I have found that periodic individual sessions can be very helpful in taking down blockages to the eft couples treatment, and very helpful in an overall deepening of the couples treatment. Providing the trust of the therapist is solid and reliable, these individual sessions can permit a more candid access to what is happening deeply inside of the individual in the marriage. Often such meetings are avoided by therapists for fear that they will result in splitting off the partner from the marriage. I have found that, keeping a firm grounding in attachment theory, and the defenses against attachment wounding, I am generally able to turn these individual meetings to the purpose of deepening the attachment in the marriage. The benefits to be gained from such individual meetings is that they can enable a more profound unpacking of the individual hurts and defenses in the actual couples sessions, thereby deepening the re-attachment process.
What I wish to do here is to comment on aspects of the “avoider re-engagement” and “blamer softening” that can be crucially engaged in the individual sessions, but difficult to do with both partners present. (to be cont)
There are certain benefits that I observe to men who participate in the eft group that I conduct in my practice. First, there is a powerful interruption of isolation which is replaced by emotional sharing and support with other men… all who are all trying to hold onto their primary attachment worlds. Second, repeatedly witnessing the different men “unpacking” the negative cycle process in each of their marriages deeply instills within each man the eft understanding of how marriages go astray; that there is a “rhyme and reason” to marriages in trouble, and it is not shameful proof of moral failing or “bad marriage.” Third, they get to witness many of the victorious moments when the eft work improves and restores marriages, thus growing within each of the men healthy optimism about the eft therapeutic process. Forth, the different men bring different assets and levels of maturity to working on their marriages. It does not escape the men’s notice when one of the members displays a greater capacity for loving their wives, empathic understanding of someone different, greater commitment in the face of struggle, or, in general, functioning from greater maturity in their marriage/family relationship. Over time, these “higher angel” capacities of some of the men… come to influence all the men! The men come to emulate and internalize the best qualities in each other!
In my experience, the “personal projects” of the core-styled pursuer and outer-styled avoider are significantly different. The task of the avoider is to engage the fearful underpinnings of why they do not reach out. The task of the pursuer is to engage the underpinnings of emotional escalation and compromised self-regulation.
Of late, I have been experimenting with following up actual eft sessions with 15 minute phone calls to this or that partner “stuck” in the eft process. What I have been noticing is that these followup conversations are most productive when we are able to directly talk about how that person is doing in their own personal project to understand their contribution to the marital negative cycle, rather than focus upon their partners missteps.
The intention of these phone calls is to be able to create one-on-one safety where the partner “stuck” in the eft process feels safer to open up about the vulnerabilities inside and let me help them with how to proceed, both in the next session and in their life outside the session. Oftentimes these conversations help locate an underlying vulnerable feeling that needs to be shared in session with their partner. And a recognition of the defensive functioning that is interrupting the process. Sometimes, the phone session will engage dysfunctional ways of thinking about the marriage, suggesting healthier ways of thinking. Often times I take these opportunities to once again present the “positive attachment reframe” about their partners behavior that is hard for them.
As I have commented elsewhere in this blog, eft interventions create not only an improved sense of contact with one’s primary partner, but also an improved sense of differentiated identity within the primary relationship. That is, unpacking the negative cycle down to the the essential feelings underneath, not only reconnects a couple to the attachment feelings that bring them together, It also reveals to each partner where they are with themselves within the relationship. What eft brings to couples therapy is not only a profoundly powerful method/technology for working/bringing down the negative cycle between two partners… but also a process for two people to not only sort out what is happening deeply inside themselves, but even more… to share this vulnerable inside-truth with their partner. To open up rather than fight.
What I wish to emphasize here – is that this process is most healing when partners move back and forth between what is happening between, with what is happening within; that there is a conversation happening not only with ones partner but also with oneself, and that both conversations are evolving. As I have said elsewhere in this blog, with regards to the conversation with oneself, it is most helpful for each in the marriage to conceive of their conversation with themselves as “their personal project.”
To make a “personal project” out of self-reflection implies a “certain taking responsibility” for oneself to do that inner probing and sorting out, irrespective of whether one’s partner clamors for it. This is not where many couples begin eft couples therapy, but it is where the therapy best comes to its close. In a way, the sorting out of oneself – and the sharing of each step along the way with ones partner – this is the biggest gift that one can bring to a marriage.
For two years now I have been facilitating an ongoing weekly men’s group designed along EFT lines. With one exception, all the men in this group are in eft couples therapy outside of the group. Two years into the group’s existence, the therapeutic benefits of the group have been remarkably positive.
To begin with, the group has become a rare environment where men can talk and open up about the challenges of their marital relationships within the context of eft couples therapy. This is an absolutely unique environment of cultural-therapeutic support, coming from outside of the marriage, for work within the marriage – this, in a western culture where men tend to be hugely isolated in the face of marital hurt and difficulty.
The group is composed of eight men, along with me as the lone facilitator. As in all other men’s groups that I have facilitated, the men were largely outer-styled avoiders in relationship with core-styled pursuing wives. At the beginning of the group there was a great deal of mutual comiseration about the challenge of pursuing, expressive wives who were experienced as overwhelming and “impossible.” Although the mutual support was valuable in terms of ending isolation, it was not helpful to the extent that it supported male tribalism and a sense of their more emotional wives as “bad” objects. Over months and persistent psycho-education on my part, the groups culture shifted out of polarization… into a much more balanced exploration of the marriage-of-opposites, and their own part in activating and continuing the negative cycles, Over time, a great deal of empathy for vulnerable emotional wives has taken up residence in the room.
As the group has progressed over the months, defensive devaluing of partners has greatly diminished, and has given way to a sense of each man having a precious relationship to be cared for.
