Differentiation
The ability to stay yourself while being close to someone — and to stay close even when you disagree.
How it shows up in daily life
Low differentiation has two faces. The first is fusion: you experience your partner’s bad mood as your own, their disagreement as rejection, and you adjust your opinion to avoid tension. The second is disconnection: to stay yourself you have to move away, cut contact, close the door. Both are the same problem — closeness and having your own position exclude each other.
What we do with it in therapy
The aim isn’t more independence but the capacity for both at once. We practise staying in contact even when it’s uncomfortable: saying what you think without fleeing, and hearing what the other thinks without falling apart. It is slow work, because it happens live, in a relationship, not in theory.
