Double Bind Statements

“A classic example of a double bind statement is a wife who tells her husband

‘Did I look this fat last Christmas?’ whether he says yes or no he is implying she’s fat and he can’t win.

If he says no, she'll hear that he thinks she was fat last Christmas. Because she used the word 'this' it has become a question of how fat. Did I look fat last Christmas? Is not the same at all. There is a lot of power in words and the unspoken implications.

By ‘challenging’ a clients thinking in an individual session or workshop it’s possible for a therapist or workshop leader to instill a negative way of thinking. It can go undetected if the therapist or workshop leader uses therapy jargon and blames the clients ‘issue’ instead of accepting that the client knows their own mind. The best example is ‘If you don’t admit you are angry you must be suppressing your emotions’ ‘You are angry with him or her’ and ‘The anger is all about your childhood’ These statements are a ‘hot wire to a compression chamber sentence’ because if the client allows being told they are feeling something they are not to wind them up, or they end up angry, not for the reason they are being told but because they feel they are being goaded, their reaction is misinterpreted or if the client answers by saying they are not angry, apparently they are lying or not smart enough to admit it to themselves. They are either in denial or it’s transference. The client has to admit they are angry or admit that they are angry underneath it all, where’s the choice in that? The double bind is covered by the therapy jargon and clients rarely notice how they have been caught out with the words. They can’t win however they respond and it’s a highly negative experience. The client is going to have a response, whether they feel flat, perhaps that is what my therapist meant by depression, being pressed by someone you are dependant on into a double bind, or they feel angry, when they weren’t feeling angry before but even if the therapist was right and the client was angry, they now have another problem. Because of the power imbalance in the professional relationship, the client has been left with NO CHOICE. The chances are high that the client will want to get the approval of the therapist or workshop leader, and even if the client doesn’t agree with the professional this will still cause the client to doubt themselves on some level. The self doubt is serious. That is the power of the professional having an opinion and a good reason for the ethics of therapy guiding therapists away from having any kind of opinion. Just because it’s their professional belief does not mean it has any less of any impact. It can still spark a negative chain reaction with serious consequences,” says Gena Dry of her experience of being in therapy. “If the therapist or workshop leader in any way shape or form, implies that they know better than the client due to their training and experience, they are in a position where they can put their client into a double bind thinking pattern. It seems to be a little known fact that this kind of double bind statement by a person in a position of perceived authority has the power to cause a double bind pattern of thinking that becomes a recurring experience for the victim, which doesn’t end because the client leaves the therapist or workshop, it can go on affecting them for years after.

Instead of being helped, the client has unknowingly been put into a negative thinking pattern where NO CHOICE is all they can see in other areas of their life. Most people find it painful when they can’t see possibilities in their future and chances are high that they have been influenced into going back for more ‘help’ from someone who may only be setting the negative thinking pattern deeper. If a person doesn’t realize that their thinking has been influenced negatively, they are in trouble as how can you get out of something you don’t know you are in?

This is how I would describe the experience I had in therapy.

Knowledge is crucial. If the therapist or workshop leader isn’t aware that the way that they language their suggestion is vital, ‘Do you think it is because…’ with genuinely no judgment if the client doesn’t think the same way as the therapist is where the line is. Any implication that the client is wrong and doesn’t know themselves as well as the therapist or workshop leader is crossing the line. If there is no room for the possibility that what the client feels or thinks, is the truth for them, the statement strongly influences a client to feel angry.

When my therapist insisted the only way for his client to get better was to relive their childhood experiences and negative emotions, and his focus was all on anger, as he was the ‘professional’ and he was right about everything, his clients learnt to view life as if only one view was right, there were NO VIEWS other than the professional’s view. Seeing no alternate views in life is harmful, it prevents seeing possibilities in the future but it isn’t it the mentality where wars, terrorism and racism start, when we can’t accept another person’s point of view?

As my therapist’s clients were all instructed to only look for the childhood traumas or negative experiences and blame all their problems on their parents and their childhood, forgiveness was left out of the equation and he didn’t teach them to consider the good aspects of their childhood or their families, they learnt to see life as NO GOOD. If NO GOOD is all you see in your life in the past, it’s difficult to look past that and see your life in the future as anything but NO GOOD. The base of my thinking had been remodeled on NO with a capital N. In my mind I became certain that NO was all life had in store for me. I had NO choice in the matter. And there was NO way out from there.

Once my therapist had forced his clients into a train of thought where whatever they did they couldn’t win, from his NO CHOICE NO VIEWS NO GOOD mentality, his clients became depressed. I call it a Black Cloud in my book because when you’re in it, you can’t see a way out. But if a person is in any of the three of the parts of his NO CHOICE NO VIEWS NO GOOD mentality, they may still experience being under a Black Cloud, it just gets blacker, the more NO’s that are stacked up.

Being put into a NO CHOICE mindset or a double bind can only be done by someone who you regard as having authority and the relationship must feel vitally important. A parent, a wife or husband, a boss, even though the person may do it and they may not be aware of their thinking hijack, the train of thought you are forced onto isn’t going anywhere. It’s a rock and a hard place. And that is a painful place to be.

