It’s been there all this time, right in front of our eyes, yet few saw it. I, for one, had noted the similarity between pursuers and distancers in marriage… and the pursuers and distancers described among children in early attachment research. I appreciated these findings and took them as outside confirmation of the importance of marriage-of-opposites dynamics in marriage. But I, along with most others, did not did see deep enough into the early childhood attachment research to see the foundations of a whole new theory of marriage and marital therapy. This is what Sue Johnson did. And in so doing she has opened up a pathway to effectively treat a far broader range of troubled marriages than has ever existed before.

Couples therapy is enormously challenging work, akin to finding just the right path up the side of a mountain, often with lives hanging in the balance. Sue Johnson’s work enables us to thread the needle… with both confidence and understanding.

To begin with EFT provides a defined effective method to proceed with in the face of extreme (or not so extreme) polarization and alienation that couples bring into the start of therapy. The EFT procedure of putting the couples pain within a context of near-constant tracking of the interactive negative cycle provides both hope and “something to do” to do for the couple where there has often been no hope before. My sense of this is that rigorously looking at the negative cycle is both valuable as a way of making something overwhelmingly subjective into something objective, and as a ritual process that provides the couple something to hold onto during the really hard moments of discord and fear. Secondly, the unpacking of the negative cycle reactivity into the underlying fears of rejection and disappointment, on down to the deep underlying longings for connection, transforms the negative cycle into empathy and reconnection. Looking at the negative cycle within a context of unpacking underlying attachment feelings often results in the re-emergence of attachment feeling. 

Wanting to announce that I will be returning to blog posting after a nine month hiatus. In this time I have steeped myself in advanced training in emotion focused couples therapy, and look forward to integrating this work with my long term interest in marriageofopposites dynamics and treatment. The eft work has profoundly enlarged my understanding of how couples heal. In addition, my work with individuals and groups has benefited from a better grounding in attachment research and an overall greater precision. Look forward to sharing particulars over the upcoming months. 

Admidst the terrible moments of high conflict, or the more usual moments of daily dulled marital distance, it is common for both partners to nurse an underlying feeling that the other is “the enemy” or “an enemy.” This kind of thinking or “attituding” is the primitive underbelly of many marital relationships. This is an aspect of “core functioning” or “core self” that probably has its roots in the primitive fight/flight emotional centers of the brain. When we remind ourselves that, in fact, our partner is not the enemy, we are then drawing upon the resources of “outer functiong” or “outer self” which likewise is probably derived from higher cortical functions in the brain.  Such a shift in perspective is, by itself, valuable because it sets the stage for a taking down of polarization and the reactivation of emotional connection.