Category Archives: Emotionally Focused Therapy

Therapythoughts: “It’s Frustrating”

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Well, if I had a nickel for every time I have asked a client how they were feeling and their response was “frustrated,” I ‘d be able to purchase the naming rights for the Mariners’ home field and change the name from T-Mobile Park to Mediation and Counseling Offices of Joseph Shaub Stadium.

I practice Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy and as the first word would suggest, we are always exploring for the feelings that lie under the initial (and understandable) flash of anger when one feels unimportant, ignored, judged or criticized by their partner.  So often, though – it’s almost universal – the reply comes back that the person is “frustrated.”  For years, I have thought of this as the first step to exploring one’s emotion.  Hanging out with those feelings will often bring us to something a step deeper, like “fear,” or “sadness/grief,” or “shame.”  Those are heavy and we don’t show our emotional underbelly unless we know we are safe.  We’d be kind of nuts not to.  So we start with the safest, closest disclosure: Frustrated.  So, when I hear that, I have been inclined to dig deeper.  I still am inclined to do that, but…..

Something happened not long ago in a session that really shifted the way I think about that word.  Here is the thinking that followed:

What is “frustrated,” after all?  It is the desire to reach a goal and to somehow be thwarted.  I once wanted to open a door and for some reason, the handle wasn’t working.  I tried a few times to solve the problem in the most intuitive way and it just didn’t work.  I wanted to achieve a goal (open the door), but I was being frustrated in the attempt.  When I considered the word in that light, I began to wonder, “What is the goal you want to reach but feel you can’t?”  That answer, with the emphasis on the goal and the de-emphasis on what they believe their partner is doing to keep them from the goal, has been a real help in figuring out what’s bugging people in their relationship sometimes.  What I like about that exploration is that it often results in a healing message to our partner, which is the goal, I think.

The Great Debate

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Anybody who does something long enough will draw their own conclusions – make their own connections between events & experiences.  No description of the therapy experience could be more apt.  Nothing could be a better example of this series of observations than The Great Debate that enters my office over and again.  So many times, I have sat with two people who seek help with “communication issues” and when I have a chance to experience these frustrating communication conundrums (bet you didn’t think you’d read that  phrase today!) I so often see people descending into their Great Debate.  One person has something they want to get across and after he has laid it out, he will sit back with the hope and expectation that his partner will get it.  Yet, what does she do?  Almost invariably she will respond with her position, hoping that she will be able to communicate  her point of view.  My early trainers and teachers in Emotionally Focused Therapy would continually admonish us not to “go down the content tube.”  With every issue that confronts a couple (sharing housework, dealing with money, struggling over parenting issues, where to go for vacation, etc. etc.) there is his side and her side (or her side and her side or his side and his side).  When people bring these struggles into my office I am shown The Great Debate and invariably (I mean invariably), each person gives up, exhausted and deflated.  As well they would be!!!  

So here’s the way out of this frustrating circle.  Realize that the chances of convincing the other person that you are right and they are wrong will be very slim.  The second step, that is so crucial, is to understand and appreciate that there is something else that feels vital that underlays The Great Debate.  It may be about having a crucial emotional need recognized. It may be about being seen and valued by your partner.  Usually, these needs (which are what the Debate is about on the most fundamental level) are outside of our awareness, yet they spark our intensity.  Needless to say, this devolution into Debate, is a particular interpersonal hazard for those trained in law.  The mistake is to seek to persuade the other.  This will almost always spark the Debate and steer us away from understanding and ultimate agreement – in whatever form that may take.

It’s Not That What You Did Was Really, Really Bad…

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It’s not that what you did was really really bad…it’s that what you did really, really hurt me.

We human creatures are creatures after all.  Staying away from danger is what all creatures do by instinct and we have a lot of nerve endings exposed to our loved one.  We all have “raw spots” as Dr. Sue Johnson elegantly phrases it.  All of us.  Some, because of early ravages may have very sensitive places within and it really doesn’t take a lot of threatening or hurtful contact to make us collapse in self protection like a sea anemone.

If we fight about whether “you did something wrong” and “I demand an apology” we are going to spin ourselves up (and away from each other) very quickly.  I can try again and again to try to get you to see (and admit) that you did something really, really bad.  Yet, you either start to justify yourself or get angry back at me, or both.  I get so mad back at you because you refuse to acknowledge what you did.  And on it goes.

