by Donna Eden
Because you handle relationship stress according to your particular Energetic Stress Style and your partner doesn’t (people with the same sensory style usually don’t choose one another), it is almost inevitable that you have hurt one another and will hurt one another again. There is, however, a positive twist in this seemingly absurd design. Because of the differences in your sensory styles—if you don’t leave one another—you will very likely expand one another and open one another to unimagined realms of experience. Maybe that is what nature had in mind when creating the dangerous arrangement of having essentially acrimonious styles attract one another. To attain one of the most sublime states available to the human species—deep and lasting love—you are forced to expand yourself, to know a style that, without intimate contact, you might hardly have imagined.
You are required to learn that style so well that you discover, from the inside, the enormous differences in the ways two people—you and your partner—can experience the same world. Seeing through another’s eyes and hearing through another’s ears deepens your understanding of life, and it particularly deepens your comprehension and compassion for how and why others walk their walk and talk their talk. Two realities are better than one. Intimate contact with another’s reality also helps in preventing you from the characteristically human pitfall of taking your own reality too seriously.
But before we get too cosmic and idealistic about the Grand Plan, we want to address the fact that differences in sensory style are irreconcilable differences. You cannot make your partner think like you think, want what you want, feel as you feel, or perceive as you perceive. And the differences in how you represent your world are not just psychological differences or mere tricks of perception. They are based in core energies that reflect your biological essence. These irreconcilable differences need not, however, be the grounds for divorce. The blocks they place between you can be used to build bridges. Your differences can be the foundation of a strong and juicy partnership. When the wounds they have caused are healed, and skills have been established for moving through the hazards they present, they can deepen your soul connection and maintain the spark that keeps a relationship fresh and exciting.
The differences in your energy systems and stress coping styles cannot and should not be disguised, merged, or blended. They are to be respected. Once they are deeply understood, they will be appreciated and even cherished. Some people gain this understanding through misunderstandings, skirmishes, disappointments, and shattered expectations. Others learn the essential principles by reading about them. Your call.
Sensory Style Highs and Lows
The Visual Style (For Better and for Worse)
Have you ever had the experience of being so powerfully met by another person, eye to eye, that you were swept into a vision or plan of action that was new or foreign to you, but that suddenly became compelling? Perhaps you had heard other people express similar ideas, but this person’s arguments carried an energy that moved into you and took you over. You became enthralled in a different way of seeing as this fresh perspective put the world together for you in a new way. The person’s strength of communication was also magnetic. If your friend was excited about a possibility, you were excited about it; if angry about an issue, you became angry; if committed to a movement, you found yourself committed to that movement. The vision became your vision. You were witnessing a force of nature in this person’s persuasiveness and strength of conviction. And you were grateful somebody helped you see the underlying truth in an important but elusive issue.
This is the visual sensory style in its power and glory. However, when such a person is your life partner, particularly if the two of you are out of sync, the dynamic shifts a bit. All the energy that had been directed into a magnificent vision for humanity now becomes laser-focused onto a vision of how you should be and how you are not measuring up. Many people find this much less thrilling. But not your partner. Your partner is eagerly trying to help you “get the picture.” This is your partner’s gift to you, filled with the promise of wonderful improvements in your life and for the relationship. You are expected to appreciate every breath your partner expels in bringing these pearls your way. Meanwhile, you are drowning in the fervor of the passion that is rushing toward you. Your partner becomes exasperated, wondering how you could possibly fail to grasp the wisdom and elegance of the insights being so freely offered. And when you still do not see the light, your partner’s passion has fully transformed into anger, judgment, and disgust.
The Kinesthetic Style (For Better and for Worse)
Your kinesthetic partner believes in you. Knows how you feel. Understands completely. The willingness to sacrifice in order to help you is striking. The generosity abundant. The compassion almost telepathic. You are recognized for who you are, not judged for what you do. It is your essence, more than your actions, that seems important in this relationship. And through this, you come to appreciate your own essence in a larger, clearer, purer way than you ever had before. Neither past nor future is bemoaned; each moment is lived with a presence that beckons you too into the fullness of life. Sound good? But wait, there’s more.
People who are that incredibly open and who give so much pay a price. They often say “Yes” when reality requires a “No!” They are pulled by their compassion in many directions. They suffer for others and become fragmented. Their strong caring and deep understanding become the emotional glue that keeps them at the help-giving center of a sticky web of relationships. They are taken for granted. They may fall into exhaustion or disorientation or become overwhelmed. With their partners, they have a depth of compassion that prevents them from saying what would be hard for the partner to hear. The kinesthetic almost always errs toward compassion over confrontation. As a result, the partner may be operating on highly skewed information. The partner may take the unbridled acceptance and unconditional love as a sign that all is well, that the other is happy, and there is no need to make any real changes. Understandably, they usually don’t. But it does not prove to be very satisfying to come up against someone whose self is being sacrificed, who will not call you on your blind spots, and who can easily be pushed over, at least until all of this accumulates to an explosive level, culminating in blowups or permanent exits. So not only are you not growing, you are somehow feeling alone despite all the love and affirmation.
