A difference of opinion that I have with Sue Johnson is that she does not understand pursuing and avoiding as two different personality styles, but rather as flexible forms of adaptation to any given relationship. She makes the accurate point that one person may find themselves pursuing in one relationship and avoiding in the next. Though I also have witnessed situations where there has been cross-over from one relationship to the next, my experience has been that there is  an even stronger trend towards “preferred action tendency” in the marriage-of-opposites; that is, underlying the ability of both types to flexibly adapt, most individuals in these relationships have powerful underlying preferences to respond in one way or another.

As I have discussed in a web document elsewhere (Borders, 2002) the key dynamic is located in two different relationships with the problem of vulnerability. One defends against vulnerability by reaching for rescue to someone else, the other defends against vulnerability by avoiding experiences that evoke vulnerability.

An inherent difficulty arises within each type, a kind of lopsidedness in development. The pursuer, with their focus upon being reassured by the other, is inherently limited in growing their own self-reliance. The avoider, in their avoidance of emotional feelings that might lead to rejection from others, is inherently limited in their emotional aliveness and intimacy.

Each type, sensing something missing in themselves, is drawn towards the other type… thus creating the marriage-of-opposites. However, following powerful attraction to the other, when close-in, each struggles with the others primary mode of responding. The pursuer begins to feel abandoned by the avoiders failure to emotionally reach. The avoider begins to feel engulfed, judged and not accepted by the pursuers powerful expression of need and confrontation.

The “individual project” is about each partner engaging the limitations of their own particular style, and the way that these limitations detract from the marriage. It is my experience that “working the individual projects” powerfully enhances the eft cycle work with the couple.

Several times in any given week of eft couples sessions, couples leave the sessions with benefit, but still in distress and negative cycle conflict. My intuitive feeling has long been a sense that a portion of the continued conflict derived from an insufficient amount of therapeutic support. In this last year I have experimented with “focusing interventions” wherein I have called one or both partners a few days after the eft session; in a 10 or 15 minute phone call, sometimes longer, I would then inquire about where things went following the session, bring forward once again my understanding of the cycle, empathically engage each partners sense of threat underneath the cycle, and lay in more deeply the underlying reality of continued attachment and caring in the marriage. 

What I am trying to address here is situations where couples leave the sessions with the negative cycle still predominant. The particular eft session may have, in fact, been quite good, but not sufficient to yet calm down the negative cycle. The therapy is not yet organizing of safe connection. The couple is still in the world without sufficient resources and support to interact differently, metaphorically blowing in the wind like an untethered flag. 

It is my hope that a second, briefer contact in the week, one designed to emphasize the core therapeutic message, could serve as a kind of booster shot to therapeutic interventions delivered in the primary eft session. 

Of late, I have taken weekends to reexamine each of my couples therapy situations in terms of a singular question… is there a certain “additional something” that might be brought to bear to these couples that would substantially deepen the therapeutic work. The answer that I keep coming back to is “yes.” What I am now exploring… is what are the different additions to the work that would deepen the therapeutic work, and when and where? What are different “additional somethings” for the different situations, and what are the different timings that are most helpful. Many of the next postings will explore these “additional somethings.”

We are here looking at tailoring adjunctive interventions in eft therapy to the varied couples situations. To mention just a few: those couples whose negative cycle is so highly escalated that it is hard to effectively unpack and lower the reactivity in the eft session. Another situation is where the negative cycle has been lowered in the couples lives but intimacy and closeness is still very low. The posts to come will explore these different kinds of situations. 

As I posted a few weeks ago… I have found it very valuable to encourage both in the marriage to clarify their respective roles in the recurring cycles. This is in addition to opening out each partner’s underlying dynamics in the sessions; it adds to this process each partners recognition of how they are better able or less able to manage their part in the negative cycle situations with their partner. This adds to each partner a degree of responsibility for how they carry themselves in the therapeutic process of healing the negative cycle.

I am aware as I write these words that they are in contrast to a central aspect of eft work; what is wondrous about emotion focused therapy is the way that the therapeutic action of bringing down the negative cycles takes place without involving conscious intent on either partners part. To a degree, all that is necessary is for each in the marriage is to stay open to the therapeutic work of opening and bringing down the cycle. Intent, effort and discipline is largely not a necessary ingredient in these early sessions. Their is no need for either partner to try and “will themselves to want to be in the marriage” in order for these first sessions to work. 

However, as the eft therapy progresses, and the couple begins to understand of how their particular negative cycle operates, I find it very helpful to enlists each in the marriage to clarify their own contribution to the negative cycle, and to form a sense/picture/vision of a personal project that serves to guide each in the marriage – making the negative cycle less likely, less intense, and more recoverable. That is, to not only have better understanding of what is happening within each other when the negative cycle occurs, but to also cultivate a sense of how to operate from one’s “better angels” within and between each other in the marriage.

Note that this sense of personal project cannot effectively emerge without first coming into a full understanding of how the negative cycle operates within the marriage. The key driver here is not to avoid shame or being reproached by ones partner – the key driver is the positive attachment motivation that emerges within each partner as the negative cycles are repeatedly taken down… that each in the marriage engage their personal project out of loving caring, not a sense of being right, avoiding shame, or winning in a contest of wills. 

So often in my eft couples work, couples have benefited hugely, leave the therapy very much improved… but somewhere between sometimes and often, I have been left with a felt sense, the work could have been deeper, further reaching, more transformative; that somehow the therapy stopped short of fully reworking the couples underlying core negative cycle. (to be continued)