Awhile back I wrote a post about the fear center within your brain, the amygdala, and how identifying it’s reptilian instincts can often spare me some of the panic it produces in my nervous system. I tell myself that my amygdala, whom I call Amy, is throwing a bash upstairs, and I have to go post “no partying in my head” signs all over to keep the anxiety from setting in.
Now I know that I have to apply that truth to my relationships, as well. In his bestseller, “Getting the Love You Want,” Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., a psychologist who, in partnership with his wife, Helen Lakelly Hunt, Ph.D., originated Imago Relationship Therapy, a unique healing process for couples, prospective couples, and parents, asserts that we have two parts of the brain: the old section responsible for many of our dysfunctional behaviors and thoughts because it rarely thinks before it speaks and acts, and a highly developed new renovation, capable of cognitive functions (i.e. making prudent decisions).
Hendrix explains that as we search for a lifelong mate, we are, in fact, on a quest for someone who can bang us over the head like our mom and/or dad used to do.
Says Hendrix:

What we are doing, I have discovered from years of theoretical research and clinical observation, is looking for someone who has the predominant character traits of the people who raised us. Our old brain [the portion of the brain that includes both the brain stem and the limbic system that is hardwired and determines most of our automatic reactions], trapped in the eternal now and having only a dim awareness of the outside world, is trying to re-create the environment of childhood. And the reason the old brain is trying to resurrect the past is not a matter of habit or blind compulsion but of a compelling need to heal old childhood wounds.

According to Hendrix, we choose our spouse because our old brains feel that we have found an “ideal candidate to make up for the psychological and emotional damage you experienced in childhood.”
Now, I think I know what you’re thinking right now: “Here we go ahead, the oldest psychological trick in the book … blame it on the mama (or papa or both).”
But Hendrix says that you need not experience severe trauma or abuse or neglect to have childhood wounds. We all have sores, to some extent, because all of our needs were met in the womb, and when we were forced out of there, let’s face it: life got harder. A lot harder for some. A little harder for others. “Even if you were fortunate enough to grow up in a safe, nurturing environment, you still bear invisible scars from childhood,” writes Hendrix, “because from the very moment you were born you were a complex, dependent creature with a never-ending cycle of needs.”
We want it the way it was before, when we felt whole and happy inside our little womb. So we try to hook up with a dude or lady to bring us that fulfillment—that fairy tale existence we lived before we were born.
Personally, I think Hendrix gets a little carried away about the eros, or communion-with-the-universe within the womb. I guess I say that because even in the womb I never had my own room. I shared it with my twin sister, so it was never “all about me” even before I was born—it was all about sharing the goods and divvying up the nutrients. Somehow I think she stole a few more neurotransmitters. I was born first. In retrospect, I should have stolen more on my way out.
At any rate, I do find his theory fascinating. Because in all of my boundary issues, especially lately, and in all of my dysfunctional relationships there is this reliving on my earlier years: nurturing and loving my mom to the extent of alienating my dad, and constantly trying to force peace in our family living room, which housed one explosive outburst after another.
Whenever I get that twisted knot in my stomach as I’m about to set a boundary and I hate, hate, hate that I am going to potentially upset someone, I hear my childhood fear: if I don’t make things okay, I won’t be loved.
I know that seems simplified. But consider the last dysfunctional relationship you dealt with. Recall your emotion, and where it stemmed from—what exactly the message was going through your brain.
The good news, according to Hendrix, is that we can start using our new brain in our relationships and get healthier results. He concentrates mostly on marriages, but I found his theories and exercises within the book helpful for several of my friendships and strained family relationships, as well.
Says Hendrix:

The problem with the old brain is that it’s unguided; it’s like a blind animal trying to find its way to the watering hole. To achieve the valid and important objectives of the old brain, we need to enlist the aid of the new brain—the part of us that makes choices, exerts will, knows that … today is not always, and that yesterday is not today. … once we forge a working alliance between the powerful, instinctual drives of the old brain and the discriminating, cognitive powers of the new brain, we can begin to realize our unconscious goals.