The Energies of Love

by Donna Eden

  How Your Energetic Stress Style Distorts the One You Love

  In an old parable, a group of blind men are brought to an elephant. Each has his hands placed on one part of the great creature and is asked to identify what he is touching. The one given the trunk determines that it is a hose. The one at the elephant’s side thinks he has come to a wall. The one whose arms are wrapped around the leg knows it to be a tree. The one at the tail certifies that it is a snake. Although the parable does not account for these men’s apparent olfactory limitations, it does illustrate that by focusing on only one part of a larger story you may come to conclusions that are comical at best and disastrous at worst.

  This is what happens to you when you are under relationship stress. Because you are wired to treat your closest relationships and your own survival in a similar manner, such distortions are particularly strong when the stress is caused by difficulties with your partner (to paraphrase the popular song “You Always Distort the One You Love”). The closer the person is to you, the harder it is to keep the person in perspective when the relationship is having difficulties. And the way you distort the one you love has everything to do with your Energetic Stress Style. You represent the world when feeling distress according to the bias of the sensory mode that dominates when you feel threatened.

  Your Energetic Stress Style is not the act of seeing, hearing, or feeling. Rather, your inner world is organized according to principles that most closely correspond with seeing, hearing, feeling, or the fourth mode, abstract logic. Human thought is extraordinarily flexible, and each of us normally combines all four modes. But we viscerally tend to depend and put more emphasis on one of them, and when we feel distress in our primary relationship, the other modes fade into the background. The entire elephant becomes just a wall or snake or hose or tree. We distort the one we love according to the principles of the sensory mode we trust the most. The other three modes simply shut down. It is not a choice but a physiological energetic response. And when this occurs, we cannot help but create mental distortions and then act accordingly (and inappropriately). It’s the natural thing to do!

  Energetically, You Become a Different Animal during Relationship Stress

  When Donna carefully watches a couple in a stressful encounter, she will see one of four distinct energetic modes emerge in each partner. This shift in energy corresponds with the visual, kinesthetic, digital, and tonal sensory channels we’ve been discussing. It occurs quite consistently and is independent of intelligence, height, or political party. Yet the energy that dominates for you during relationship stress is as tangible a difference to those who see energy as is the color of your eyes, the breadth of your shoulders, or whether you have an “innie” or an “outie” belly button.

  Distortions of the Visual Style

  Without the other modes to round out the picture, visuals lose perspective, normally their greatest strength. Their internal take or “view” of the situation overshadows whatever actually occurred. Not only does this tunnel vision compellingly distort understanding and undermine empathy, but visuals can quickly assemble a vision of how things should be, or more specifically, of how you should be and what you should do. They tend to embrace this vision wholeheartedly. You, meanwhile, are feeling unseen and are experiencing your visual partner’s “helpful” analysis as judgment and blame. With the energy radiating outward from your visual partner during a stressful encounter, the focus moves to you, with emphasis on how you are the cause of the problem and need to do things differently.

  • THE ENERGY DIMENSION •

  Visual Stress Style

  During times of relationship stress, for people whose Energetic Stress Style is visual, the body’s energies tend to:

  Concentrate in the head and the upper chest.

  Then move outward, particularly through the eyes and chest area.

  Appear to tunnel toward the other person.

  Distortions of the Kinesthetic Style

  When disagreement or upset occurs, kinesthetics are more attuned to their partner’s hurt than to their own needs. Whatever energies the partner is emanating are absorbed like a sponge into the kinesthetic’s body. As thick painful energy accumulates in their heart and chest, kinesthetics feel like they are about to burst or drown. Their desperate impulse is to turn off the source of their anguish by soothing the partner! Clear thinking is not supported, as the most vital energies have left the brain and gone into the body. These energies blend with the crisis that is unfolding until the distinction between self and other is long gone. From this constellation, with their needs unrecognized by themselves or their partner, kinesthetics are thrust into the interactions that will shape their relationships.

  • THE ENERGY DIMENSION •

  Kinesthetic Stress Style

  During times of relationship stress, for people whose Energetic Stress Style is kinesthetic, the body’s energies tend to:

  Become slow and heavy, like sludge.

  Connect with the outer world and then move inward in an overpowering way.

  Concentrate at the Heart Chakra at the center of the chest (chakras, from Sanskrit, are energy centers).

  Move out of the hips, legs, and feet, compromising grounding and stability.

  Distortions of the Digital Style

  The voice of the heart is muted, yet a rich choreography of energy is unfolding within the brain. The verbal reasoning and logic of the front brain overshadow the primitive needs of the back brain, giving the digital the appearance of clarity and calmness. This seems to the digital to be the paragon of rational, civilized thought. The system is closed and encapsulated. Not only do the energies of the heart and gut have no pathways to consciousness, the energy of the partner bounces off like rubber bands shot at a granite wall. The partner’s explanations, feelings, and desperate pleas do not upset the digital, who is not consciously trying to dismiss the loved one. The partner’s concerns are just not relevant and will be put to rest when he or she grasps the logic of the digital’s superior understanding.

