The Core & Outer-Styled;

Two Different Therapeutic Projects

Ultimately, each in the marriage-of-opposites must come into two differing psychological projects. The project of the core-styled hinges on “learning to contain” emotional reactivity. The project of the outer-styled hinges on “learning to emerge” with emotional reality.

The outer-styled must “learn to emerge”; that is, they must learn to bring forward their elemental feelings, needs and convictions, the “basic stuff” that resides within their core-self. This “bringing-forth” leads to a healthier balance inside and puts them onto the path of increasing psychological wholeness. It also enables emotional availability/intimacy and “inter-subjectivity” with “the other.”

Sometimes the outer-styled have awareness of their core feelings/needs but simply struggle with their expression in the face of anxiety/fear/shame. More commonly, however, they are either not “in-touch” with their feelings or, if they are, they are so “fused/undifferentiated” with their judgments/opinions that they have little direct contact with feelings and needs themselves. What this often means is that the “psychological work” of the outer-styled must begin with helping them to recognize how much they conduct their “emotional business” out-of-touch with feelings/needs or else not “self-claiming” of feelings/needs. This work inevitably comes up against either fear or defensiveness/denial/rationalizations/justifications. The larger goal is the acquisition of self-claiming of feelings/needs simply because they are.

The therapist participating in this work generally does best to cultivate a combination of directness and gentleness, lest the healing situation become largely intimidating, a development that then simply recreates the reason why the outer-styled distanced from feelings/needs in the first place. The danger here is that the marital therapy simply become re-traumatizing for the outer-styled. On the other hand, a certain amount of pressure must be maintained because without it they often default to outer-styled defenses that work all too well. 

The project of the core-styled involves growing the capacity to contain emotional reactivity. This means learning to inhibit impulses/urges in favor of more modulated responses. It is only in the acquisition of “emotional modulation” that the core-styled are enabled to allow “psychological room/emotional space” for “the other.” Note that “emotional modulation leading to psychological room” is also a necessary condition for the core-styled to come into themselves as “formed individuals” capable of “holding onto themselves.”

The barrier that generally must be worked-through with the core-styled is the tendency to undervalue/devalue the importance and positive contribution of modulated response. Commonly, the person in the core-styled position feels that their reactivity “makes perfect sense” given their partners distanced/abandoning behavior. They do, however, often feel badly about the end results of their escalated acting-out. This “bad self-feeling” can, in turn, make further escalation likely. Learning to inhibit/contain/modulate is the only way out of this vicious circle.

The healing of the marriage-of-opposites requires that both styles come into “a new emotional compass.” It is perhaps true that this changing of emotional compasses puts both partners more onto “the same page.” In some human way they do end up more alike. At the same time each partner ends up more truly matured, more truly whole, and more truly themselves. It is interesting that it is two very different projects that serve as the vehicle for this change.