If Feeling Unseen In Your Household Is Driving You Into A Boiling Rage, Do This.
A step-by-step guide to getting through one of the most common triggers in a relationship.
by The Candidly Team
In the course of a relationship, it’s not uncommon for either person to start to feel invisible or overlooked by the other.
Have we not all felt it?
That urge to report the 767 thing we did that day to make the lives of those around us run smoothly? To cry out how deeply, deeply drained we are? To fish for some teeny tiny token of recognition?
A recent survey of American mothers showed that 75% felt “invisible” and 94% felt “unappreciated, unacknowledged or unseen.” Even as professional, parenting, and household responsibilities are divvied out more equally, women still take on about “2/3 or more of the unpaid domestic work and childcare for their homes and families,”according to Eve Rodsky the creator of The Fair Play Method. And there’s a long list of what she calls “invisible labor,” meaning unpaid or unnoticed work, that women still predominantly do.
It’s not necessarily that our partners aren’t hardworking or generous or loving or considerate in countless ways. But sometimes we just don’t feel seen. And that can make us carry a certain weight. A resentment. Maybe even a certain level of … boiling rage?
And then, of course, we feel something else - guilt. Guilt for being irritable. Unsatisfied. For wanting something.
On the flip side, and if we’re being truly honest, we might feel sorry for ourselves. Victimized. Wronged. Punishing toward the partner we feel shut out by.
Finally, to make it all extra easy on ourselves, we feel all these things at once. And ultimately, that leaves us feeling the biggest feeling of all. Demoralized.
But according to research from John Gottman, Ph.D. of The Gottman Institute, who has studied the dynamics of couples for decades, we apparently don’t have to be.
We talked to Certified Gottman Therapist Karen Bridbord, Ph.D. about exactly what to do when we feel a quiet rage at being overlooked in our relationship, both in ourselves and with our partner. And it was all so actionable, so honest, and so … hopeful.
Making Sense Of The Disconnect
According to Bridbord, there’s a series of critical steps we can take to help us navigate our own hurt and rageful feelings around not feeling seen and to improve the dynamic with our partner. But first, it’s important to make sense of the dynamic that’s leading us to feel disconnected in the first place.
“In any given interaction between two people, there are really one of three choices,” said Bridbord. “You can either turn towards someone, turn away from someone, or turn against someone. What really put [Gottman] on the map was the fact that he found that for every one [act of] turning away or turning against, you actually need five turning towards. So that's an enormous ratio right there. And what happens is that over time, when people turn away, that can lead to this boiling point.”
Turning away is basically a form of “stonewalling, where a person just shuts down,” said Bridbord. “Oftentimes, people turn away not because they're intentionally trying to ignore or hurt the other person on the other end [but] because they're flooded. They're overwhelmed themselves by the situation and they don't know how to address it. Flooding is kind of like the fight, flight, freeze response where they shut down.”
It’s, of course, normal to feel triggered by our partner shutting down or “turning away” consistently. In fact, “Gottman's research found that turning away was a little bit worse than turning against,” said Bridbord, “Why? Because in turning against at least there's some energy. Even in the conflict, there's connection.”
The absence of connection can create a “build up” of heated or hurt feelings. In order to reestablish connection and communicate what we want and need from the other person, we ourselves have to be willing to turn towards our partner. “Even in the discussion of a challenging scenario, it's really your work to be able to not get into that fight, flight, activated mode, so that you can acknowledge your feelings, you can talk about them calmly with your partner, and hopefully, your partner can hear what you have to say and respond to you in a calm effective way as well.”
Steps To Take Before You Sit Down To Talk:
We all know that storming up to our partner with a suitcase brimming with rage-driven complaints will get us nowhere. But neither will using all of our strength to keep that suitcase sealed shut while bursting at the seams. Communication will need to happen, but before it does, there are 3 things we can do to feel calmer and clearer in ourselves:
1. Self-reflect
“The first piece is to recognize that you really don't feel seen and understand for yourself where that pain is coming from,” said Birdbord.” That might mean asking yourself if there’s “a way that you bring either baggage to the table, meaning you have a history of feeling ignored in some way, or are you contributing to being ignored?”
The point here is not to “blame the victim” but to reflect on your side of the equation in order to gain a fuller understanding of the dynamic. Ask yourself whether you’re setting boundaries or setting yourself up to be hurt in certain ways that might be based on your own history. As Bridbord put it, “Real self-reflection comes in terms of trying to figure out what's me, what's them, and what are we creating together?”
2. Self-soothe
“The antidote to stonewalling is self-soothing,” said Bridbord. “Self-soothing usually means not thinking about the thing that really pissed you off that the other person did. And in this case, we're talking about the thing that the person did many times over the course of who knows how long, but it's to learn how to take care of you. Because if you don't take care of you, you're not going to be able to come to your partner as easily and say, ‘Hey, this really bothered me when you did this, and it hurt my feelings.’”
3. Reflect on the other person’s experience
“Acknowledging what's going on in the other person's life is also important, not as a way of excusing the behavior, but as a way of understanding,” said Bridbord. “For example, are they having a particularly stressful time at work or with a friend or with their parents or with something that could be contributing to their behavior? And they're not necessarily aware that your perception is that they're turning away.”
