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Chronic Strategies of Disconnection A Reflective Tool

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Doris Nguyen
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77 views

Chronic Strategies of Disconnection A Reflective Tool

Uploaded by

Doris Nguyen
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Chronic Strategies of Disconnection: A Reflective Tool (Cooper and Knox, v 2)

Chronic strategies of disconnection are patterns of behaviour that people develop to protect themselves from
hurt or anxiety in close relationships, but which may now be redundant: that is, they tend to do them
automatically, when it may, in fact, be more beneficial for them to stay in closer connection with another
person.
Reflecting on your own experience of close relationships as an adult, and on times in which you feel hurt or
anxious, to what extent do you tend to use the following strategies to disconnect from others (when you
might be better off staying in connection)? Once you have completed this reflection which strategies, if any,
might be present in your therapeutic work.

Not at all A little Moderately A lot


Immersing yourself in activities (e.g TV) 0 1 2 3
Being busy 0 1 2 3

Distracting yourself 0 1 2 3

Talking a lot 0 1 2 3

Being aggressive towards others 0 1 2 3

Acting in an arrogant way 0 1 2 3

Criticizing others 0 1 2 3

Being cold or prickly 0 1 2 3

Ending contact with people 0 1 2 3

Being controlling 0 1 2 3

Pushing others away 0 1 2 3

Feigning disinterest: that you don’t really care 0 1 2 3

Being overly formal or polite 0 1 2 3

Keeping things at a superficial level 0 1 2 3

Using humour or laughter 0 1 2 3

Avoiding communication with others 0 1 2 3

Physically avoiding people 0 1 2 3

Using drugs or alcohol 0 1 2 3

Daydreaming 0 1 2 3

Withdrawing emotionally 0 1 2 3

Intellectualising 0 1 2 3

Mentally shutting down, ‘going into your head’ 0 1 2 3

Not joining in with things 0 1 2 3

Becoming tired or going to sleep 0 1 2 3

Avoiding conflict 0 1 2 3
Not at all A little Moderately A lot
Being compliant, appeasing 0 1 2 3

Not expressing your wants 0 1 2 3

Being closed in your body language 0 1 2 3

Changing the subject 0 1 2 3

Avoiding eye contact 0 1 2 3

Not listening 0 1 2 3

Becoming quiet or silent 0 1 2 3

Focusing attention on others 0 1 2 3

Rescuing: being overly helpful to others 0 1 2 3

Being independent 0 1 2 3

Trying to hide or make yourself invisible 0 1 2 3

Criticising yourself 0 1 2 3

Feeling sorry for yourself, playing the victim 0 1 2 3

Source: Cooper, M. (2013). Experiencing relational depth: Self-development exercises and reflections. In R. Knox, D.
Murphy, S. Wiggins, & M. Cooper (Eds.), Relational depth: New perspectives and developments (pp. 137-152). Palgrave
Macmillan.

- I’ve always used humour as a coping mechanism (for when I want to disconnect or for
avoidance) but I didn’t realise this until my friend had gone to therapy (she does the same)
and her psychologist had picked this up. I had reflected upon this for a while before I talked
to my friends about this to which they asked me if I would like for them to call me out on it.

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