Chicken Coop
By Michele Ritterman, Ph.D.
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes, 42 seconds
Milton and Elizabeth Erickson’s professional collaboration didn’t stop with their early papers on time distortion. During Milton’s last seven years, when I was a frequent visitor to the Erickson household and office, Betty was very much involved in all aspects of his work. After I had my first baby and was pregnant with the second, Betty took care of my daughter for a whole morning so that I could have uninterrupted time with Milton. The rapport between Milton and Betty and her involvement was as important to me as my direct studies with Milton.
During the session in which Betty watched my baby, and in the context of discussions he and I were having about my marriage and my parents’ relationship, I asked Milton about his own family, and his parents. As best I can recall this is what he told me. It is my favorite Erickson story, the foundation of the couples courses I now teach around the world.
“I was fortunate,” he said, “to have had parents who told me life was enjoyable in their twenties and thirties. They liked their forties and fifties together. Their sixties, seventies, and eighties were wonderful and full of surprises. But nothing was as good as their nineties.
Now, when I was of marrying age, I went to my mother who lived on a farm, and I asked her what it was that made her relationship with Dad so good.
My mother said, ‘I tell your father something once and I don’t repeat myself.’
I went to my father out in the field and I asked, ‘What is it that makes your relationship with Mom so good?’
He said, ‘I tell your mother something once, and I don’t repeat myself.
Now, son, you see that chicken coop over there in the yard? It’s made of wire.
Many years ago your mother asked me to make her a fine chicken coop of brick, something permanent. I considered the request thoughtfully. I said, No, I would not, but I would make her a temporary coop. She never said another word about the matter. Nor did I. Now that temporary coop lasted a lifetime.'”
That is the story Milton told me while Betty watched Miranda, my daughter, and I was pregnant with Judah, my son. I have shared this story with so many couples who would bludgeon each other with pressures and demands instead of accepting a yes or no and live with it if they can, and leave if they can’t.
There is classic elegance and grace to this good farm sense. It can take a multitude of forms. Be careful if you apply it, because even apparently bickering couples may secretly be at peace with each other. It would be wretched to think of professionals forcing couples to behave like Erickson’s parents. There is no rigid application of the story. It is just a tender, simple story of love and acceptance. It is not about tolerating the insufferable. It is not about silencing oneself when it is time to speak out. I offer it as a tender simple story of acceptance and true love. Use it sparingly and wisely.
This excerpt has been extracted from Volume 25, Issue No. 1 of The Milton H. Erickson Foundation Newsletter.
You may also like…
by Jeffrey K. Zeig
Type: Softcover
Need some good advice? Have questions about your marriage, dating, children, money, sex, even cheating, or divorce? It’s all covered here.
Seventy psychologists, therapists and counselors who regularly help couples with their relationship issues were asked to create ten basic rules that every couple needs.
Each set of “commandments” deals with something essential, from general areas such as making your relationship last or maintaining connection to more specific challenges like rekindling passion, dealing with infertility, or financial issues. The “commandments” have been collected from a remarkable panel of exemplary experts who work extensively in relationship counseling and relationship improvement. In addition, each contributor had no knowledge of what the others had written. What distinguishes this book from others is that the inspirations are presented as easy to reflect upon “sound bites.” Once digested, they can be internalized as “commandments,” commandments that will enrich your primary relationships.
Contributors include: John Gottman & Julie Gottman, Harville Hendrix, & Helen LaKelly-Hunt, Harriet Lerner, Pat Love, Terry Real, Marty Klein, Cloé Madanes, Judith Beck, Helen Fisher, Lisa Firestone, Sue Johnson, Bill O’Hanlon, Michele Weiner-Davis, Claudia Black, Jon Carlson, Scott Miller, Reid Wilson, Daniel Amen, Janet Abrams Spring, Phillip Zimbardo —And more, covering all topics with over 80 sets of commandments.
Highly readable, practical and profound, this book invites you to sit down with the finest minds in couples therapy. And when it comes to the most important aspect of life — the intimate relationship at its center — who doesn’t need some good advice now and then?
About the Editors:
JEFFREY K. ZEIG, PHD is the founder and Director of the Milton H. Erickson Foundation, having studied intermittently with Dr. Erickson for more than six years, He has edited, co-edited, authored, or coauthored more than 20 books now available in twelve foreign languages. His current area of interest is extracting implicit codes of influence from various arts, including movies, music, painting, poetry, and fiction that can be used to empower professional practice, and everyday communication. Dr. Zeig is the architect of The Evolution of Psycho-therapy Conferences, and organizes the Brief Therapy Conferences, the Couples Conferences, and the International Congresses on Ericksonian Approaches to Hypnosis and Psychotherapy. Dr. Zeig is on the Editorial Board of numerous journals; is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (Division 29, Psychotherapy); and Fellow of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis. He is a Distinguished Practitioner in the National Academy of Practice in Psychology of the National Academies of Practice. A psychologist and marriage and family therapist in private practice in Phoenix, Arizona, Dr. Zeig conducts workshops internationally (more than 40 countries). Specialty topics include experiential psychotherapy, hypnosis, and brief therapy with various clinical problems. Dr. Zeig has spoken at major universities and teaching hospitals including The Mayo Clinic, Men-bingers and MD Anderson. He is president of both Zeig, Tucker & Theisen Publishers in the behavioral sciences, and the Erickson Foundation Press.
