"I can't win with my mom", laments a young client as she sits on my couch for a first therapy session.

"What do you mean, win?", I ask.

"If I tell my mom anything about my life, she seems disinterested or will change the subject but then if I take that to mean she doesn't want me to share anymore she tells me she misses me and wants to know more about my life and gets angry telling me I don't care about her", she shares.

This client is experiencing a double bind. A double bind occurs when seemingly contradictory messages exist within a relationship and lead to confusion about how to be "successful" in building connection with another person.

"The Double Bind theory" was developed by Gregory Bateson, a social anthropologist, who noticed this type of paradoxical communication as occurring in family systems where dysfunctional relationships were present.

Double bind communication has three components:

1. Contradictory demands: In the case of my client, her mother made two demands of her - "share more or it will mean you don't care about me" while also behaving in a way that led the daughter to believe she didn't want her to share at all. Other common contradictory demands are telling someone to share their feelings to only respond by saying something like " you're always too sensitive" or asking someone to open up about their concerns and then attacking them for their transparency.

2. No escape: In double bind situations, the person cannot escape the bind because if they try to they are met with further confusing demands. In every direction the person feels as if they are being hit with a new confusing message.

3. Punishment: Once the person recognizing the contradictions they will face consequences in the relationship. For example saying something like "I notice whenever you ask me to open up to you and I do, you then criticize what I've shared" might illicit a response like "I've never done that before but if that's how you really feel about me then we might as well end our relationship".

Double binds can cause relational, mental, and physical health issues in the person on the receiving end of them. In extreme cases, double binds within families can cause psychology.

When someone notices that they are experiencing double binds, like the client highlighted earlier in this post, the therapist can help that person to develop a strong sense of their own reality, confidence, and assertiveness, support them as they develop communication skills that can overcome their own self doubt, and develop a sense of safety through developing boundaries and limitations in the relationship they have with the person creating the double bind situations.

Article by Elizabeth Earnshaw, LMFT, CGT

Elizabeth Earnshaw is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Utah. She has written several books about relationships, including I Want This To Work, and is a frequent relationship contributor to The New York Times and other international media outlets. You can read more about her here.

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