Withdrawers, Part 1

Hey George!

It's good to see you.

Awesome seeing you,

Wesley.

What's happening?

Okay,

I really need your help with withdrawers because I'm a pursuer and some of my withdrawers are making me climb the walls,

So I need to get in your head and have you help me understand them.

Well,

I've got to figure out how to meet a withdrawer one day.

Have you met any?

Are you joking?

I am joking.

All right.

Okay.

Who broke me in as a therapist?

There's way too many withdrawers.

So,

I think,

You know,

This is going to be kind of a free-flowing conversation,

But the two things I think you're going to help us with are how to really understand withdrawers,

How to understand the function of the withdrawal,

Since I think to me as a therapist,

It can look like this is anti-survival,

It's anti-bonding,

Why is this happening?

But you know that there's good reason for it,

So you're going to help us understand that.

And then I think some,

Just some practical ways to work with some of the tricky withdrawers.

Okay.

So,

Maybe you can just start by helping,

Helping get our heads around the withdrawer mindset system in general.

The most important thing when working with the withdrawer as a therapist,

Let's take a step back and try to see a bigger picture.

We are not trying to turn withdrawers into pursuers.

We really want to honor this ability to turn off their feelings and stay calm under pressure.

We wouldn't be here as a species if we didn't learn how to do this.

It's how withdrawers feel good about themselves,

It's how they fit in,

It's how they get promoted.

There is so much beauty in this ability to turn down their emotions.

So,

We want withdrawers become more flexible and more balanced,

So they have more choice of when they could turn it off and when they can turn it on.

The problem is they get so much training and so much experience turning off their emotions,

They don't know how to turn it on when it's really necessary and appropriate.

So,

That's where we're trying to,

You know,

Create some flexibility.

But as therapists,

I'm reminding myself,

I really want to get myself to a place where I can honor their avoidance,

Not see it or pathologize it as something dead and I want to turn them into pursuers so they can always do emotion.

It's so necessary for them to hold on to this ability to kind of turn off their feelings and cognitively focus on a task,

Stay calm under pressure,

And take care of business.

So,

I think as therapists,

We want to start off checking our own bias.

We want to come right in and start pushing these withdrawers to start emotionally engaging.

They're like,

Boom,

Here comes the walls.

But if you come in saying,

Hey,

This is great that you could turn off when it's really healthy and necessary.

I don't want to change that.

It's what you do best.

You really start to strengthen that alliance and start getting them feeling like they're seen in a bigger picture.

Mm-hmm.

I think,

Yeah,

I think that's such an important reminder because when you say like we have to not pathologize the withdrawer,

I think that it's easy to do that,

You know,

Especially when you see this moment where you really want this bonding to happen or this emotional connection to happen and you can feel like,

Oh,

Like their system is preventing this thing from happening.

So,

I think that stepping back and saying there's a purpose to withdrawal,

There's a function in our world for withdrawal.

And I even think,

Honestly,

As a therapist,

Like we have to moderate,

We have to cut off our emotions to a certain extent,

Right?

If we've had a bad day,

Like we have to cut that off to a certain extent.

Right.

But we can kind of forget that.

I remember my son just went off to college,

My first son,

And he sprained his ankle the first day.

And I'm like a total,

Like,

Worried and nervous mess.

And,

You know,

My clients are saying,

And then this happened.

Am I gone?

My brain is just going away,

Right?

It's thinking about that.

And I have to be able to turn that off.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

So,

Yes,

This is so adaptive to turn off.

And it's,

I think about my own life and how many years I've been trained to do this in so many different facets of my life,

Right?

To be strong,

To be independent,

And to,

You know,

There's a lot of good.

We don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater with this.

Yeah.

Right.

So,

It's really,

I'm very intentional with withdrawals or when I'm training therapists.

You have to get yourself to a place where you can honor their avoidance.

That doesn't mean we don't see the cost of it,

Too.

And we want to change that.

