welcome to the relationships podcast
this is Jenny Morrow I'm a 20 year
marriage therapist and relationship coach
and I have been reading The Surrender Experiment
by Michael Singer and today I'm gonna share an area
where I disagree with what he is saying
and I'm gonna talk about why I think there's an
important concept to understand
here if you're working on relationship development
in this book singer is talking about
surrendering to life as a way to decrease
suffering and expand possibilities at one point
Singer talks about accepting the weather as it is
and I really like this you know if it rains
when I want sunshine
there is something incredibly useful
about noticing how much unnecessary suffering
can happen internally when I'm arguing with reality
singer then says that he decided to push the envelope
and broaden the range of events
that he would learn to accept
which I also really like this as a practice
so instead of limiting acceptance
to relatively neutral things like the weather
you know what happens if we
begin to practice accepting things like
when plans change or when opportunities disappear when
another person disagrees
with us or when life doesn't unfold
the way that we expect
but then he starts to talk about the idea
that the primary
thing that is keeping him from peaceful acceptance
seems to be his preferences
and so the next logical step in his experiment becomes
quote letting go of his preferences
and he wonders where this will lead him and he asks
if my preferences
were not leading me what would happen to me
now I understand
what he is reaching toward here and I actually think
there really is something valuable
in this idea and in this experiment but I also
begin to disagree
here with the language that he's using
because I'm not sure that it's a very accurate
I really don't know that it's actually possible
for us as human beings
to choose the experience of non preference
there's a fascinating
case work from the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio
that helps to illustrate this
Demasio wrote about a patient whose name is Elliot
or who he calls Elliot in his case study
who had undergone brain surgery to remove a tumor
the surgery involved
damage to the areas of the ventromedial
prefrontal cortex which is regions involved in
integrating emotional information into decision making
what made Elliot so interesting
was that his IQ memory and
logical reasoning skills remained completely intact
and he actually he scored in the
97th percentile on cognitive tests
so he actually was very high
achieving in his cognitive abilities
and those cognitive abilities remained intact
so the abilities that we normally associate with
intelligence
remained remarkably high even after the surgery
but something profound changed
in his personality and in the way he experienced life
Elliot became strikingly emotionally flat
and Damasio described him as able to recount
enormous personal losses and difficulties
with a kind of detached quality
almost as if he were describing the life of somebody
else
and Elliott himself reportedly described this state
as being like an uninvolved spectator
and that ended up having consequences
for his decision making
Damasio famously observed
that Elliot would agonize for hours over basic tasks
for example
deciding between a Wednesday or a Thursday appointment
could trigger him into endless deliberation
and Elliot would spend hours
mapping out the pros and the cons the traffic patterns
and the weather for both days because neither option
felt any better than the other
the same problem
showed up when he was choosing where to eat
he could read different menus
and he could logically analyze prices
he could look into the different locations
but because he could not generate a clear preference
a feeling of wanting or desiring
one option over the other
he struggled to actually choose a restaurant
the problem was not that he lacked intelligence
in some ways this is exactly
what makes the case so striking
is that his reasoning capacities seemed
nearly entirely preserved but reasoning by itself
was not efficiently helping him to produce decisions
so Damasio eventually develops what is known
as the somatic marker hypothesis somatic refers
to the body and Damasio
realized that when healthy
people think about making a decision our brains
instantaneously simulate the predicted outcomes
and they send very minor unconscious
emotional and physical signals to our bodies
like a slight tingling in the stomach
or a tiny spike in skin moisture and these bodily
emotions act as an invisible filtering system
for example
they can instantly weed out say 95% of the options
by instantly marking them as good bad or even boring
and
this leaves us with only maybe a few choices to logically
debate
without that emotional lift or somatic preference
every single detail
carries equal weight and your brain gets trapped
in this infinite loop of meaningless logic
so while these signals
do not necessarily tell us what is objectively
true or what we ought to do
they can help to organize the field of possibilities
enough to help movement to occur
now I'm not saying that Elliot's case
proves that a human being
cannot make any decision without preference
you know we don't have enough data to determine that
but it does make me question
whether not being aware of a preference
is the same thing as not having one
so what may have changed is not the presence
of preference but Singer's awareness of it
some preferences are obvious to us
we are conscious to them while others
may operate much more quietly in the background
through emotional waiting and Learned associations
through our values through our habits
and even our competing internal motivations
so when singer describes letting go of preference
I wonder whether preference has actually disappeared
or whether the more immediate preferences
the one he himself is more conscious of in himself