The Digital Style (For Better and for Worse)
Few people are more kind, more calm, more rational. You are fascinated by this exquisitely logical mind, able to organize vast amounts of information and access it in an interesting and highly systematic manner. Not burdened with extravagant or excess feelings, and undaunted by yours, this person is as solid as an ivory tower. An individual of principle and character, there are no messy emotions cluttering this personality. From a gift for abstraction emerges an ability to quickly understand complex situations, place them into their proper intellectual context, and serenely map out solutions for any problems they contain.
• THE DIGITAL/KINESTHETIC CONUNDRUM •
“The facts are the facts—the feelings just confuse the issue!”
—DAVID
“The feelings are the facts—it’s what you call the ‘facts’ that confuse the issue!”
—DONNA
However, having your anger, grief, and pain bounce off your partner’s scholarly shield, time and again, can leave you very lonely. The reasons for your feelings may be patiently explained to you, and the solutions to your problems freely revealed, but a juicy heart connection is not so available. If you do not agree—no matter, you will come around. And should you become exasperated—no matter, you will grow up. You reach in, but you can’t quite touch. And you’ve learned that screaming is ineffective, so your choices are to become futilely hysterical or to begin to deaden yourself, in the very likeness of your kind and numbing partner. This is where you discover that calm, cool, and collected can transmute into d
ull, dry, and deadening.
The Tonal Style (For Better and for Worse)
No one has been able to enter your inner life more skillfully. The challenges you face, the urges you feel, and the place you occupy in your world are all intuitively grasped and precisely analyzed by this person. You are fed words and insights that help you to better comprehend yourself and appreciate your own dilemmas. You feel understood at multiple levels. You are listened to far beyond your words. Gaps between the lines that you had not noticed are filled in with wisdom and poetry. This ability to perceive at so many levels turns life into an art form. Every nuance is registered and evaluated with powerful aesthetic discernment. Whether it is music, art, or the poetry of life, you are swept into shades of experience that had previously passed by unnoticed.
Fully registering so many dimensions of experience can, however, turn life into an overwhelming cacophony. Three simultaneous conversations from adjoining tables in a restaurant cannot be ignored as they rudely intrude and overshadow enjoyment of the soup du jour. If you are the partner, please don’t add to the barrage when stress is present. But even if you don’t, you may be treated as if you did. The profound ability to hear between the lines, if fed by past hurts or deep insecurity, can expand into an epic ability to hear what you never said, felt, or thought—and to hear it as a reflection of imagined accusations, intentional unkindness, or outright punishment. You are judged not only for your own shortcomings but also for having made your partner’s shortcomings evident. You are the villain in this story, and don’t complain that you were misunderstood. It only proves that you care more about defending yourself than understanding your partner.
• THE FOUR ENERGETIC STRESS STYLES •
Interpersonal Perils of Each
VISUAL STYLE
“Sees” what you do wrong.
Looks at you rather than “seeing” self.
Projects his or her viewpoint onto you.
Sees how things should look, should be.
Criticizes, judges, blames.
Dismisses you.
Nitpicky.
“Look at me when I talk to you!”
Looks powerful, not vulnerable.
Relentless, must win.
Easily moves into anger.
Disappointed when you don’t fulfill his or her vision.
Righteous and non-negotiable.
ORIENTATION: Toward the future.
EYES: Looks you straight in the eye. Needs you to keep eye contact to be able to trust you.
MOTTO: “You’re wrong!”
DIGITAL STYLE
Logical, rational, reasonable.
Computerlike, detached.
Too calm, cool, and collected.
The classic Mr. Spock.
Cut off from emotions.
Cut off from you.
Unaware there is a problem.
No clue why you feel exasperated.
Orderly, programmed, structured.
Tunes out the other’s truth.
Can’t be reached with feeling.
ORIENTATION: Moves freely among past, present, and future without fully experiencing any of them.
EYES: Looks up and to the side, left or right, as if looking into his or her mind.
MOTTO: “I’m right!”
TONAL STYLE
Sound is very personal.
Hurt more by your tone of voice than by your actual words.
“Hears” between the lines. Sonarlike.
Small specks of behavior may be exaggerated into tremendous meaning.
Easily hurt by perceived put-downs.
May withdraw, falsely feeling rejected.
Easily checks out until not really there.
Absorbed in own world.
Hears own inner dialogue louder than your words—sometimes to a paranoid degree.