But we're always trying to connect with something before we fix it.

And a lot of us get the order out of whack.

We want to go right in and fix it,

Identify it as a problem.

And it's not really seeing that which are in their totality.

Right.

I love how you said that.

We have to connect with something before we fix it.

Yeah.

I wonder if,

And,

You know,

We can edit this out if you don't want to talk about this,

But I wonder if you wouldn't mind sharing a little bit about some of the messaging that that young boys and men receive around being strong and that sort of thing.

Because that's not stuff that I hear,

And I wasn't raised with any brothers,

So I probably don't have as much exposure to it.

I know we have female withdrawers.

I definitely see female withdrawers.

But would that be okay to speak a little bit to like what boys are raised with?

I mean,

My family,

And I had four brothers.

So if my dad saw me crying,

He would come over and say,

I'll give you something to keep crying if you don't stop.

I mean,

I was trained from the earliest age not to show tears.

I grew up in a tough,

Blue-collar neighborhood.

There were a lot of fighting going on.

I mean,

The more that you were able to stay calm under pressure,

The more you fit in,

The more people looked up to you.

You know,

We think about macho jobs,

Like I was a firefighter,

A police officer,

And obviously you see the benefit,

But it's so much bigger than that.

I mean,

If you think about your lawyers,

Your doctor,

Any profession,

This ability to not be vulnerable,

To just kind of present yourself as under control and not going to be rattled is hugely reinforced.

I've been trained in schools by my coaches,

By my parents,

By my brothers,

By my friends.

You name it,

Across the board,

I've gotten a message over and over again to not show my vulnerability.

Most withdrawers are trained that vulnerability is weakness.

It's being open to attack.

It's something you don't want to do.

That's why most therapists get out in front of withdrawers.

We love vulnerability,

Right?

We see this.

We measure success in tears.

It's how we feel good about ourselves,

Right?

This is not the world of a withdrawer.

To really understand that this is really risky to do,

They have not had a lot of success in this area.

They have good reasons to kind of turn that down.

Well,

Thank you.

I appreciate you sharing that and your vulnerability in sharing that because it helps me take that step back,

I think,

And think about,

Yeah,

There are so many messages.

I think in many,

Many elements of our culture,

Ways where it's survival to be composed,

To not be vulnerable,

You know,

Yeah.

I coach both my sons in football.

When one of them drops,

I remember when they were little,

They would drop a ball.

It's normal to feel sad and want to cry.

There's no room to sit and cry on a football field.

So what am I going to do when I see them crying?

Stop your crying.

Get back up.

Get back in there.

Like,

I'm training them when it's appropriate.

And sports is another great area where we are trained to turn off our feelings and our vulnerabilities.

Yeah.

Anger,

To mobilize ourselves to kind of turn down those fears and to go forward.

Yeah.

And I think that there,

I think,

You know,

As we're in the mindset of really appreciating the value of this,

That we're honoring that this has a function,

I think that we all do benefit from the ability that when things feel hard,

That we can still choose to push through and we can still say like,

This is hard.

I'm still going to push through it.

Like,

You know,

To stay functional when it feels hard is a real advantage.

I went down to Katrina to help out after the storm.

And I remember working with a bunch of African-American teenage boys and they had all lost their families and they were basically living on the streets.

Did it feel safe for them to open up their vulnerability?

No way.

No way.

Yeah.

So what I'm going down there,

Just trying to normalize the struggle and emphasizing their resilience and kind of practical strategies on how they could kind of keep moving forward.

Yeah.

Time and a place for safety with vulnerability,

Right?

Yeah.

So those boys reminded me,

It isn't always about getting people to be vulnerable,

Right?

Vulnerability demands safety to be able to do that.

Yeah.

If you don't have that safety,

You need that strategy that's going to turn off those feelings and look out for yourself and be strong because otherwise you're going to get eaten up.

Right.

Yeah.