the one he's been more identified to
whether those preferences have simply
become less dominant
while other less conscious preferences
have begun guiding what happens next
and this would especially
make sense as some of this comes after his experience
of starting to get more curious about how the mind
works and actually sitting with that experience
in meditation so he talks about first being guided
by this question of kind of who is the one
that is thinking about these things and then he begins
sitting in his experience of meditation
and then he begins to have this experience
of making choices that aren't necessarily
his initial instinct
they aren't necessarily his initial preference
and so he talks about this idea of letting
go of preference but again I wonder if what's happening
is it's allowing space for other preferences
that he has not been as identified with
or as conditioned to hold this tightly
he suddenly it's almost like he's expanding
his own awareness of himself
so that more parts of him can come forward
and when I started
thinking about Singer's experiment through this lens
I actually really started to appreciate and like the book
this lens really works for me
but I do wonder whether he actually stopped
living according to preference at all I feel very
skeptical about that interpretation
so I am wondering if it's not that maybe something
much more subtle was happening
which again is that maybe he stopped allowing
one particular layer of preference to dominate
while the other less obvious preferences
became more influential
so let's go back to the weather example
suppose I wake up and I want sunshine but it's raining
so one preference might be obvious to me
for example I prefer sunshine
if I spend the next three hours
irritated about the rain
and complaining about it and wishing it were different
that preference
is organizing a lot of my internal experience
and singers practice
here would invite me to stop fighting the rain
and accept the weather
as it actually exists which again I think is a really
helpful thing to play with
but
when I do that has the preference really disappeared
perhaps maybe I still prefer sunshine
and perhaps another preference
has simply become more important
so maybe I prefer peace
over arguing internally about the weather
maybe I prefer being present
to the day as it actually exists
maybe I've come to prefer the experience of openness
over the experience of trying to force
reality into a predetermined shape
especially in a situation like this where I realize I actually
really don't have any control over the weather
so what looks like relinquishing preference
may actually be a reorganization of preference
to different values
this possibility creates an
interesting paradox inside of the surrender experiment
singer
decides that he wants to stop allowing preferences
to determine what happens next
but the decision to undertake that experiment itself
seems to contain valuation
so something about surrender has
become more compelling to him than
continuing to live according to his immediate wants
something about openness curiosity peace or discovery
has begun to acquire greater importance
so I don't think that this weakens Singer's
experiment
in fact I actually think that it helps
to explain more accurately
what's happening which I think actually helps make the
experiment
more robust and perhaps what he is surrendering to
really doesn't have anything to do with preference
itself perhaps he is surrendering
his automatic identification with the first
loudest or most immediate preference that occurs
and that distinction
becomes especially useful in relationships
because most of us do not have one clean
unified preference that's operating at any given moment
we often contain
several competing wants at exactly the same time
so imagine that I'm in an argument with my partner
and I'm desperately
wanting him to understand what I'm saying
that is one preference
the preference of wanting to be understood
but if I slow the moment
down there may be other things that I also want
maybe I also want the relationship to feel safe
maybe I want to understand him
I also want
reassurance
and maybe I also want to protect myself from rejection
so all of those preferences can coexist simultaneously
and that's one thing I really appreciate about the therapy
and coaching models that use some form of parts work
internal family systems
is one of the most popular ones right now or IFS
but similar ideas
also show up in models like voice dialogue
ego state approaches gestalt work schema work
and a variety of integrative coaching models
so the language and theory differs
but they all make room for something that most of us can recognize
in our experience and that is that we contain
different internal positions
motives and emotions at the same time
which that can leave us wanting
contradictory things simultaneously
and this can complicate the phrase my preference
so what we experience as my preference
may sometimes just be the preference that is most
emotionally activated in that moment
and that emotional activation
could come from many different places
including being conditioned into certain preferences
including repetition of certain preferences
including identification with certain preferences
maybe we have associated
certain preferences with certain threats
that may or may not be real
or at least they may not be real in all scenarios
maybe they were real in a certain
scenario but they're not real in another scenario
so from this perspective
Singer's surrender practice becomes really interesting
maybe he is not removing preference
maybe he is becoming less identified
with the loudest preference and allowing
quieter values or desires to become available
and I think that this is powerful because it can really
open up options
and create a much bigger range of possibilities
