As part of my ongoing coverage of mentalization-based treatment (MBT) that is a psychotherapy that exists, this article describes MBT as a modality. Today I'm going to be describing the concept of psychic equivalence— when you believe something so strongly when you believe some thing so strongly that your feelings become the facts! This is written for an audience of anybody, not just therapists!
Mentalizing? The Art of Getting it Wrong.
You don't mentalize everyone who walks past you on the street. That would be exhausting and pointless. And similarly, you don't mentalize tigers who are coming to eat you.
It is not adaptive to spend your time wondering about tiger appetite. I wonder how hungry he is?
The correct answer is run away.
You're gonna die. It's a tiger.
Feelings Equaling Facts is Adaptive Sometimes
When we get too emotionally hot we have predictable ways of Reacting and our minds will work differently in ways that are adaptive in certain contexts.
Your feelings can equal the facts— “I know that tiger is hungry. I'm gonna run now.” It’s not always true! I use destiny’s child “Say My Name” lyrics to illustrate….
One can even elicit proof from your environment. I need to know if you care about me So I'm gonna make sure you prove it—this way, I don't have to wonder if I can trust you, you're going to prove it to me!
How much do you care? Because if you care a lot, this is not a good space to “mentalize.” If you don't care at all, you're probably not going to be able to be curious either. Your emotional temperature determines whether your brain turns mentalizing—the dynamic ability to be curious—on or off. The ability is dependent on how much you care.
Caring “Just Enough!”
The most crucial is “Not knowing,”— which doesn't mean we're clueless. It means we're not sure and we will make attempts to get it right, iteratively. This brings us to the mentalizing stance.
Mentalizing isn't about being stuck on self or other, inside or outside. It's about being able to smoothly transition. The “test” can be as simple as a question:
What did you imagine was happening for me?
And if the person can answer, they can go from their story about themselves to one about my internal state, then mentalizing is probably happening.
When your feelings get too hot, they can get stuck. This is a graph of what that looks like:
Psychic Equivalence: Summary!
I described “psychic equivalence” as a psychological term. This means your feelings become facts! I'll end with a quick summary in visual format of the all the things we will learn to understand this therapy!
Keep reading this fine to learn more about your internal world! Here's a quick video summarizing, because I'm going all in on multimedia today:
Video summary:
Stay tuned for the subsequent steps! Can you please feel free to share this article with all!