The goal of attachment-based couples therapy, which is at the heart of eft treatment, is to help two people learn to hold onto each other/be there for each other/live together with mutual awareness. This can only happen if each in the couple has come to feel emotionally safe with the other, emotionally safe with each other in spite of the differences that always exists between two people… secure with each other no matter the differences. This also means that the two have come to deeply trust each other.
This “holding on” process is never actually perfect. It depends upon the ability of the couple to do repair during/following moments where insecurity/vulnerability/rupture inevitably occur. It takes time for two people to convincingly learn that the other is going to respond to the vulnerable reach of repair with a vulnerable reach back. But learning to trust the other in repair is at the heart of learning to trust the other… period.
Repair is always about two people coming back to one-another. The “always coming back” is at the heart of the process. There cannot be repair if two people do not return to each other… if one stands away, held back. What eft work adds to this process is the recognition of the precious value and deep love that is inherent in each other’s reach for return… never to be taken for granted.
Highly conflicted couples often benefit in the actual eft sessions, however, the negative cycles commonly continue to dominate their marital and family lives between sessions. I have have wondered for some time about possible ways to increase/intensify the de-escalating therapeutic message for these couples. (to be continued)
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.