Interprets, analyzes, and judges.
Judges own self harshly; hard on self.
Exasperated at not feeling heard.
Anger from frustration.
ORIENTATION: Toward the past.
EYES: Looks down and to the side, giving you an ear while trying to think without getting hit too much by your energy.
MOTTO: “I’m angry at you for making me feel wrong!”
KINESTHETIC STYLE
Over-compassion for others (suffers for you).
Short on self-compassion.
Acquiesces to you and your needs.
Compulsive enabler.
Not analytical or logical.
Difficulty with discernment.
So much in the now that now seems how it will always be (overgeneralizes from the present).
Emotionally suggestible.
Loses his or her words.
Particular difficulty putting feelings into words.
Loses his or her truth while taking in yours.
Explodes or falls apart.
Will stay in the relationship even when hopeless.
ORIENTATION: Toward the present.
EYES: Looks straight down . . . not as an evasion but an effort to cut down on sensory input and come home to self.
MOTTO: “I don’t want you to suffer or feel wrong.”
It’s Not Learned Behavior
Putting these four Energetic Stress Styles into strict categories might seem too rigid, but in our experience, when people are under sufficient relationship stress, they usually become exemplars of one of the four patterns. This is not learned behavior. It is, rather, a reflection of your energy system. Recall how Donna can accurately tell the parents of a newborn which of the four styles will unfold. The quality shared by everyone, saint or sinner, is that under enough relationship stress, one sensory mode dominates and the other three fade away. The blind-man-and-the-elephant problem emerges. Significant aspects of the situation go unregistered. What is registered becomes distorted. The behavior that follows lacks the person’s good judgment and usual attunement.
• THE ENERGY DIMENSION •
When Relationship Stress Hits
The patterns of distorted behavior are quite predictable. The energy system shifts in distinct, palpable ways. The color of the aura changes, energies accumulate in the brain and body regions described earlier, the limbic system (emotional brain) is energetically engaged, meridian flow (meridians are basic pathways for the body’s energies) is disrupted, and chakra energies constellate themselves for battle.
Putting the Theory to a Public Test
In evening presentations introducing the impact of Energetic Stress Style on relationships, we sometimes ask for a couple to volunteer. We have each partner bring to mind a moment when the relationship was difficult, and we do the energy test Donna devised at the hypnosis class so many years ago to determine the Energetic Stress Style each reverts to during relationship distress. We then make predictions about how they argue. An audience member happened to tape one of these demonstrations and the following description is based on excerpts from that tape. After energy testing the couple, we determined that the husband, Dan, was tonal and the wife, Annette, was visual. When Donna simply stated, “Visuals can see very well what you’re doing wrong,” Dan started laughing with recognition, then Annette, then the entire audience. Donna then tried to seriously explain that “while it may feel at times that she’s blaming you, for her, it’s just so disappointing that you aren’t seeing it in the obvious way.” More laughter as Dan teasingly asked, “Were you in the backseat of our car?”
Donna finally went on, describing how she knew Annette was visual as soon as she looked into her eyes. There’s a power that comes out of a visual’s eyes. You feel it when you’re being looked at by a visual. Because Annette’s secondary mode is kinesthetic, Donna went on, she also has a lot
of empathy. But when the distress is really bad, she goes into visual, where she desperately wants Dan to see things as she sees them.
Annette and Dan’s communication difficulties illustrate how different Energetic Stress Styles, in their case visual and tonal, interact. As Annette “sees” what Dan is doing wrong, she mobilizes to try to persuade him to do it right. Meanwhile, for Dan, as a tonal, he is able to hear between the lines. Being able to hear between the lines can be a great skill. The best therapists we know are tonal or have a fair amount of tonal. They can hear what is meant even when it is not being said. The trouble when tonals are in relationship distress is that what they hear doesn’t necessarily have much to do with what is actually being said. Tonals can also totally check out. They can be looking right at their partner while not taking in a thing.
Recognizing that these tendencies are not willful attacks or acts of sabotage can be illuminating. The dynamics at work are so basic that once you understand how they play out in your relationship, newfound empathy and more effective problem solving readily follow. For most couples, however, the differences in their sensory styles are underappreciated and misunderstood. Turning to Annette, Donna empathized, “It must be exasperating when you find yourself in the middle of an argument about having said things you never said. Next, you’re watching him go into a major retreat. The whole dialogue can take place in a tonal’s head, so you are not heard at all.” Turning to Dan, David countered, “On the other hand, you’re dealing with a visual, so all the bad things you think she is saying may be exactly what she means” (followed by much laughter). The remainder of that class focused on how to untangle the problems caused by differences in Energetic Stress Style, and that is where we are heading in this and the following two chapters as well.
Does Everyone Really Fit into Just One Category?