What did we just see Sal and Kerrie do here in these last two conversations?
• They have started to go beyond just doing the steps in their negative dance and to see the pattern it is creating as it occurs and begins to take over their relationship.
• They are acknowledging their own steps in this dance.
• They have begun to see how these steps trigger each other into the primal program of attachment needs and fears. They are starting to grasp the incredible impact they have on each other.
• They are understanding, voicing, and sharing the hurt of rejection and fears of abandonment that drive the dance.
All this means that they have the ability to de-escalate conflicts. But more than that, every time they do this, they are creating a platform of safety on which they can stand to manage the deep emotions that are part of love.
Now that you see how de-escalation works, it’s time for you to make it work for your relationship.
PLAY AND PRACTICE
1. With your partner, pick a brief, unsettling (but not really difficult) incident from your relationship, one that happened in the past two or three weeks, and write down a simple description of what happened as seen by a fly on the wall. Hopefully you can both agree on this description. Now write out in a plain sequence the moves you made in that incident. How did your moves link up with and pull out the moves your partner made? Compare notes and come up with a joint version you can agree on. Keep it simple and descriptive.
2. Add in the feelings you both had and how each of you helped to create this emotional response in your partner. Share your responses and agree on a joint version. Now ask about the deeper, softer feelings that might have been happening there for your partner. Be curious. Being curious gives you valuable information. If your partner has a hard time accessing his or her softer feelings, see if you can guess using your sense of your partner’s raw spots as a guide. Confirm or revise with your partner what his or her deeper feelings were.
3. Using the information above, see if you can together describe or write out what you might have said to each other at the end of this incident, if you had been able to stand together and complete it in a way that left you both feeling safe. What would that have been like for you? How would you have felt about each other, your relationship?
4. Try the previous three practice questions with a difficult, unresolved incident. If you get stuck, just acknowledge that a certain part of the exercise is hard for you. If your partner finds the exercise hard, ask if there is any way you can help him or her right at this moment. Sometimes a little comfort is all people need to be able to stay with this task.
5. If you knew that you could take moments of conflict or disconnection and defuse or review them in this way, what impact would this have on your relationship in general? Share this with your partner.
With what you’ve learned in the first three conversations, you now have the ability to de-escalate conflicts. That is a great deal. But to really have a strong, loving, healthy relationship, you must be able not just to curtail negative patterns that generate attachment insecurities, to see and accept each other’s attachment protests, but also to create powerful positive conversations that foster being accessible, responsive, and engaged with each other. You’ll do just that in the following conversations.
Conversation 4: Hold Me Tight — Engaging and Connecting
“When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.”
— Billy, age four, defining love, as reported on the Internet
There is one image of love that Hollywood has right. That is the moment when two people gaze deeply into each other’s eyes, move slowly into each other’s arms, and begin dancing together in perfect synchrony. We know instantly that these two people matter to each other, that they are connected.
These moments on-screen almost invariably signal that a couple is in the intoxicating early days of a romance. Rarely are they used to illustrate a more mature stage of love. And that’s where Hollywood gets it wrong. For such moments of intense responsiveness and engagement are vital throughout a relationship. Indeed, they are the hallmarks of happy, secure couples.
Almost all of us are naturally and spontaneously tuned in to our partners when we are falling in love. We are hyperaware of each other and exquisitely sensitive to our partner’s every action and word, every expression of feelings. But with time, many of us become less attentive, more complacent, and even jaded, with our partners. Our emotional antennas get jammed, or maybe our partner’s signals get weaker.
To build and sustain a secure bond, we need to be able to tune in to our loved one as strongly as we did before. How do we do this? By deliberately creating moments of engagement and connection. In this conversation, you’ll take the first step toward doing that, and subsequent conversations will show you how to actively further a sense of closeness so you’ll be able to create your own “Hollywood moment” at will.
The Hold Me Tight conversation builds on the sense of safety you and your partner have started to produce as a result of Conversations 1, 2, and 3, which taught you how to halt or contain negative patterns of interacting with your partner as well as to mark and name at least one of the deeper feelings that come up in negative cycles and moments of disconnection. Effectively seeking connection and responding supportively is hard without a basic platform of safety. In this conversation, you’ll learn how to generate positive patterns of reaching for and responding to your loved one. In effect, you’ll be learning how to speak the language of attachment.
Think of it this way: If Conversations 1, 2, and 3 are a little like going for a walk in the park together, then Conversation 4 is like dancing the tango. It’s a new level of emotional engagement. All of the previous conversations are preparation for this one, and all the upcoming dialogues hinge upon a couple’s ability to create this one. Conversation Hold Me Tight is the ultimate bridge spanning the space between two solitudes.
Stepping aside from our usual ways of protecting ourselves and acknowledging our deepest needs can be hard, even painful. The reason for taking the risk is simple. If we don’t learn to let our partner really see our attachment needs in an open, authentic way, the chances of getting these needs met are minuscule. We have to send the signal loud and clear for our partner to get the message.