  • THE ENERGY DIMENSION •

  Digital Stress Style

  During times of relationship stress, for people whose Energetic Stress Style is digital, the body’s energies tend to:

  Rush up into the brain.

  Move from the back brain to the cerebral cortex, the front brain, with a primal force.

  Accumulate there in the forebrain.

  Be so cut off from the body that the heart and the gut have little influence on the person’s experience.

  Distortions of the Tonal Style

  The tonal’s energies get focused in the organs involved with emotion. The vibratory rate of the outside world is also sensitively registered and reverberates in those organs as well. Under stress, the partner’s comments may activate a torrent of inner emotion that is not particularly related to the actual words or intended meaning. The tonal’s acute sensitivity, which under peaceful conditions lends itself to exquisite aesthetic sensibilities, leads to a roar of painful and contradictory emotions under stress. Everything begins to scream at the tonal, sound becomes extraordinarily personal, and the distinction between the sounds generated by the partner and those generated by the internal organs is lost. A rich drama of incompatible emotions may be enacted until the tonal has little choice but to escape from the bombardment.

  • THE ENERGY DIMENSION •

  Tonal Stress Style

  During times of relationship stress, for people whose Energetic Stress Style is tonal, the body’s energies tend to:

  Concentrate in two locations: the solar plexus and the area between and including the ears.

  Then move into the organs that govern intense emotion—such as the heart, stomach, liver, lungs, gallbladder, kidneys, spleen, and pancreas—as well as the adrenal glands.

  Become painfully acute.<
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  Assessing Your Energetic Stress Style

  Recognize yourself yet? You may or may not at this point, but your partner probably does. It is much harder to recognize our own distortions than those of our partner. Particularly when we are in the middle of relationship stress, our inner experiences can become quite confusing. Another complication to identifying your own style is that when not under stress, you combine all four modes, and you may have even cultivated one of the other styles so strongly that you consciously identify more closely with it than you do with your primary inborn stress response mode. But when relationship stress hits, your Energetic Stress Style returns center stage for both you and your partner to encounter. This section of the book will show you what to do when life has drawn you into such a fine mess. As you work with your own and your partner’s stress response styles, the dynamics of each will become clearer and it will be easier to bridge your differences.

  You can gain at least a tentative idea of your own and your partner’s Energetic Stress Style by taking the following quiz. A limitation is that when you are under relationship stress, your self-understanding is at a low ebb, so your experiences of who you are at such times, as well as your memory of those experiences, may be less than reliable. That is a reason we will be asking you to rate both yourself and your partner. The ensuing discussion of differences in your perceptions may be surprising and enlightening. Expect them. Be kind to one another as you try to reconcile them. If you find that you pretty much agree from the start, do not be discouraged; you will likely stumble into areas of disagreement later in the program!

  Energetic Stress Style Assessment7

  Permission is granted to photocopy this assessment for personal use. Make two copies for yourself and two copies for your partner. First complete each item for yourself; then for your partner. Circle the letter of the response that BEST describes your experiences. If you cannot decide between two items, mark “1/2” next to each of them. The opening line, “When in major conflict with my partner,” is the same for each item.

  1. When in Major Conflict with My Partner:

  a. I can focus clearly on precisely what my partner is doing wrong.

  b. I become logical, rational, and reasonable.

  c. I become exasperated at not feeling heard.

  d. My primal feelings can take over completely.

  2. When in Major Conflict with My Partner:

  a. My partner tells me that I can’t see my own part in it.

  b. I know what I think more than what I feel.

  c. I “hear” between the lines.

  d. Feelings are facts and logic is suspect.

  3. When in Major Conflict with My Partner:

  a. I can see what my partner needs to do to solve the problem.

  b. I want to escape until my partner calms down.

  c. I hear my inner dialogue louder than my partner’s voice.

  d. I feel very lonely when my partner won’t show feelings.

  4. When in Major Conflict with My Partner:

  a. I get more irritated than I should when my partner doesn’t live up to my expectations.

  b. My partner sometimes accuses me of being too calm, cool, and collected.

  c. I carefully analyze my partner’s behavior and have strong emotions about it.

  d. I tend to be nonconfrontational and overly cautious about not hurting my partner.

  5. When in Major Conflict with My Partner:

  a. I tend to judge and criticize my partner.

  b. My logic is one of my greatest strengths.

  c. Even though my partner claims I’m not being rejected in any way, I still feel rejected.

  d. I try to make my partner feel good, but eventually I may fall apart or explode.

