it is not a matter of wanting or not wanting them;
it is matter of wanting and not wanting them. The
hope that we get what we want (a lover, a partner,
love everlasting) and the dread that we get what
we want (with all the accompanying baggage,
hard work and anxiety). This is a good, healthy
kind of emotional conflict—ambivalence—and
it is meant to be worked through in relationship,
not avoided or, more typically, acted-out by
being both in and not in (i.e., defended against
intimacy).
how does our relationship
with our caregivers as
children play a role in our
adult relationships?
We believe that children are natural born
caretakers. The more that parents are taking
care of their own needs, the less the children will
be compelled to turn the tables on care—and
care for their caretakers. The ways that our early
caretakers take care of themselves—have their
needs and desires met—sets a foundational
example for how children are able to experience
care. If the caretaker is experienced as unwell,
if the parent is depressed or anxious (though,
for a child these fall into the general category of
not happy), the child cannot simply accept the
parent’s care. The child must first do everything
she or he can to ensure the parents’ wellness—
and this comes at the expense of being able to
experience the world (other people from then on)
as being safe and dependable. This becomes the
set of compulsive caretaking routines that start
out as one person being a human antidepressant
and result in irrelationship.
what is the 40-20-40 tool
and how can we use it to
improve our relationships?
The 40-20-40 is a simple recipe for how to
communicate: to speak from the heart and listen
with compassionate empathy; to transform
destructive conflict into mutually healing and
intimacy-building experiences; and to recover
from old wounds. Trying to stick with the 40-
20-40 is never perfect, but with time it becomes
second nature. It is a practice which, over
time, equips people with the tools to pursue
relationship sanity when tough issues threaten to
throw the relationship off the rails. The 40-20-40
is a tool, a way of interacting that operates as a
spot-check inventory for the relationship itself.
It is a structured meeting where each person
in relationship agrees to take inventory of their
own contribution--good, bad and everything
in-between--in a way that results in each person
becoming accountable and taking ownership
of his and her part of the relationship. Using a
current conflict, issue or problem, each person
agrees to take no more than 60% accountability
and no less than 40% for the issue at hand. The
result over time is that the space created in
the 40-20-40, the 20% in the middle, becomes
a representation of the third entity of the
relationship itself: it is us-ness, it is we.
About the Authors
Mark B. Borg, Jr., Ph.D. is a community and clinical psychologist and a psychoanalyst practicing in
New York City. He is founding partner of The Community Consulting Group, a consulting firm that
trains community stakeholders, local governments and other organizations to use psychoanalytic
techniques in community rebuilding and revitalization. He is a supervisor of psychotherapy
at the William Alanson White Institute and has written extensively about the intersection of psychoanalysis
and community crisis intervention.
Grant H. Brenner, MD is a psychiatrist in private practice in New York City, specializing in treating
mood and anxiety disorders and the complex problems arising from developmental childhood
trauma. He works from a humanistic and integrative perspective, incorporating evidence-based
approaches as well as innovative techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and
neurofeedback. He is on the faculty of the Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital, Director of Trauma
Service at the William Alanson White Institute and a volunteer and Board member of the not-forprofit
Disaster Psychiatry Outreach.
Daniel Berry, RN, MHA has practiced as a Registered Nurse in New York City since 1987. Working
in in-patient, home care and community settings, his work has taken him into some of the
city’s most privileged households as well as some of its most underserved and dangerous public
housing projects in Manhattan and the South Bronx. He is currently Assistant Director of Nursing
for Risk Management at a public facility serving homeless and undocumented victims of street
violence, addiction and traumatic injuries.
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