If we have generally found others to be safe havens and have a secure bond with our lover, then it is easier for us to keep our emotional balance when we feel vulnerable, connect with our deepest feelings, and voice the attachment longing that is always part of us. If we are feeling unsure of our relationship, it is harder to trust our longings and risk being vulnerable. In that situation, some of us try to stay in control of our emotions at all costs, to hide them, and instead demand what we need. Others deny that the emotions and needs even exist. But they are there. As the perceptive but murderous villain of the movie In the Cut murmurs to Meg Ryan, the heroine who avoids closeness with others, “You want it so much, it hurts.”
Conversation 4 has two parts. The first — What Am I Most Afraid Of? — requires further exploring and elaborating on the deeper feelings you tapped into in the previous conversations. In those dialogues, you were taking the elevator down into your emotions. To discover your attachment priorities, you must now go all the way to the ground floor.
The second part — What Do I Need Most from You? — is crucial, the tipping point encounter in EFT. It involves being able to openly and coherently speak your needs in a way that invites your partner into a new dialogue marked by accessibility, responsiveness, and engagement, an A.R.E. conversation.
A COUPLE IN TROUBLE
Charlie and Kyoko are a young immigrant couple who come from an Asian culture where the husband is very much the head of the household and emotional expression is frowned upon. Kyoko had been placed on antidepressant medication by her doctor when she became “hysterical” after being refused entry to a universi
ty graduate program. Charlie tried to help her by offering advice. But it consisted largely of telling her how unsuited she was to any of her career choices. Needless to say, that didn’t help. This is where they are when they come to see me.
Charlie and Kyoko easily identify their Demon Dialogue: he stays emotionally removed and delivers logical lectures full of “shoulds,” while she dissolves into angry tirades and teary hopelessness. After a few sessions, they can touch on their raw spots, although it is still hard for them to really explore their sensitivities. Kyoko, small, exotic, and speaking very fast in her lilting English, confides that her childhood was full of rigid rules and that she was shunned by her family until she complied with these rules.
I frame it that Kyoko is now allergic to being told how she “should” be and feels punished when Charlie is distant. She tries to explain to Charlie. “It is like I am already on the floor, feeling small, and you come in to take charge. You tell me, ‘Yes, you should feel small, now do this and do that.’ So I fight you. Your advice just puts me down. I get hurt and angry. Then you give me more rules about not being angry. And I am alone. With no comfort.” She allows that her husband is “incredible” in many ways. He is responsible and conscientious, and she respects him very much. But their fights and his physical and emotional distancing are “driving me crazy. I think you call it nuts. I only get more depressed.”
Charlie, a physics whiz, has had a very hard time taking this in at first. His idea of love has been to protect his wife from her own “upset” and to “guide her” in this new North American world. As to his own emotions, he admits at one point that his heart is “shattered” by Kyoko’s angry “explosions.” But mostly he minimizes his hurt and focuses on his wife’s “problems.”
Charlie slowly moves from criticizing Kyoko’s reactions (“Kyoko has a psychological problem; she is like the weather”) into discussing his own reactions (“I do protect myself. I can’t deal with her unreasonable outbursts. We never spoke like that at home. That kind of talking is foreign to me”) and finally, into exploring his own emotions and motives (“I get overwhelmed here. So I give her advice, formulas to stop her being so angry”).
Kyoko becomes clearer on how she “pushes” to get her point across and stop Charlie moving away from her. She acknowledges her hurt at Charlie’s censure, and goes on to reveal that she feels “discarded” since Charlie has pulled away from making love or any physical contact. The words overwhelmed and discarded seem to echo around my office. By the end of the hour, Charlie concludes, “I guess my advice and my logic wind up hurting Kyoko, and make her feel small. Trying to push her feelings aside just makes everything worse.” Kyoko, in turn, says she now sees how Charlie’s detachment and logic are a cover for his discomfort with her “upset.”
They move on to a Revisiting a Rocky Moment conversation. The moment occurred when Charlie had been away visiting a friend and Kyoko, feeling lonely, had called him. Although he had heard the emotion in her voice, Charlie cut her off, saying he was busy and had to hang up. But when they replay that moment, they are able to hash out what happened. Kyoko discloses how she had been thinking about their relationship problems and had this sudden urge to call to get some reassurance. Charlie explains how, once he heard the emotional intensity in her voice, he had become “anxious” and had simply run away from the explosion that he feared was coming. Kyoko then concedes that she does indeed get “crazy upset” when Charlie distances and that she can see how this might confuse and overwhelm him. They both feel good that they can now share how they sometimes “lose their way” in their marriage and get stuck in complaining about each other.
It is time now for Charlie and Kyoko to move into Conversation 4 and risk acknowledging their deeper needs.
WHAT AM I MOST AFRAID OF?
This part of the conversation is aimed at gaining greater emotional clarity. I ask Charlie how Kyoko can help him get the safe, loving feeling they had once experienced back into their relationship. “Well, I wouldn’t get anxious and lecture her, if she would just quit exploding,” he replies. I then invite him to talk about himself and his feelings. He tells me that he is not sure where to begin. This world of feelings is “foreign” to him. But he does now see, and he gives me a big smile here, that maybe there is a “logic” to being able to listen to feelings and share them. He turns to Kyoko and tells her that he does see her as more predictable, as “safer,” now that he understands that she feels pushed away and punished by his advice giving. But he is not sure how to really get into his own deeper feelings here.
