After working through several instances of the negative cycle, wherein couples commonly feel considerable relief and feelings of reconnection… one important continuing resistance to change resides in the negative core beliefs/conclusions that each partner has of the other. These negative beliefs are stereotypes that each have formed of the other to protect themselves from vulnerable hurt over a long history of discord and disappointment. Oftentimes, it is these core negative beliefs that keep propelling couples back into mistrust even after they have made considerable progress in understanding and taking down their negative cycles. In recent years it has been my experience that in the middle of treatment it is often necessary to probe deeply into these negative beliefs, explicate their role in propelling each partner back into the negative cycle, to fully unpack the protective function of maintaining the negative beliefs, to lay out how they actually propel more negative cycle and mistrust, and to encourage the formation new beliefs that more accurately reflect the compassionate understanding the couple has learned in the therapy. At times, this part of the therapy can be quite challenging but is essential! Otherwise, the good moments of change can remain compartmentalized and not fully spread through the hearts and psychologies of each in the marriage. That is, the negative beliefs, if they remain unaltered, serve as a final bastion of self-protection, pushing away, mistrust and insecure attachment… the raw materials of the negative cycle. They block the full taking-in and internalization of the change events in the therapy.
In a way, each micro-intervention in eft therapy is directed at taking down these negative beliefs and replacing them with the compassionate human story of lovers who have lost each other and are afraid… and how the negative hurtful things that each say/do in the marriage are prompted by a sense of threat to that which is most dearly needed between them. To this degree, engaging negative beliefs each has of the other, is a common part of cycle-work generally. What I am emphasizing here is that focusing upon deconstructing the negative beliefs themselves, just like focusing upon trauma and relationship injury, is also a powerful additive to the therapeutic mix. It leads to powerful “reorganizing existential moments” wherein each in the marriage is invited to reclaim (or claim for the first time) the primacy of viewing their partner as special and worthy of loving.
