Conscious Dating After Divorce

In this episode of Divorce Source Radio with Steve Peck, we explore what Freud called “the unconscious” –  the collection of repressed thoughts, wishes, fantasies and drives, many of which have an aggressive quality. What is the relevance? Inside these unconscious conflicts lies the answer to why we are attracted to and or seem to attract a certain kind of person. The show is called Conscious Dating and our guest is Elizabeth J. Tupling, MS, TLLP is a psychotherapist specializing in individual, and family therapy, and maintains a private practice in Huntington Woods, Michigan. For  the person who is wondering why they are always drawn to the “bad boy” or “bad girl”, the addict, the emotionally and or legally unavailable person, it’s important to “open up the hood and look underneath”.   What we’ll usually find is a long standing, established pattern of being attracted to the same kind of person, and not knowing why.  Like a moth to a flame, we drift toward exactly what we consciously know is not healthy for us – it’s a real primitive, primal process that originates in early “imprinting” in the brain.  This imprinting creates an unconscious definition of how relationships should feel for us – good or bad. The challenge for the listener is to examine what feels “good” in the early stages of an attraction.  And if the person is doing a truthful inventory of these feelings they might find that subtle cues of rejection, the need to chase, dismissal of one’s needs, justification of disrespectful behaviors, all feel vaguely familiar, comfortable and worse off, comforting.  Doesn’t make sense does it?  It usually doesn’t, it’s unconscious. For more on Elizabeth Tupling, visit: www.MySoulGrowth.com.  For more programs on divorce and life after divorce, visit www.DivorceSourceRadio.com.