I ask him how he identified his feelings in the previous conversations. Where did he start? He is a very clever man, and he tells me what we therapists often take years to learn. He says, “Oh, I look first at what blocks me, what makes it hard to focus on feelings. I look at that moment when I stay away from my feelings and go off into my head sorting for formulas.” I agree, and Kyoko helpfully joins in, telling him, “It must be like me learning English. If feelings are a foreign language for you, it’s hard to feel comfortable. We try to stay away from what is strange. Strange is scary.” Charlie laughs and replies to his wife, “Yes. I go away from feelings because they are strange. I don’t feel in control. It is easier to make up an improvement program for you.”
He turns to me and makes a second point. “In our best conversations, it helped to take what you call ‘handles’ and mull them over.” Handles are descriptive images, words, and phrases that open the door into your innermost feelings and vulnerabilities, your emotional reality. Kyoko and I remind Charlie of some of the handles he has used to describe his reactions to Kyoko: a shattered heart, overwhelmed, anxious, freaking, and fleeing. Charlie nods his head but looks doubtful. “It’s hard for me to slow down and stay with those handles,” he whispers. “Even just to let myself explore. To listen for the cues that spark my feelings and thoughts. I don’t know where this will go. I trust thinking more. But maybe it’s not enough here.” I nod and ask him what handle holds his attention right now. He says quietly, “Oh, that is obvious. I go off in my head when I cannot stand the disquietude, the foreboding.”
Kyoko and I both lean back a little. “What does ‘disquietude,’ this big abstract term, have to do with anything?” I wonder aloud. Then Kyoko chimes in. She has learned from previous conversations to unpack big abstract words like this so that they don’t hijack the conversation. She leans forward and asks, “Charlie, is it like you stay away from your emotions and from mine because of big anxieties?” Charlie stares at the floor and nods slowly.
He sighs. “I just want to keep everything under control, so I guess there are big anxieties. I do get overwhelmed when Kyoko gets so upset with me, and then I start to feel lost. I don’t know what to do.” At this point, I want to go to the root of a partner’s fears, so I ask, “And what is the biggest catastrophe that could happen here, Charlie? What are you most afraid of?” But I don’t need to ask. Charlie goes there by himself. “The word shattered keeps coming up in my head,” he says. “If I stay and listen to Kyoko’s upset, I will be shattered. I will lose control. The explosion will kill us.” Charlie has said a lot here. We need to mine this moment a little. So I try to take it, piece by piece, and help Charlie expand on it. It’s always best to start with identifying the emotion.
I ask, “So, Charlie, the basic emotion I hear in this is fear. Is that right?” He nods solemnly. “I feel it right here,” he says, and pats his chest. So I continue, “But what does this fear tell you? What are the terrible ‘ifs’ here? Maybe, if you don’t stay totally cool, she will go even more out of control? Maybe, you will hear that she wants something that you don’t know how to give her? If you stay open and hear that your wife hurts, then you haven’t been the perfect husband you should be? Then you might lose her completely?” Charlie nods vigorously. “Yes, all of it. All of it. I have tried so hard. But what I know how to do doesn’t work. The more I try to get her to be reasonable, the worse it gets. So I feel helpless. Really
helpless. I am good at everything I do. I follow the rules. But now . . .” He spreads his hands in a gesture of defeat.
Don’t we all want the one or two infallible rules for how to love and be loved? But love is improvisation. And Charlie cuts off his best guide, his and his lady’s emotions.
I ask him, “Listening now to this sense of fear and helplessness, what is the main threat, the most frightening message? Can you tell Kyoko?” He sits bolt upright and shouts out, “I don’t know how to do this. I can’t figure it out.” He turns more toward Kyoko and continues, “I don’t know how to deal with it when you’re not happy with me. And you can explode any time. I never feel sure of myself with you. And I need that. I feel very sad. We came across the world together. If I don’t have you . . .” He weeps. Kyoko weeps with him.
What has happened here? Charlie has moved into and laid out the deeper emotions that speak to his need for a safe emotional connection with his wife. He is shaping a coherent attachment message out of his emotional turmoil. As I look at him, he is actually smiling at me. He does not seem helpless or overwhelmed. I ask him, “How are you doing, Charlie, having said all this?” “So strange,” he replies. “It feels good now, to be able to say these things. I did not shatter. Kyoko is still here, and I feel stronger somehow.” When we examine and make sense, or as I put it, “order and distill” our experience, no matter how painful the process, there is a sense of relief and empowerment.
This is a new, more accessible Charlie. How Kyoko responds at this point is critical. Too often in unhappy relationships, when one person takes a risk and opens up, the other partner doesn’t see or is afraid to trust the revelation. I have heard partners dismiss their lover’s new steps toward them with everything from “That’s ridiculous” to some version of “So let’s see you prove it.” Then they spin back into their Demon Dialogue.
Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love Page 13
