There are some aspects of EFT that remind me of just good general marital therapy practice. And then there are additions.
First the commonalities. First, slow the couple down as they begin to escalate with each other in the session. This is necessary in order to even begin the work. Second, describe back to the couple their interactive process as they begin to escalate. “When he said this you felt what? And then you responded with this… and when she did this, you felt what and responded with this. Then you reacted with this, and then you reacted with yet this. And so on.” This describing and taking-apart-the-process generally calms things down as the couple sees they are caught up in interacting that is bigger than the particulars, allows an initial taking down of personalization and polarization. This process begins to “unpack” or “deconstruct” the locked-in, enmeshed conflict and fight. Both this describing back to the couple their enmeshed process and the unpacking of that process is common to most approaches to couples therapy.
Perhaps what is different from most schools of thought is the way that the eft therapist then deliberately goes into the individual internal process of one or the other partner, while the other partner watches on. And how often the first in-depth focus is on the more distanced, emotionally avoidant partner, often engaging the pursuing partner only long enough to calm things down to then bring forth the avoidant partner. Sometimes, at that point, much of the hour is spent exploring and “unpacking” the upper and middle layers of the avoiders feeling intimidated, fear, hopelessness, closing down, hurt, wishing it was different but helpless to make it different, etc.
On the face of it, the going into the individual process would strike many as a departure from couples therapy, which many schools of thought view as primarilly interactive. But in actuality, this “unpacking of whats inside of each as they interact” actually addresses the more profound issue of lost empathy and lost emotional connection so powerfully hurting and eroding the marriage.
This steadfast focus on taking apart the layers of individual experience within the context of the marriage characterizes EFT and stands it apart from most other approaches. In posts to follow I will begin to consider how such a process can unfold in highly therapeutic ways.
In this and posts to follow I will be sharing my digested understanding of the impact of Sue Johnson’s Emotionally Focused Marital Therapy approach to my own therapeutic work with couples generally, and the marriage-of-opposites in particular.
To begin with, the attachment model of marital treatment places the establishment of attachment safety ahead of separation/differentiation/individuation. Developmentally this makes sense as the creation of an attachment homebase predates the emergence of separation-individuation in the individual life cycle. The thinking in the attachment research going back to Bowlby is that the internalization of homebase safety is a necessary foundation for a secure moving out into the larger world. While many make their movement into the outer world without a reliable home base, the general understanding is that they suffer a costly attachment wound in the process.
Often in the marriage-of-opposites the therapeutic work begins with a core-styled pursuer’s intense anger at the outer-styled’s avoidant behavior. Not uncommonly the avoider shuts down even more as they recieve the pursuers angry confrontation, resulting in many conflicts going to escalated levels far beyond the original conflict of the moment. Intuitively, many therapists are then inclined to focus upon containment of the pursuers escalative feeling in order to create safety in the room for the avoider. As an initial approach this is probably necessary. However, from the perspective of the EFT approach, to continue with a focus upon the pursuer’s containment or impulse-control deficits is a mistake because the pursuer is reacting to the avoider’s fundamental abandonment of the attachment field-of-play. Hence, the challenge for the therapists is to manage their own countertransference evoked by the pursuers hostility and to nevertheless find their way to focus upon the avoider’s wounded/fearful/avoiding/blaming experience that causes them to crucially check out on an interactive marriage. In focusing much of the early work upon the avoiders inner experience the therapist is doing many things at once; first, this provides the pursuer with a tacit recognition of the legitimacy of their deep hurt related to the avoiders abandonment of connection, second, when done empathically it provides the avoider with a meaningful voice for there fear-based attachment wound, third, it invites empathy within the pursuer towards the avoider’s interior fear/hurt/shame thereby reestablishing an empathic attachment bridge where it did not exist before. Unconsciously, the pursuer has the hope that the therapy will “open up and bring forth” their avoider partner so that “they could then feel attached to them.” Commonly at these times the esclated anger in the pursuer melts away.
To the degree that we are not fully formed as individuals when we marry we will build our marital relationship upon incomplete personal honesty, unrealistic expectations, and unstable foundation. This is a commonly heard truism often spoken by older individuals in the culture. At the same time it is far more often the truth than not; it is the norm to embark on marriage with huge amounts of dysfunctional anticipations that are intrinsically unrealizable. This sobering reality highlights another general truth, that for whatever immature unsustainable reasons that relationships begin with, what matters most are the mature and enduring reasons for relationships to continue.
There is the whole topic Of accountability in marriage. Accountability has to do with our “being responsible” for what we bring to our partner. In order for this even to be a factor in our marital lives we we must have a sense of ourselves in the relationship beyond our reacting to our partner, a sense of ourselves not only embedded in the marital dance, but also as individuals “choosing how we are in marital dance.” Our ability to offer ourselves and our partner “win-win” engagements is built upon this larger sense of ourselves as being both capable of choices and responsible for our choices.
Hence, in marriage we are always in dialectic between our reacting to our partner and our choosing within ourselves how we want to proceed with our reacting. This is at the center of the marital dance. Do we feel “room within ourselves” as we respond to our partner or do we feel locked into something with the other that precludes a sense of self inside that harbors our needs, wishes and dreams.
By accountability, I have in mind something far more profound that simply following through with what we verbally promise our partners, though verbal promises are certainly a part of the picture. This larger sense of accountability is concerned with our being true to ourselves in our lives with our partner, and our being true to the emotional depth of the relationship. It does not mean never failing or never hurting our partner. It does mean that “at the end of the day” we take our partner in, and care about what is there experience, even if we struggle with what they bring to us. And it does mean that, past the understandable moments of an inflamed fight, at the end of the day, we do not dismiss our partner with various labels “bad” or “impossible” … and if we do we must know about ourselves that we and our relationship are in difficulty that requires healing.
Commonly there is an early phase in couples therapy where one or both in the marriage rail against their partner for not giving them what they need. Sometimes this focus upon “what is wrong in the other” can be brief, sometimes it can go on for months, and commonly it comes and goes in cycles throughout the therapy. Somewhere in the couples therapy journey, however, there is “a moment of truth” when each in the marriage must face what they themselves bring or do not bring to the marriage. This is that place where we ask ourselves, do I really bring to my partner “win-win interactions.” Note that win-win interactions start with with a crucial acceptance of what ones partner’s capacities are, so that there is good opportunity for the partners success in the interaction. Otherwise, the interactions are a set-up for the partners failure… and the relationship’s failure.
What I have in mind here is that dimension where we face ourselves in our marriage. Without wishing to sound religious, that place where “we talk to God” about ourselves and our participation in our own lives; that place of total honesty with ourselves. In what we bring to our partner, in our real knowing of them, have we really “been working with who they are” in what we bring to them, or are we just in one more reenactment of proving them incapable/wrong/bad?
Likewise, we must also ask ourselves the therapeutically useful question, what am I doing in a relationship wherein my own participation is not functional? And perhaps, if am choosing to stay in this relationship, what greater functionality may I want to ask of myself… so as to be able to like myself at the end of the day.
