What Actually Helps When Perceptual Incongruence Shows Up (Part III)

When you notice perceptual incongruence occurring in your relationship, naming it is a great place to start.  Just naming a process can bring clarity and containment, and it’s also helpful because instead of making one person in the dynamic a problem, you’re making “the problem the problem,” as narrative therapy traditionally frames it. In an ideal world, I would love for you and your partner to name this problem together and then decide to tackle it as a team, with each of you taking on different jobs.  If it’s not possible to name the perceptual incongruence problem together (maybe your partner is too upset, or just doesn’t have or want this information), name it for yourself. Try to separate the challenges of the moment from both your and your partner’s humanity.

Perceiver:  What You Can Do

Overall, the work for the person in the role of perceiver in a perceptual incongruence dynamic is to cultivate flexibility around their ideas about what’s going on for their partner, try to spend less time in their partner’s head, and shift their focus to understanding themselves. Here are some steps to take:

1.      Offer yourself compassion for your very human and understandable desire to know what is going on inside your partner. It’s possible that you’ve had past experiences where your sense of relational safety and survival depended on knowing what was going on in the mind of an important person, and you may have some very understandable hypervigilance around this. 

2.      Remind yourself that you can’t know with certainty what is going on for your partner or why, though you have a guess, and that it is okay to hold this guess lightly, with curiosity and flexibility.  Try to separate action from character (i.e. my partner is often late, but I don’t know if that behavior is coming from a selfish part of them, an overwhelmed part, or an overpromising part).  It might help to notice that putting so much of your focus on trying to figure out what is in your partner’s head is likely going to be exhausting for you. 

3.      Turn toward your own mind and experience with compassion. Here are some reflection questions to ask yourself: 

• What am I feeling and thinking right now?

• What impact am I experiencing, separate from the intent I am assuming?

• What do I want to experience instead? 

• What is in my locus of control to do to create the experience I want?

4.      If your partner is available for this conversation, check your perception with them. For example:  When X happened, what I told myself this means is Y (you don’t care about me, you don’t respect me, etc.).  Is this what’s going on for you, or is it something else?

5.      Over time, you can develop a kind of internal steadiness that allows you to stay with your own experience and name it skillfully and feel less need to spend time in your partner’s head.

Perceived:  What You Can Do

Overall, the work for the person in the role of perceived in a perceptual incongruence is to cultivate an internal steadiness and self-trust so that your partner’s ideas about you feel less threatening, perhaps even to your sense of identity, and from that steady place, own what belongs to you with self-compassion, and hold the rest with curiosity.

1.      Offer yourself compassion for how deeply threatening it might feel to be misunderstood in a negative way or blamed by someone you love and who is important to you.  Notice you might have had past experiences of feeling unfairly blamed and misunderstood that make this moment feel especially threatening. 

2.      Important note:   you might be assuming something is in the mind of your partner about you, that actually isn’t in their mind, or is in their mind in a much gentler and less global way than you’re assuming.  If your partner is available for this conversation, it’s usually smart to check what you think is in their mind about you, just to make sure you’re not mindreading them about mindreading you! For example:  I’m worried that you’re thinking X about me; is that true?

3.      Remind yourself that even if your partner seems convinced that they know what is in your mind, they actually can’t know this with certainty.   What you think, feel, prefer, and intend belongs with you; the impact belongs with them.

4.      Lovingly turn toward your own mind and experience. Here are some reflection questions to ask yourself:  

• What am I feeling and thinking right now?

• What do I know is true about my values, my actions, and my identity?

• What part of what my partner thinks about me feels true and what doesn’t apply?

• Separate from the impact to my partner, what do I know is true of my intent?

• What do I think is true about the impact my partner is experiencing?

5.      Some people tend to take in too much of others’ experience of them and their assumed intent as true, and some people tend to take in too little.  Slowing down and imagining a loving separation between your mind and your partner’s mind (psychological boundary imagery, explained in Part IV, can help) can support you in taking in and owning the right, balanced amount.

6.      Over time, you can develop a kind of internal steadiness so that being perceived negatively becomes less threatening to your nervous system.  From this place of feeling more safe, you’ll have a more solid base to move forward with integrity.

It’s possible that each of you are playing both roles of perceiver and perceived simultaneously. In this case, it’s important to slow down even more and for each person to take time to separate and reflect on their own experience and the growth invitations within each role.

Read Part IV of this series to learn what you can do to future-proof your relationship from perceptual incongruence.