The ‘punishment’ for not changing your thinking to comply is the rejection felt when a person does not accept what you say to be the truth for you. Depending on how insistent they are about being ‘right’ their approval, respect, love and support, may be also be withdrawn, if they think they know better than you. They may even use their anger against you or give you the silent treatment, oh, and they might blame you for not speaking to them. The power is unspoken. In other words, they won’t tell you word for word what the deal is, but you’ll know. The trouble is caused by the two conflicting messages, neither of which can be ignored. You are left torn both ways, as responding to one message will contradict the other. Whichever demand you decide to respond to, the other demand cannot be met. It can leave you distraught. The real problem with being put into a double bind is that it becomes a recurring experience for the victim. A way of thinking. The pattern repeats, ‘I have no choice, whatever I do I can’t win’ becomes a normal experience because your thought has been ‘trained’. Instead of your train of thought naturally looking for possibilities and alternatives, it’s been turned around and you can’t see the way forward.

In the therapy I went to, it was a circle, the therapist made statements that were painful to be on the receiving end of and I was sold an answer which kept me going back to the same rock and a hard place. That’s not a good place to be, it defeats the whole object of therapy. The therapy required a particular train of thought and I had to leave my own train to fit in with another persons thinking or to ‘Think of it this way…’ There was no room in my therapy to disagree with the standard view, ‘It’s not about my anger and it’s not about my childhood.’ My point of view was never respected. It’s not simply that the therapist has a professional opinion, a different way of thinking about things, if it’s held up as the one definitive ‘right’ angle. It only takes four right angles to put your thinking in a box.

If you were headed in the direction of asking ‘What if doubting myself has led me to feel uncertain about my future? And if so, how can I turn it around and trust that uncertainty can bring good things into my life? Or any number of questions that relate to aspects of our thinking that as far as I know, are not talked about in therapy, they certainly weren’t in mine, you could say you’ve been sidetracked instead of being given fuel to take you where you want to be and developing your own lines of thinking. If the box you end up in becomes a negative pattern of thinking that stays after you’ve left therapy, alarm bells should be ringing.

The answer to how you get out of the rock and a hard place and seeing no choice in your life isn’t straightforward especially if the people you go to for help are prone to using language which causes a problem in the way you think. If the therapists answer to ‘You’re suppressing your anger’ is expressing it, there’s a problem on my train of thought. It’s a one directional train and that limits possibilities. The question is, if we drive our trains one way, where does that get us? In my view the answers are reached by a variety of trains that all have two directions.

Doubt at one end of the train and trust at the other end. The same with uncertainty and certainty, lack of belief and belief and so on.

If we only look in one direction, maybe we are missing the point, if we want to experience the other end of the same train and find some balance in the middle. My experience of expressing anger was that it turned my train into an express train headed in the wrong direction. Expressing doubt was never the answer to finding trust and expressing uncertainty doesn’t gain certainty. Perhaps we are off track? If you are not comfortable with expressing anger it’s because you are ‘suppressed’ the therapist has an answer for everything, the question is, is their answer right for you? It wasn’t long ago we thought of a lobotomy and electric shock treatment as the ‘right’ answer, according to the professionals. In my experience an overdose of doubt and uncertainty caused me pain and fear and confusion caused pain and running out of time to do the things I wanted to do with my life caused me pain, and yet all I was meant to talk about in therapy was anger and my childhood. Never how love and happiness was where I wanted to be in the future. It seems back to front now I’m off that train and looking back at it from a different train.

If the opposite of fear is courage or love and the opposite of anger is happiness or love, it all depends on how the individual sees it, that must be an indication that the individuals view is all important. If I allow someone to divert my train, there is every possibility that they may be headed in a different direction even though they may tell you ‘My line of thinking might take you on a different journey to the one you expected but we are going to end up in the same place.’ Your thought about Grand Central Station may be different to mine and there lies the problem. Your train of thought is unique to you. It might be invisible but it’s real, it can take you on a journey, open doors, track down possibilities. It can make things happen. Other people can still jolt it, shunt it, hook onto your train and pull you off your own track and even derail your train, if it gets stuck it will affect what happens in your life. I am going to be careful who I allow on, a mind terrorist comes in many disguises, a most unlikely suspect is your therapist.

One answer is to find a healthy balance between all aspects of our thoughts, not to try and eliminate the negative end of the train and tip ourselves out of balance by focusing in on one direction and one angle. Opposites are the natural law of the Universe and finding a comfortable balance seems achievable. I don’t think it’s possible to fight your way out of one end of your train in order to get to the other end and you can’t make aspects of the world we live in disappear by ignoring them. Balance makes sense. It’s an answer which takes into consideration the bigger picture. An important consideration in my mind. Our minds are made up by multi faceted aspects and choices. Puzzles are made up by pieces that make up the bigger picture. Puzzles are solved by a series of decisions over each aspect. Being in a position of thinking you have no choice will stop the thought process. See what I am driving at?

Our own choice is the crucial aspect.” Gena Dry © 2007

Read more in The Five Questions You Must Ask Your Therapist.

© Gena Dry 2006 All rights reserved