  6. When in Major Conflict with My Partner:

  a. I blame my partner.

  b. I am surprised because I had no clue that there was a problem.

  c. I can be hurt more by my partner’s tone of voice than the actual words.

  d. I am more attuned to my partner’s feelings than I am to my own.

  7. When in Major Conflict with My Partner:

  a. My partner is usually wrong.

  b. I become orderly, structured, and programmed.

  c. I judge myself.

  d. I lose my own truth.

  8. When in Major Conflict with My Partner:

  a. I want to say “Look at me!” if my partner is avoiding eye contact.

  b. My partner’s strong emotions are a turn-off.

  c. I withdraw in hurt and frustration.

  d. I often just give in if my partner seems to be in too much pain.

  9. When in Major Conflict with My Partner:

  a. It sometimes feels like a contest that I must win.

  b. My superior logic gives me comfort.

  c. I am very hard on myself.

  d. I lose my truth and scramble for words.

  10. When in Major Conflict with My Partner, My Unspoken Position Is:

  a. “You’re Wrong!”

  b. “I’m Right!”

  c. “I’m Angry at You for Making Me Feel Wrong!”

  d. “I Don’t Want You to Feel Wrong!”

  Although the Energetic Stress Style Assessment may lack scientific rigor or validation, it is at least easy to score. Count your total number of a, b, c, and d scores. The more a’s, the more you experience yourself as a visual, the more b’s = digital, c’s = tonal, and d’s = kinesthetic. Once you’ve scored it for yourself, take the test again rating your partner. Then, if your partner also took the test, compare your scores with your partner’s scores on both versions.

  Most people score highest in one area, somewhat less on a second, and substantially less on the other two. The top two scores reflect your primary and secondary styles. The primary is inborn, primal. It is what you instinctively rely on during primal threat. Your secondary style has been nurtured by experience and preference, is often more valued consciously, and may be how you view yourself. This will often account for the difference between the way you scored yourself and the way your partner scored you. Recognizing these differences of perception is a start for bridging them and should, for now, at least lead to some interesting discussion.

  When Two Energies Dance

  One of the most important insights about sex and intimacy to come from the behavioral sciences is deceptively simple. For sex to stay hot within a long-term relationship, you not only must be able to deeply bond with your partner, you must also be able to preserve a separate identity.8 You must be able to act autonomously and sustain your own center even while deeply registering your partner’s needs, expectations, and desires. This delicate interplay between bonding and differentiating is the underlying issue around which many marriages succeed or fail, and it is as much a dance of two energy fields as it is a dance of two personalities.

  No matter how much you love one another, if you can’t get your energies into harmony and accord, it is going to be a rough road. All people have strategies for shifting the energy when a relationship becomes tense. Yelling is very popular. So are withdrawing, crying, or having an affair. These all work; each generates a change in the energy. But they are something like symptom-suppressing medications. They may make you feel better for a while, but they don’t resolve a thing, and they often have side effects that are much worse than the original problem. The way you and your partner maintain and mediate the energies between you, moment by moment, day by day, month by month, defines your relationship.

  • THE ENERGY DIMENSION •

  The Merging of Two Energy Fields

  While physical bodies are relatively fixed and stable, energy fields are fluid and ever-shifting. A relationship begins with the meeting of two energy fields. Over time, the interactions between your energy field and your partner’s gr
ow ever more intricate and complex. Some parts of your energy fields may merge, some may repel; one field may overwhelm the other, or the two may blend into a new field that surrounds both bodies with comfort and joy . . . or tension and acrimony. The way your energy field and your partner’s interact forms the framework for everything else about your relationship. It is the invisible force that supports your intimacy one moment but may place clouds of tension between you the next.

  A simple technique to get the energies of two people dancing is to actually dance. This can be as easy as placing your hands palm against palm and creating free-flowing figure-eight motions with one another. As your hips and bodies follow, you are weaving your energies together. Doing it to music you love brings your rhythms into an easier sync and makes it more fun. A technique to deepen your connection is for each partner to put one hand around the back of the other’s neck and the other at the side of the waist. Do this standing while looking in one another’s eyes. Let your breathing synchronize. Feel your energies connecting.

  When Your Styles Get Out of Sync

  Whenever your energy field and your partner’s come into dissonance, primal parts of your brain perceive a threat. Something is wrong on the home front, and you find yourself experiencing the world according to your Energetic Stress Style—visual, kinesthetic, tonal, or digital. The purpose of the following discussion about this inevitable, unpleasant dynamic is not to make you less hopeful about the relationship. It is just the opposite. It is to show you just where the problem lies and to allow you to more effectively address relationship difficulties at their energetic core.