so the original preference might remain real
but it stops being the only information in the room
so Daniel Conneman's work in the book Thinking
Fast and slow gives us another way to understand this
Kahneman described what he called
System 1 and System 2 thinking
System 1 refers to fast automatic
associative mental processes
and System 2 refers to slower
more effortful deliberate thinking
these are not literally
two separate pieces of the brain
but the framework is useful because so much of our
perception judgment and preference
appears before conscious deliberation
even enters the picture
so for example
you might walk into a room and immediately
you prefer one chair over another or you meet someone
and right away you either feel drawn to them and
interested
in them or you feel wary or a bit disconnected
or you might hear an
idea from someone and it feels obvious
even before you've actually examined
the evidence for it
so our preferences often arrive
before our real explanations for them
we might even think we have an explanation
that we might give but it might not even be the actual reason
why we have that preference over another
and those preferences that we have those immediate
preferences have histories
they've been shaped by our biology
by our temperament our culture our family
our religion if you have a religion
habit and familiarity so when I say this is what I want
that statement may be completely accurate
without necessarily telling me
all of the truth about why I really want it
and I think that this is where
relationship development becomes much more nuanced
than either obeying preferences
or trying to eliminate them
the practice becomes learning how to relate
to preference
suppose that I prefer
frequent reassurance from my partner
I do not need to shame that preference or
stuff it under the rug
or hide it or pretend I don't feel it
but I also do not immediately
need to act as though it is a command
or even always believe it or buy into it
instead I can become curious about it
the developmental question is not simply
how do I stop wanting reassurance
right which is what singer is
saying how do I just get rid of all my preferences
and it's also not how do I get my partner to provide
enough reassurance
that I never experience discomfort again
the more
interesting question here might be something like
what do I believe reassurance means about me
what happens when I don't get reassurance
when did I long for reassurance growing up and why
and what do I believe that reassurance will do for me
and then perhaps one of the most important questions
what else other than reassurance do I also want
maybe I want reassurance and I also want to
become capable of tolerating uncertainty
maybe I want my partner to respond differently
and I also want to respect that he is a separate person
and I also want to know his real feelings
so now we are no longer dealing with preference versus
no preference we're dealing with competing valuations
and this is where values matter
so a value can function like a more enduring or higher
order
preference about what kind of a person I want to be
and what kind of a relationship I want to participate
in so for example I may strongly prefer
yelling in a particular moment
because I'm angry and I want the other person to finally
understand how serious I am
but another part of me may care more deeply about
treating myself and other people with dignity
where I'm not trying to
control someone or force someone into seeing something
that I think they should see that they don't seem to be catching on to yet
another example is I may prefer
winning an argument over not winning an argument
but I may also care more deeply about accurately
understanding what is true
these are not examples of transcending preference
they may be examples
of becoming more skillful at organizing
multiple values and desires
including reorganizing that their relationship to one
another is actually not always oppositional
so sometimes the more useful question
is not which value should win
but which one needs to come forward first
one value or preference may create the conditions
that allow another to be expressed more skillfully
so for example if I am anxious
and I'm wanting reassurance I may first orient
toward my desire to tolerate uncertainty
and remain grounded in myself
that does not erase my desire for reassurance
but once I am less organized around urgency
then I may be able to ask for reassurance in a way that is
clearer less demanding and more relational
and sometimes the relationship between values
changes even more deeply than that so sometimes
as one value becomes more developed or more central
another preference
actually may begin to weaken shift or even dissolve
so if I became more secure
in my ability to tolerate uncertainty
I may genuinely need less reassurance
if I care more deeply about understanding what is true
then the desire to win an argument
may begin to lose its appeal
and in those cases
one value is not simply competing with another
or even coming first in sequence
it's actually changing the internal conditions
that made the other preference
feel so necessary in the first place
so maybe instead of surrendering our preferences
a more accurate framing is that we're learning to
include more of them
so rather than reacting to the loudest
or most immediate preference on a hair trigger
we slow down
enough to notice the quieter preferences too
the ones that are connected to our deeper values
our relationships and the kind of person
we want to be and the kind of relationships
and life we actually want to live in and in that sense
development may not be about becoming
less driven by ourselves
it may be about becoming aware of more of ourselves
so maybe surrender then is not about having
less of us in the room
maybe it's actually about including more of ourselves
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