So I think just keeping that mindset in my own head of that there are many situations where it's not safe to be vulnerable and that that's just part of life,

Right?

Like we're not looking for every single aspect of life to be vulnerable and to kind of always sit in that space.

But that flexibility comes in when it's with their partner.

That's kind of when we are trying to kind of encourage that.

Exactly.

Okay.

I'm reminding myself with the withdrawers all the time,

My target is success and vulnerability for them.

Why they don't engage emotionally is they don't have a lot of success with their emotions.

So that's the target.

But to really land on that target,

I have to start off by appreciating their reluctance to want to do that and how that actually works in a lot of different settings.

It's connecting with the function of that avoidance and honoring it that kind of creates the safety and builds that trust between a therapist and a client to then get them to head towards that darkness.

It's not an easy thing to do.

It's so counterintuitive for them to want to head towards their fears and listen to what they're saying instead of just turning that channel.

And so can you give us a couple phrases that you might say to really validate a withdrawers not wanting to open up or not go to vulnerability?

I think it's so important to really be explicit about the process with withdrawers,

Right?

They live in their head.

You want to get their buy-in to the process.

So most therapists just want to ask withdrawers lots of questions.

I mean,

That's a setup for failure.

Withdrawers should be reluctant to want to come to therapy.

Their biggest fear is failure.

They're going to get it wrong.

And they're going to be asked to talk about their feelings,

Something they're not good at.

They are set up to fail in therapy.

They should be reluctant,

Right?

And then a therapist is going to come right in.

How are you feeling?

You know,

Where are your body?

Can you go deeper?

Do you feel sad?

And it's this kind of deep push for vulnerability.

And the withdrawers,

When they're looking at the therapist,

They start looking up.

They're in their head.

They're trying to figure out,

Like,

What does this therapist want?

She said,

I feel sad.

I guess that sounds right.

Yeah,

I'm sad.

And they just basically tell you what you want to hear.

They're not hearing severe emotion.

They're trying to figure out what you want from them.

They're trying to perform.

That's the world most withdrawers live in.

It's performance.

It's focusing on what they need to do outside themselves.

If you're focusing on how to fix things and what you need to do,

You're not really focusing on your inner world.

Okay,

I just,

This is so much good stuff you're saying.

I just want to slow it down if I can,

Even though I know that that's a bad thing to say.

But I really do want to slow it down.

Slow it down.

Because,

But only- Withdrawers like when you slow it down.

That's okay.

You can slow it down with withdrawers.

You want to check in with my partner again?

I'll take a couple minutes break here.

Okay.

But it's only so I can actually digest some of these really key things you're saying,

George.

So one is to just really appreciate that the act of therapy is counter to what feels safe and familiar for them.

Okay.

The second is that even though I have an ultimate goal in mind of helping them connect more to themselves and therefore their partner,

If I drive straight to that and I start asking questions about their internal world,

I'm asking them to describe a country they've never visited.

I'm asking them to tell me what the food tastes like that they've never eaten and that they're freezing up and going straight back up into the cognitive and going to just basically like agree with whatever I'm saying to make it stop.

Okay.

So when a withdrawer says,

The most common thing a withdrawer is going to say is,

I don't know.

And most therapists are like,

Uh-oh,

If you don't know and I don't know,

So that we start to push and we start to say,

Well,

What do you feel in your body?

We just start going quick.

I want you to pause a moment and say,

What is it like for this withdrawer to not know?

And their whole world safety is based on knowing and fixing and doing.

Yet here they are in this moment,

Not knowing what to do.

What's the feelings that are attached with this?

Even though they're in their head,

There's always some feeling attached to meaning and to how we make sense of something.

And we don't want to push to these really big conjectures like that must be lonely and sad or vulnerable.

It tends to be simple.

That must be really difficult for you.

That must suck.

That must be hard.

You're good at knowing what to do,

And yet here you are not knowing what to do.

So let me backtrack a second.

