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)
