There is a concept in psychoanalytic thinking of the “bad object.” The notion is rooted in the black and white thinking of early childhood, where the world gets divided up into “the good and the bad.” Often times, this oversimple breakdown of life survives within each of us, even as we grow up and mature into a much more realistic view of life. One prominent place it continues to live inside of us, and in our society at large, is in the area of shame. In public discourse, for example, accusations of shame commonly boil down to projecting “badness” onto the person shamed. Few things in public life are more painful than having ourselves attributed with such labels of badness. 

This is especially true in marriage. In choosing our primary partner, we hope to establish an emotional home base where we are protected from the threats of being shamed and diminished so common in the outer world. At least with our chosen partner we are hopeful of being seen as essentially good… good and worthy. In my experience, this is a nearly universal longing in all marriages. 

But a truism about marriage is that this is exactly where we are revealed in all of our limitations. And yet, it is exactly with our partner that we most need to be seen for best in us. In marriages dominated by the negative cycle, the opposite happens. Our partner mirrors back to us the ways they are disappointed in us, and we in turn mirror back our disappointment in them. This “death by a thousand cuts” can easily do in any marriage… even marriages with fundamentally good potential. 

Shame by itself is also a normal part of life, as in shame over this or that misstep. The place where shame becomes hugely damaging (to self and other in relationship), is when it rises to the level of toxic shame. In toxic shame we are not just ashamed of a misstep in the world or with our partner, in toxic shame we are essentially ashamed of ourselves, our own being in the world, our inherent nature. There is a common phrase in todays world where one claims something shameful of ordinary scale… we say “that’s my bad.” I actually find this non-catastrophic acknowledgment of misstep as helpful in marital healing. By contrast, in situations of “toxic shame” the feeling is one of “all badness” … that I have no worth, that there is no goodness or love within me, that I am “bad-bad” in that way that young children can concretely feel. Couples amidst the negative cycle are highly at risk of evoking this feeling of “bad-bad” in each other, at times passing it back and forth like a “hot potato! 

The still face experiment, conducted by Dr. Edward Tronick, is a very powerful demonstration of early attachment behavior… behavior that plays out in marriage decades latter. The experiment vividly demonstrates a young child’s reaction to maternal coldness and non-response. Sue Johnson’s ground breaking work on emotion focused couples therapy is based on the insight that couples insecurities/conflicts are rooted in the same attachment behaviors evident between mothers and children depicted in the film.

Almost without exception, when shown this video, couples are deeply moved… and commonly see instant parallels between the video and their marital difficulties. The pursuers in marriage powerfully relate to the absent mother as similar to their feeling with their avoiding partner… who feels so absent to them. Likewise, watching the video often gives avoiders a first ever deep insight into what happens to their pursuing partner when they make distance from them.

https://youtu.be/apzXGEbZht0

There is a point in EFT therapy, after the couples negative cycle has has been repeatedly described and engaged, when the couple’s therapy benefits from a shift into examining the exact micro-moment process that happens within each partner that causes them to “pull the trigger” on the negative cycle. That is, it is crucially important for each in the marriage to recognize/understand exactly the steps they go though inside themselves that lead up to their own respective triggering. To a degree, the success of the therapy depends upon learning how not to end up triggered. Slowly, but persistently, each in the marriage needs to acquire “tools of understanding” that enables them to “stand down” in their reactive response. This involves learning to think differently about the negative cycle, but even more, learning to discern within oneself the “cascading individual elements” that result in fight/flight… and learning how to alter, quiet down or turn off these individual reactivities. When each in the marriage learns to discern this process within themselves, it gives them new capacities for self-control… and leaves them more more able to resist the inevitable provocations that daily occur in the marital dance. 

I write these words here because it is my view that this individual component of the couples work is often not done to the depth of maximal benefit. The reason for this is understandable; so much of what is special about eft work is that both partners in the marriage learn to calm down in a mutual way as part of improving shared process with our partner; we find ourselves getting better because our partner gets better with us, and they get better because we our better with them. Better than any other therapy, eft guides and harnesses this approach, and couples often respond quickly to such a process. However, it is my understanding that depth-full individual work adds in a crucial additional amount of resilience within the couple. so that the couple is able to resist the negative cycle even when what they are getting back from their partner is not warm and connecting, even provocative!