What's it all about?

When you have a strong sense of healthy differentiation, you can access a new sense of both autonomy and intimacy in your relationships. When you are not afraid of losing yourself in or being controlled by another, you can allow yourself to feel deeply connected and affected, while standing strong in your own sense of self.

With healthy differentiation, your relationships transform from something you are beholden to into something that supports you in new adventures of discovery and learning in the world.

There are many ways to cultivate a sense of healthy differentiation. One important way is being able to stand clearly in the values that guide your life. When you are grounded in your values, you can make effective decisions for yourself and engage in effective collaboration with others. Healthy differentiation also involves learning to tolerate disharmony, embrace differences, self-soothe, offer compassion, and set boundaries.

At the most basic level, to differentiate means deciding what you identify with— what you call “me.”  Differentiation could also be described as being who you are in the presence of who they are. If you are someone who thinks you are more connected to yourself and happier when you are not in a significant relationship, you may have developed your individuality, but likely have difficulty with differentiation.

From the process-oriented framework of MCD, identity is something that is fluid and directed by universal needs and what most deeply serves life. From this perspective, an identity phrase could be something like this:  “I am an ever-changing flow of dynamic aliveness.” Identity phrases that include active verbs align with this process orientation. For example, “I am someone who is dedicated to compassion,” rather than, “I am compassionate.”

From a process orientation, differentiation is an active, ongoing process of connecting to and honoring your own experience and sharing that experience when doing so will support collaboration to meet needs. Specifically you are able to identify your needs and preferences in any given situation and speak up for them when necessary. You regularly and explicitly clarify boundaries. You are able to manage the reactivity and discomfort that comes from either risking greater intimacy or potential separation.  This last point shows up, perhaps, most often in intimate relationships.