I believe that the way out of this self perpetuating and exhausting (and dispiriting and lonely) cycle is to shift to a true statement that the other person may be able to hear and respond to in a way that makes them feel safe to you again.  That statement would run something like this, “What you did really, really hurt me.”  You’ve got to let your partner see where your sensitive places are. Over and over, I have seen, and read about, and spoken to colleagues about intimate partners in stress and conflict who shift their thinking and speaking in this way who settle down.    They begin to allow the natural attractive force of their bond to overcome the centrifugal force of the conflict.  That shift needs to take time and usually it’s best to do this with the help of a couples therapist.  These are ubersensitive places for us.  We need to approach them cautiously and with respect.  The real stuff down there is (pick one) fragile, scary, raw, threatening…the opposite  of comfortable.  We’ve got to protect ourselves, and if the sensitivity seems big, then the self-protection will be big too.  It’s not easy to say “you hurt me” when the hurt is so deep.  It’s way safer to say “what you did is incredibly bad.”  That won’t get us closer, though and usually we will need a calm guide to help us find those words – find that emotion and talk about it.  That’s why it’s called Emotionally Focused Therapy and not something else.

Ambivalent Attachment – In Childhood and Marriage

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Back in the 1970s, Mary Ainsworth conducted what may be the most important psychological study ever.  It was the Strange Situation Stuambivalentdy and this link describes it clearly.  Basically, Ainsworth and her associates observed mothers and babies in the first year of their lives and then brought them into her lab where a room was set up for them – a chair for mom and toys on the floor for baby.  There were a few steps to the procedure, but basically, mom would leave the room and then return.  Ainsworth noted the reactions of the babies when mom left and when she returned.  Those reactions varied, but could essentially be classified into three categories, each of which described the “attachment” bond that existed between mother and child.   The great majority of babies were “securely attached” and they responded with great distress when mom left the room, but were able to be comforted by her upon return.  A smaller group were termed “avoidantly attached” and these babies didn’t display outwardly any distress at mom’s exit and seemed to be engaged more with their toys than her, so it seemed like they hardly noticed when she came back in the door.  Another group of babies were “ambivalently attached” and they, by far, showed the greatest distress, both upon their mother’s leaving and upon her return.  When mom came back to the room, she could not calm her child.  The baby would lean into her for comfort and then arch away from her, crying intensely.  The child would kick at her and be very hard to comfort.  Observations of these ambivalently attached babies also reflected that when mom was sitting in the room, they were often preoccupied with her continuing presence, making sure periodically that she was there.

Ainsworth and her associates found there to be a connection between the highly activated, anxious and distressed behavior of these babies and the quality of parental care and “attunement” they had received at home.  More specifically, what they had observed in the previous year of spending hour upon hour in each parent’s home was that the “ambivalently attached” babies experienced very inconsistent attutnement.  Sometimes they would be lovingly cared for when distressed and other times ignored or even rebuked.

Now comes a New York Times article which describes numerous current studies that demonstrate that the same inconsistent care and connection in marriage results in ongoing baseline, high levels of anxiety and distress.  It turns out that inconsistent, trustable, love correlates to high blood pressure, lowered immunity and other indicia of a chronic keyed-up, insecure state.  What we find so painful as babies is the same thing that undermines our well-being as adults, as we relate to our primary care-giver – be it a parent or an adult intimate partner.

Life……Happens

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When I meet with a couple for the first time there are a couple of things I want to understand about them from the outset – aside from what brinstormgs them to my office now.  The first element of any assessment is their interactive process.  How do these people relate?  Are they volatile (or exercising a lot of self control not to be volatile in my presence)?  How quickly does one or the other person become emotionally reactive and when that happens, what does their partner do in their own reaction?  Emotionally Focused Couples Therapists, in their early interactions with a couple in distress, are ever vigilant for indications of this particular pair’s cycle.  It’s at the heart of the healing work we do and it’s darn near guaranteed, that if a therapist can help a couple understand the process by which each becomes emotionally reactive to the other (and then is responded to with an equally emotional reaction) we have traveled leagues in the direction of creating safety and an emotionally calmer domestic environment.  But there’s yet another critical part of any assessment of a couple in distress.

How is life treating them?