But the main intervention most therapists ask withdrawers is an evocative response.

It's some type of question.

But I'm reminding myself all the time with withdrawers is they don't have the answers to a lot of these questions.

What does it feel like when you're asked a question and you don't have the answer and your fear is that you're failing?

And your strategy when you're failing is to put up a wall.

So if you don't have an answer,

You're going to put up a wall.

That's just the math behind it.

So I know I'm up against that.

So the first thing I want to do is be explicit about the process.

I'm going to ask you questions.

I'm not expecting you have the answers.

How could you have the answers?

I know the way kids learn to articulate their feelings is somebody helps them put words to it.

Withdrawers don't get this.

So they have a sense of self that lacks coherence in these more vulnerable places.

Right.

So really being upfront about it's okay not to know the answers to these questions and also let them know why you're asking the questions.

But I'm asking questions because,

You know,

If you could not understand yourself,

These emotional signals more clearly,

It's easier to have more success in communicating with your partner.

It's also easier to understand what your partner is looking for.

So that's why we're heading in this direction.

Psych ed for withdrawers is critical to buy into the process.

A lot of times that's why withdrawers,

When you can ever get them to read,

Hold me tight or,

You know,

They like,

Oh,

They come in.

It's like,

Oh,

That makes so much sense.

Why are you trying to get me to do this?

You could see like the relief that they feel because they're going with you instead of dragging their feet the whole way.

So I want to make sure it's okay not to know.

And I'm going to ask you questions because I'm trying to help you do it differently.

You didn't get this help.

It's not your fault.

If we don't help people with their words when they're younger,

They just don't have the words.

Right.

So that's it's never too late to help find those words.

Well,

And I wonder,

Like,

Am I connecting the pieces right?

If I'm thinking like,

Oh,

Like this is part of meeting the withdrawer in their head,

Like helping them understand where you're going and why.

That you need to do that.

They they're focused on fixing and performance.

If they're going to put aside all this stuff,

They need to know the direction you're kind of leading them.

You're just asking questions like,

What do you feel?

They have no idea why you're asking it.

They don't know what you're going to do with the answer.

How could they not be reluctant?

And we know what they do with reluctance and fears.

They put up walls.

Yeah.

I'm constantly up against this.

I know what a withdrawer is wanting to do if I'm not clear.

Right.

And if I just,

The beautiful thing is when you see the,

You have good reasons for your intervention.

But when you see them starting to block you,

Feeling like you're failing,

They're just giving you information.

Your intervention was a little off what they needed.

So,

But now if you can catch that as it's happening.

I get the most excited when I see a withdrawers defensive moves happening in a room and I could honor that when it's happening.

So,

I might ask something and a withdrawer starts to laugh.

I'm like,

That's so cool.

I mean,

I love when we start like getting somewhere.

You go right to laughter.

It's such an adaptive way of kind of letting out some of that pressure that you start to feel.

That's great that you did that.

What's that like to hear?

Right.

So,

I'm trying to find these moments of helping them notice their own moves because that's withdrawer re-engagement.

Withdrawer re-engagement isn't trying to get a withdrawer to cry.

Withdrawer re-engagement is just trying to get a withdrawer to be present with whatever is happening.

Okay,

Let me repeat that because I think that's really important.

Withdrawer re-engagement isn't trying to get a withdrawer to cry.

It is trying to help a withdrawer be present.

That's it.

And they might be tears and a lot of times when we go deeper,

That's where they will go.

But especially in the beginning,

It's about just being present.

If what they are doing in their head and they're feeling pressure and you're trying to get them to put words to it,

If you get them to put words to the laughter,

Which is just their way of kind of letting out a little of this pressure they're feeling and go intellectual when you see them.

I mean,

There are lots of moves that withdrawers are going to use.

They can use anger,

But their anger is very different than pursuer's anger,

Right?

And a pursuer's anger is trying to get some response.

They're going to see a withdrawer use anger,

But they're using anger to create distance.