TAMI KULBATSKI, PSY.D., C.PSYCH. is a psychologist registered with the College of Psychologists of Ontario. She holds a Doctorate degree in clinical psychology and has over 15 years of clinical experience. Dr. Kulbatski runs a private practice in Toronto, Canada where she provides psychotherapy and counsel-ing to adults, couples, and adolescents. She is the founder and director of the Toronto Centre for Positive Psychology. Dr. Kulbatski has held a position as core faculty member at a graduate school for psychology, and has taught extensively in the field of psychology. She has been quoted in numerous national magazine and newspaper articles. Dr. Kulbatski provides lectures, seminars and work-shops on various topics, including Positive Psychology, Happiness, Dating, Relationships, Marriage, Communication, Self-Esteem, Coping with Stress, and Striving for Psychological Well-Being. She is a dynamic speaker who enjoys inspiring and motivating her listeners to maximize their potential and to achieve happiness and fulfillment in their lives.
10 Commandments For Every Aspect of your Relationship Journey
Here’s the premise: A relationship is an ongoing process of co-creation, for better or for worse. This important videotape takes this essential concept and shows couples how to put it into action – for better.
Working with real couples, Dr. Stuart demonstrates a series of exercises he has developed to help them clarify areas of discord and to acknowledge common ground. By delineating pockets of responsibility and forging a greater understanding of oneself and one’s partner, the process – and the promise – of co-creating begins to unfold.
Words such as “acceptance,” “caring,” and others that we associate with positive relationships are often just wish-words, that is, they don’t have meaning in our day-to-day lives. But the activities presented here will help couples to take these words and make them ways.
Co-Creating a Positive Relationship unlocks new opportunities for working as partners to build a more flexible, responsive and stimulating life together.
by Terry Hargrave
Type: Softcover
"A wise, balanced, and original approach to fostering a strong ‘us’ in marriage without losing the ‘you’ and ‘me.’ Hargrave is onto something that nobody in our field has captured before.
–William J. Doherty, Ph.D.
This fresh perspective on what makes marriages work will jumpstart the efforts of every couples therapist. At its core is Hargrave’s message that much of what is currently done in couples therapy misses the point, focusing all attention on the need to accumulate more and more skills and to work toward ever-greater self-actualization. While there is a time and place for both of these concerns, Hargrave suggests that the real answer resides in some new math. Where once we believed that two became one, and then, more recently, that two remained two, Hargrave proposes that in strong marriages, two become three.
The Essential Humility of Marriage explores the landscape of “you,” “me,” and “we.” The book clearly carves out this third identity, and then describes how its expectations and desires can take precedence over those of the individual partners–without taking away from either one. Why the concept of “us” plays such a central role in satisfying marriages is explained, and ways in which therapists can help couples first to acknowledge and then to strengthen that “us” are demonstrated.
Hargrave doesn’t offer a single method or technique so much as an entirely new perspective on what healthy, growing marriages have in common, and where foundering marriages have gone wrong. He has written this book to help therapists help their clients to regain–or perhaps to discover for the first time–the rich mutual benefits that can come with a long-term relationship.
by Pat Love and Sunny Shulkin
Type: Softcover
If your relationship were a garden, what shape would the flowers be in?
Pat Love and Sunny Shulkin shed some sunshine on the question as they take a humorous look at the things we all do that whittle away at perfectly good relationships.
How To Ruin a Perfectly Good Relationship is an eye-opening guide to the multitude of ways so many of us whittle, whether it’s taking our partner for granted, treating him or her like a stranger, making mountains out of mole hills, or engaging in any number of other nasty habits. Problem is that relationships really are like gardens–they need to be tended, cared for, nurtured, for if they are not, they die.
Tiny in stature but big in vision, this book is a playful exploration that will have you giggling as you count how many times you or your partner appear in its pages. But Pat and Sunny have serious business in mind: they point out that research shows that the behaviors described, no matter how insignificant they seem, over time erode the love between two people. And since the majority of couples indicate that “growing apart” is the reason for the dissolution of their relationship, this isn’t really a laughing matter.