By this question, I mean, what sorts of natural stresses or traumas are they experiencing?  When life transmits a blow that would knock anyone off their feet, it is natural that this will contribute to the stress that two people will experience – and reflect in a wicked interactive cycle of fear and distress.  Pregnancy and birth of a first baby is one of those experiences.  “We never argued like this before little Mitzi came alone,” is not an uncommon cry in my office.  A couple who decided to marry only after they discovered their pregnancy is another example of a powerful life stressor.  (Life stressors can be thought of as a finger that plucks a guitar string, setting it to vibrating energetically.)  I have worked with a number of couples that found one partner, or both, moving to a new locality, away from their network of care and support.  The dislocation of such an experience will cause people to bounce around in some psychic earthquake that can register beyond Richter scale readings.  Illness or other challenges besetting a child, job loss or any other blow to people’s financial security, falling victim to a crime, deployment to and return from active military service, illness or disability of a parent – these and other thunderstorms that inundate people with worry and woe cannot help but set off the cycle of anxiety and painful interactions described here as a cycle.  Almost always, when people come into my office, they have their subjects that they are struggling over.  Yet to take that “10,000 foot view” of the problem, it is easy to see how a major life challenge has left people exposed, vulnerable and so easily subject to the interactive cycle of distress that reaches through the doors and windows of their home and infects their lives and renders them fearful and miserable.  It is always helpful to give ourselves a break and understand the impact of life as it …. happens.

Therapy Thoughts – The Dramatic Epiphany

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My first therapy experiences occurred in the 1970’s, when Gestalt Therapy and dramatic breakthroughs were all the rage.  Connecting with one’s inner child and going toe to toe with the oppressive, internalized parental figure was the common and popular approach.  Part of my training was with a descendant of Bob and Mary Goulding, the developers of a pvolcano.2owerful mashup of Gestalt and Transactional Analysis which they called Redecision Therapy.  I also experienced Lifespring, which was a “kinder, gentler” cousin of the notorious Erhard Seminar Training, a very intense process that would blast through people’s defenses, with the support and (I believe) coercion of their many peers, sitting in the big conference room with them.  I had dear friends who went through Lifespring and came out with heightened energy and focus.  They would repeat to me a mantra of “reasons or results” which dismissed rationalizations for not pursuing your given life path.  If people possessed the ego-strength to deal with the rapid dismantling of their carefully constructed and long-held psychological defenses, they might  benefit from this dramatic epiphany counseling.  I have colleagues today who endorse dramatic approaches such as this, but I remain skeptical, myself.  It has been my observation (and experience) that dramatic “breakthroughs,” when facilitated (or engineered) by a therapist have a continued risk of falling back into previous modes of thought and behavior, unless reinforced thereafter.  It seems to me another example of the tendency to find a single “magic bullet” which will cure distress, without the investment of time and care which accompanies the incremental change that is more organic and less sudden.

While therapy that works will often find a person experiencing a moment (or moments) of epiphany, these, alone are not enough.  More importantly, if the groundwork isn’t laid, if we don’t carefully approach the molten material laying inside, the hoped for healing will be pushed beyond our current grasp.  I have worked with some gifted, resourceful and wise therapists over the years.  Those who supported me while I moved through my changes, at my speed and with the inner resources I then possessed, were among the greatest gifts of my life.  People can only do….well, what they can do.  Working with anyone in pain who is seeking relief will always entail a delicate and rich dance.  A therapist has many tasks and they include support and protection of the wounded heart that sits within us as well as the gentle prod which over the course of the work facilitates change.  I worked for two years when I first arrived in the Northwest with a blessedly wonderful woman, Peg Blackstone who, I grieve to say, died some years ago.  Peg taught me this lesson and I thank her in my mind and heart repeatedly.  Change is organic.  It is incremental and very personal.  Much of what we do that now causes us distress is almost always a useful strategy we devised long ago to protect ourselves.  So much energy went into this protective effort, which for so long was so vital, that when the threat receded, we were left with a strongly held suit of protective armor.  That armor separates us from the love and connection – the peace – we crave, but to simply step out of this suit will leave us naked and vulnerable.  We need to grow a new protective skin – which isn’t quite so thick.  Watch your skin next time you cut or scrape yourself.  Your body tells you – healing is incremental.

Therapy Thoughts – How Often to Come In?