Taking this time to reflect is done “in the service of coming to your partner to share with them how you feel and acknowledging that you recognizethat they're going through a lot, and it's been hurtful that you’ve felt like you're the one that's been carrying the load for the relationship and they have not been turning towards you,” said Bridbord. In this way, it's not about blame, which tends to put the other person on the defense.
When You’re Ready To Talk, Here’s How To Do It:
There are five very helpful things to keep in mind to help you convey what you really want to say and to elicit a better response from your partner.
1. Make sure that your partner is ready to have the discussion
“You know how they say in real estate, location, location, location. Well, I tell couples all the time when having critical conversation, timing, timing, timing is key, because you might be ready to have the conversation, but they might not be ready to have the conversation,” said Bridbord. “We want to set up the conversation to be successful. So you might want to say to your partner, ‘Hey, I would love to talk to you about some stuff, but I don't want you to be distracted, and I need your full attention during this time, so when would be a good time for you?’”
2. Use “I” statements to say what you are feeling
“When you say something like, ‘I'm feeling alone,’ it’s different than saying, ‘Hey, you're ignoring me,’” said Bridbord. “Even better is saying something like, ‘I really miss you.’ If you say to somebody, ‘I really miss you', it's going to be seen as a turning towards rather than “you're not doing enough.”
3. Remind your partner of your intentions
Be outright in stating that your intentions are not about blaming. It’s about getting closer, knowing each other, and making things feel better, individually and together.
4. Be clear and give specific examples as opposed to generalities
Pay attention to when you use words like “always” and “never.”
So instead of saying:
“You never thank me for cleaning the kitchen late at night. You’re always just watching TV, not even offering to help.”
You might say:
“The other night when I did dishes and you watched TV, I felt lonely and really tired. It would have meant a lot to me to be offered help or thanked or acknowledged in some way.”
5. Be open to hearing what they want to tell you
To create a climate where feedback is welcome, it has to go both ways. Showing that you’re interested and care about the other person’s inner world and point of view creates a sense of safety, where each person knows they’re not just there to bare the brunt of the other person’s blame.
“Chances are, if you are not feeling good, they may not be feeling good, too,” said Bridbord. “They may share with you some information that you may not be aware of about how they've been feeling.”
3 Practices To Keep You Feeling Seen And Connected:
In order to avoid falling back into a pattern of stonewalling or feeling overlooked, Bridbord recommends consistently having three types of conversations with your partner.
1. State Of The Union
Gottman talks about having what he calls “state of the union” meetings once a week. These are really just an opportunity for both people to talk about how things have been going the past seven days, which “prevents a buildup of negativity over time,” said Bridbord. “At work, everybody can appreciate that they probably have more meetings than they even want to … and yet couples don't even think about having regular meetings where they come together and say, ‘how are we managing ourselves as a family? How are we communicating with each other? What's working? What isn't working yet?’ Turns out that couples who do have those types of meetings regularly report having better connection and, ultimately, better communication.”
2. Date Night/ Love Mapping
Unlike a state of the union where you’re focusing on the dynamic between you, there needs to be a time in your week where you’re just connecting and sharing about your individual lives, according to Bridbord. “It's really hard to feel disconnected when you are making time every week to just turn towards and talk about your lives outside of the relationship, building those love maps [and relaying] who you are [to each other].”
3. Repair Meetings
A repair meeting is “when we're actually talking about a conflict that happened recently, and we're going through a process of trying to understand and learn about each other more deeply as well as come up with a plan of action for next time we get into a fight,” explained Bridbord. “You're saying, ‘wow, we blew up this week and let's look at what happened … How did you feel? How did I feel? What was your perception of what happened? What was my perception of what happened? What were the triggers that led to how are we each taking responsibility for the conflict that we had? And finally, next time a conflict like this arises, how are we going to do it differently?”
Of course, each of these conversations can naturally “meld into each other” but it’s also important to make time for each one in their own right in order to keep both people feeling understood and close to each other.
Ways To Cope When Feelings Of Being Invisible Run Deep:
And finally, if feelings of being invisible get triggered easily or seem out of proportion to the situation with your partner, here are three actions Bridbord suggests you take:
Self-care: “When I say self-care, I don't mean sitting on the couch eating bonbons,” said Bridbord. “I mean doing things like taking care of your own mental health, exercising, sleeping well, meditation, laughter, just lifestyle strategies for self to help you not get as triggered when your partner is turning away from you.”
Open up about your vulnerabilities: “It is important for your partner to know if you have a sensitivity to feeling overlooked or rejected. “Everybody brings baggage to the table from the past, from past childhood wounds as well as past relationships,” said Bridbord. “It's important for your partner to know that this is a vulnerability that you carry into the relationship, so that they can be more gentle with you when it comes to that issue.
See a therapist: Finally, if you find yourself struggling with feelings of insecurity or abandonment, it’s incredibly valuable to find a therapist. And this is true for anyone, hoping to make sense of their reactions and ways of being in a relationship.
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