Many years ago, I was working with a couple who could not seem to land with one another.
The man lived primarily in his thoughts. The woman lived primarily in her feelings.
They loved each other, but whenever they tried to connect, they seemed to miss each other.
As I listened, a metaphor emerged.
I said to them, “I think all of us have an inner elevator.”
I went on to describe it this way:
Inside each of us is an elevator that travels between three levels. There’s the penthouse, the lobby, and the basement.
The penthouse is the world of thought. It is a beautiful place with a wide view. It is where we analyze, understand, plan, imagine, and make meaning of our experiences. The lobby is the world of feeling. It is rich and layered. It is where we experience tenderness, sadness, joy, fear, longing, gratitude, and love. The basement is where our raw emotions live. It is where the sobs, the shakes, the laughter, the grief, and the deep currents of our humanity reside.
As human beings, we have the extraordinary capacity to travel between all three levels.
When we are integrated, the elevator moves freely. We can think clearly and feel deeply. We can experience emotion without being overwhelmed by it. We can bring understanding to feeling and feeling to understanding.
The challenge is that many of us become stuck on a particular floor.
Some of us spend most of our lives in the penthouse. We understand everything, analyze everything, explain everything, yet remain disconnected from our emotional experience. Others spend much of their lives in the lobby, feeling deeply but struggling to access the perspective and clarity that the penthouse can offer. And sometimes life takes us all the way to the basement, where powerful emotions demand our attention.
None of these places is wrong, but the goal is not to live on one floor. The goal is to have easy access to all of them.
Over the years, I have found that this simple metaphor gives people a language for understanding themselves and each other.
A person can say, “Right now, I’m speaking from the penthouse.” Or, “What I’m about to share is coming from my lobby.” Or even, “Something is coming up from my basement.”
Suddenly, there is more awareness, more responsibility, and more compassion in the shared language this metaphor offers and we begin to recognize where we are speaking from and where our partner is listening from.
Relationship difficulties are often not caused by a lack of love, but because one person is standing in the penthouse while the other is waiting in the lobby.
One is explaining while the other is longing to be felt. One is thinking while the other is grieving. One is offering solutions while the other needs connection.
The invitation is not for either person to abandon their floor.
It is to repair the elevator. To become more integrated within ourselves, and to become more available to one another.
Perhaps some of the deepest work we can do is not in choosing between thought and feeling. Not deciding whether the penthouse, the lobby, or the basement is better. But instead, learning to travel freely among them all.