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There was a time when I would be very accommodating to couples who wanted to come in every other week or every three weeks.  The reasons calendar.were certainly understandable.  Finances are always a consideration.  Many couples are very busy and have to work to squeeze in a couples therapy appointment when they can.  Two jobs and children will do that to you!  Then, a while ago, I realized that this was a big mistake and a disservice to my couples.  Here’s why –

Albert Einstein shared this brilliant insight: We cannot solve a problem with the same thinking that created the problem.  No better words could describe effective relationship therapy. In a prior post I discussed the rule that what couples are talking about really isn’t what they are talking about.  To repeat what I said there, people come into a therapist’s office locked into this repeated disagreement that is driving them nuts.  A very common example many of us have experienced involves division of household chores.  The woman, usually, complains (often bitterly) that he does not help around the house.  She feels like his maid and she is very angry about that.  The man will often respond that this is just not so.  Why, just two days ago, he did all the dishes after dinner and she gives him no credit for the mowing, gutter work and other chores he performs.  Her exasperated reply is that he doesn’t understand.  It’s the day-to-day chores that keep the house running that all fall on her.  He gets defensive and comes up with more evidence of his own contributions.    Many maddening couples’ conflicts look like debates.  One person states their side.  The other responds by stating their side.  The first repeats what they said to begin with, maybe trying to say it a different way, maybe ladling on more supportive evidence.  Whatever the words that spill forth, these conflicts usually reduce down to “I’m right,.”  “No, I’m right.” “No, I’m right.”   Like I said earlier, it drives these poor people nuts.  The chance of a satisfying resolution falls just behind that of Donald Trump converting to Islam and losing the wig.

One of the keys to effective Emotionally Focused Therapy is the dawning understanding by each partner that the process of their conflict is what needs healing.  They will never resolve the content of their disagreements without understanding and finding the safety to share the needs that underlie the cycle of conflict.  The content is a proxy for what’s really eating at each of them.  Understanding their particular cycle will almost always lower the anxiety and energy which fuels the intense and painful conflicts they endure.  Yet, this is a new way of thinking.  Without consistent reminders and the efforts of a therapist who can point out who the raging disputes over……whatever is upsetting them, a couple will fall back into the thinking that brought them into the therapist’s office to start with.  Thus, if couples only come in once every two or three or four weeks during the initial phase of this work, they will almost never get it.  They will spin round and round in their cycle.  They’ll maybe get it during a particular meeting, but then completely lose the thread if the gap is greater than a week.  So, really, in this kind of work, any schedule for meetings that extends beyond one week, is, I believe, a waste of time and money.  My recommendation – don’t engage in relationship counseling (particularly Emotionally Focused Therapy) unless you are willing to devote the first three or four months to weekly meetings.

Therapy Thoughts – Ending Sessions

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door.closeCouples therapy sessions last anywhere from one hour to 90 minutes.  Any less than an hour isn’t enough time for themes to develop in the room and people given enough space to explore them together to a satisfying resolution.   Plenty of times, an important subject isn’t raised, or sensitive button pushed, until midway through a meeting and ending on the 50 minute or hour mark feels like an abrupt and unsettling “hard stop.”  More frequently than I, or other couples therapists, would like to admit or experience, even the 90 minute duration won’t end in a nice feeling of something valuable having been tied up, with the clients released back into their world carrying a helpful insight into each other or with a meaningful connection made.  I think one difference between an experienced couples therapist and a newer professional is the ability to manage our own anxiety when a session ends with that unsettling static still in the air.  One person may be holding back (more) tears.  The other may be get up from their seat and hand you their payment in stony silence.  A worry passes through the therapist’s mind, “Will they come back?  Did I blow it somehow?”  Well, welcome to the world of the therapist as a living, breathing person.  We want to help – that’s why we’re in this business.  So, you can imagine the uneasiness when a couples session ends with simmering anger and complicated feelings still spinning within and between the partners.  It’s important for everyone to take a deep breath and realize that these harsh-feeling endings are not a disaster for clients or the work you are doing.  Almost never will a couple feel so distressed after a session that they will decide to abandon the couples therapy altogether.  In fact, oftentimes, couples return the next week and report that they found a way to work through that difficult patch and, while the therapist is all ready to continue with the theme that ended the last session, the people have come in with something entirely different to talk about.  While it is important for therapists not to become anxious about unfinished endings, it is equally important for couples who emerge from such sessions to understand that it’s okay and normal in the world of couples work to periodically end on an off-note.  It happens.  It will be okay.