Can you see that in your room when a withdrawer says,

This is ridiculous,

I don't want to engage anymore.

What are they trying to do with that anger?

They're trying to regulate themselves.

They're trying to kind of gain some space because to honor the withdrawal,

You really got to see how the benefits of what withdrawal can do.

It avoids escalation.

It gives a sense of control and safety.

It doesn't enable more bad behavior to happen.

It allows them to reset that they clearly,

You know,

There's so many functions to what this,

And that's a hard thing for most pursuers to get because silence for pursuers can be quite traumatic.

Drawer silence is actually comforting,

Right?

It gives their brain a chance to get off the line of fire,

To reboot and try to figure out what went wrong,

What they can do differently.

The distance is actually what makes them feel better.

Right,

Right.

Yeah.

And I think that is really hard for a pursuer to understand,

You know,

Because that stoicism or that it looks sort of like a blankness that inaccessibility is sending their system into a panic.

But I,

I mean,

I think with what you're saying,

Correct me if I'm wrong,

Because I'm going to like throw out some thoughts with it,

But it's,

It's to me,

It seems like the withdraw is,

Is trying to figure it out,

Is trying to solve it in a way they're just doing that internally and trying to be like,

Have space and calm to do that.

Yeah.

They've over relied on self-regulation.

It's what they trust because they're left alone with their emotions.

They know how to soothe themselves.

It's very scary,

Especially when the other person is feeling threatening to imagine going to them for help.

It's so counterintuitive because,

You know,

In times of,

Of threat,

The best thing to do is to retreat and ride the storm out,

Soothe yourself and try again at another date.

Yeah,

They,

So they over rely on self-regulation because that was the only thing that they were offered.

That's the only way that they could do it when they were younger.

Go back to the still face experiment.

Yeah.

When that child at three years old,

Isn't even looking at it for that parent's response.

And we look at that saying,

Look how resilient that yes,

That kid's resilient,

But it also should break your heart that already is all the child has gotten so used to a parent,

Not responding that they no longer even look for it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Goodness.

What could be worse than that?

Yeah.

Sure is they take that learning and the world celebrates it and they start to feel good about themselves that they can self-soothe and be independent and not rely on others.

And then they find themselves in a relationship where their partner says they're broken and defective because they can't do the thing.

Nobody's shown them how to do it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I think it even just reinforces how much that validation really makes,

Really is so needed.

I mean,

It's needed for all our clients,

But just that validation,

That specific validation for withdrawers,

That there's not something defective about them.

There's something really adaptive and skilled about them.

And it doesn't work in some moments here,

But it certainly works in a lot of other places.

I want to get a tattoo that says success and vulnerability,

Because that's what you've got to keep reminding yourself.

When you're telling a withdrawer that their withdrawal makes sense,

That validation is success in their vulnerability.

They start to tell the person,

Say,

You're not a bad person because you're doing this.

Because this is what you learned to do.

It's your best attempt to survive what you're experiencing in the moment.

That honor that you're giving,

That's the validation we're talking about.

Oftentimes it's the first time a withdrawer has ever heard that.

How could they not want to engage more when they have somebody proactively fighting for their experience?

It's quite common that when you start to get this honoring their avoidance,

And they start to trust that.

A funny thing happens to withdrawers.

They don't shut up.

They got years of make it up to do,

Right?

When they finally feel the space is safe,

And they start to feel like they have some success,

They start to take that space,

Really.

There's a lot of make up to do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You can see when they do finally feel safe,

They feel like what they are is understandable,

Who they are isn't wrong.

They're not broken robots.

It just flows.

It can flow out of them.

Turn up your empathy.

I like the video of Spock.

When he talks about,

He makes a choice not to feel.

When he experienced the loss of his planet,

The excruciating pain,

There was no one there to comfort him.

He learned to self-soothe.

He makes a choice moving forward that he doesn't want to feel that pain again.