That Intuitive Sense of Safety

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As one who has worked in the field oembracef intimate relationships for many years, one abiding fascination of mine is the question: What draws us to our partner?    Sadly, many who are in conflict and estranged don’t remember, or dismiss the idea that they were really attracted at all.  As Dan Gilbert says in his wonderful book Stumbling to Happiness, we see both the past and the future through our present experience.  So if we’re really alienated from our lover, we have an almost impossible time thinking of how we felt when we were first drawn to that person.  However, I have observed another reality in my work.

When we get beyond the physical attraction and compatibility, I find over and over that what drew individuals to one another is the force of an intuitive sense of safety.  Like magnetic attraction, it is unseen and not easily measured, while at the same time, it is intense in its invisible strength.   Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy is based upon Attachment.   This is a deep need in the center of our being for connection and it exists in all of its intensity when we are infants and persists until our dying day.  However, many of us (perhaps most of us) had these tender, vital and consuming needs thwarted when we were very young.  This left many with a deep, yet not consciously recognized, sense of shame for our fundamental being (after all this is what was rejected when these needs were unfulfilled).  Perhaps we may not resonate to the word or notion of “shame” but somewhere inside we carry some combination and gradation of feeling completely alone or inadequate or unlovable.  We may silently despair of ever being with another person and being truly accepted – to find that safe harbor where we don’t have to protect ourselves from buffeting winds of judgment or rejection “if they really knew what was inside.”  Most of us who carry these wounds inside, learn to cope and carry on.  We can be very attractive, smart, sociable, supportive, accomplished or supremely self-sufficient.  Any one or a combination of these attributes – or any number of others – help us get through life.  Yet, there is a niggling voice, if we are attuned to it, which yearns for a safe place – “where I can be myself.”

I think what often draws us into the intense bond of an adult intimate relationship is that the voice whispers to us (so that whether we actually hear it, the voice registers) that “Here, you have found someone who understands.”  Somehow, you intuitively sense that this person may have experienced loss, or fear, or shame in the recesses of their early life that somehow resonates with your own and that they are safe.  If this is so, then it certainly explains the intensity of the hurt, anger and sense of betrayal when, in the throes of the inevitable intimate conflict, this person flips from uniquely safe, to dreadfully unsafe.  To have taken the risk to open up, only to be judged and rejected is horribly destabilizing.

But there is good news!  With time and working with a good couples therapist, we can find that the judgment and rejection were actually the reaction of their partner to their own fears and pain of feeling rejected themselves.  It takes time, but that safety can be regained.   This will be the subject of future posts.

Attachment as a Hardwired Emotion (Part 3)

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neurons.3The seventh basic emotion circuit that was found by Jaak Panksepp (see prior posts) is what he, unfortunately, calls the “panic” circuit.  He calls it that because of the panicked reaction of young animals who are separated from their mothers.  I prefer to call it by its more appropriate and descriptive name, the Attachment Circuit.   Panksepp describes the distressed cries of animals – identical to the distressed cries of separated young, which are evoked by the stimulation of a particular neuronal circuit in the brain.  The distress is caused by separation.  The resolution of the distress is caused by reunification.  Panksepp’s work confirms what has been argued by attachment therapists like Dr. Sue Johnson – the co-developer of Emotionally Focused Therapy.  We have a deep and biologically determined need for connection.  When that connection is threatened, we become distressed and anxious.  When we become distressed and anxious, we are inclined to react automatically.  This is the painful dance that we see in the distressing cycle we almost always observe with couples who are in conflict.  Brent Atkinson, a marital therapist and author, has created an entire approach to couples therapy based on Panksepp’s  work.  Atkinson repeats that individuals are overtaken by the intensity of their emotional reactivity.  This is precisely the same kind of description that Sue Johnson uses to describe how a couple is overtaken by the force of their cycle.  Imagine, when both people’s brain circuits are firing so fast and strong that they are swept up into the maelstrom, seemingly without any control – at least not until they are helped to s….l….o…..w it down and realize when they, themselves, are being overtaken by these strong, automatic, emotional discharges in the brain.  The belief of emotionally focused therapists is that once we are able to slow it down and gain awareness of our process, we can create safety for ourselves and our partner.  That’s at least what goes on in my office, anyway.