Hold me Tight Sue Johnson

Hold me Tight Sue Johnson
Contents
Introduction 2
Love=a revolutionary new view 2
A new theory of attachment 2
Where did our love go? Losing connection 3
Primal Panic 3
Demon dialogues 4
Key moments of attachment and detachment 4
Emotional responsiveness: the key to a lifetime of love 5
Seven transforming conversations 6
Protest Polka 7
Demon Dialogue 3 Freeze and Flee 8
Conversation 2 Finding the raw spots 8
Identifying raw spots 9
Vulnerability dance 9
Conversation 3 Revisiting a rocky moment 10
De-escalating disconnection 10
Recognise your impact on your partner 11
Play and practice 11
Conversation 4 Hold me tight: Engaging and connecting 11
What am I most afraid of 11
Play and practice 11
What do I need most from you? 11
Conversation 5 Forgiving injury 12
Six steps to forgiveness 12
Play and practice 13
Conversation 6 Love and bonding 13
Sealed off sex 14
Solace sex 14
Synchrony sex 14
Play and practice by yourself 14
Play and practice with your partner 15
Conversation 7 keeping love alive 15
Danger points 15
Celebrate positive moments 15
Marking moments of separation and reunion 15
Creating a resilient relationship story 15
Create a future love story 16
Holding on to positive change, creating new models 16
Play and Practice 16

Introduction

Couples interactions as emotional not intellectual, you can’t bargain for connection or compassion

An emotional relationship is a safe emotional connection, it is the secure base.  The loved one gives reliable emotional connection and comfort, it is a replaying of self as child with primary care giver.

EFT: you are emotionally dependent on your partner for soothing, nurturing and protection.  Adult attachment is just more reciprocal than childhood attachment.

EFT creates and strengthens the emotional bond, it does this by enhancing attuning and responsivity.

Love=a revolutionary new view

We live in the shelter of the other=Celtic saying

What is love?

A mutually beneficial alliance: a cold-blooded give and get?

A mechanism to ensure gene production?

Social capital has currently reduced, i.e. how connected we are in a beneficial way to our society, how much society cares.  Lower levels of close friendship.  We now ask for emotional connection and sense of belonging.  from our partner that we used to from a whole village.  Love has also become culturally the new reason for life and has reached dizzying heights of what you should expect and its importance.

Love provides as haven to rear children and a bulwark against the vicissitudes of existence.  We would have no children without the haven of love, as we need many years until they become independent, frogs have none.

A new theory of attachment

Without love you can be physically healthy but indifferent, callous and unable to relate to others.

Bowlby, evolution=>keep precious others close aids survival.

A child’s distress at separation from parents, its needs for connection and comfort

Four behaviours basic to attachment

1.       Monitor and maintain closeness to beloved

2.       Reach out for care giver when distressed

3.       Miss the care giver when apart

4.       We can count on that person when we go out into the world to explore

Strange situation=kids who are angry on mother return have unpredictable mums, kids who are distant on return have distant mums,

Bowlby argued that adults have the same need for attachment as children

Previous views on love: as altruistic, as disguised sexual infatuation.

Attachment theory of love as being safe with the other so you can go out and explore is against the values in society of independence and self-reliance.

Bowlby to turn to others for emotional support is a sign of strength?

Adults replay their childhood attachment behaviours with their partner, when away they miss, and can be less secure, and can be angry, avoidant or calm quickly on their return.

“research” shows: secure adult attachment: less reactive to conflict with partner, more supportive, and more able to ask for support. Secure attachment means we like ourselves more and understand others better.  More securely attached, more curious. Openness to new experience and flexibility of belief relates to secure attachment, Curiosity comes out of safety, rigidity out of being vigilant to threat.

So, curiosity comes when we feel safe, flexibility when we don’t feel under threat, open to new experience and beliefs again when we feel safe and connected, so compassion and attachment.

Where did our love go? Losing connection

The bottom of the iceberg is that a couple doesn’t feel safe, when they don’t feel safe certain things happen.  Their fights are protests, to hurt.

Their questions are do you value me, do you accept me, will you support me when I need you, do you need me?

Primal Panic

When our attachment bond isn’t there we feel alone and helpless.  If we are secure we can manage conflict, if we are not we are swamped by primal panic.

In the face of primal panic, we either become demanding or clingy to get reassurance and comfort from our partner or we withdraw to soothe and protect ourselves.  These strategies either say notice me, I need you. Or I won’t let you hurt me, I will comfort myself.

When a partner isn’t safe they become defensive.

In a relationship you are both care giver and care needed, sometimes you can get caught up in your own needs and forget your partners.

If we don’t feel secure with our partner, we can put out demands rather than requests which then result in us not getting what we need.

Demon dialogues

1.       Find the bad guy

a.       One: critical aggressive, Two defiant and defensive. Blame and withdraw, increasing as each side gets higher. Results in either blaming one or other partner or the relationship for why it is happening.

2.       Protest polka

3.       Freeze and flee

Dealing with disagreements via communication is like changing the dance steps when you need to change the music. The problem is a lack of emotional closeness and safety, they are not attached, they are not connected.

Key moments of attachment and detachment

The attachment alarm goes off when we feel a threat from the world, or a negative shift in connection from our loved one.

The attachment alarm goes if you think you are not valued, respected, or needed by the other and they aren’t three for you if you need them.

The other needs you

The other values you

The other will be there for you when you need them.

When it goes off you can attack as you feel hurt, or retreat, night of which help. But if you express the hurt you felt, you also express the need you have for the other, of course this needs to be expressed in a way that encourages the reconnection.  You also need to be sensitive to the other who is offering to reconnect connection bonds.  The more you try to control the more you fear the stability of your love.

Both sexes have the same attachment needs and fears but express them differently. When a relationship is in free fall then men complain of being rejected, inadequate and a failure, and women talk about feeling abandoned and unconnected.  When women are distressed they are better at tending and befriending and do reach out for oxytocin.

When marriages fail it is not increasing conflict that is the cause but rather lower emotional responsiveness and decreasing affection.

Emotional responsiveness: the key to a lifetime of love

Nothing brings people together like a common enemy, seeing the interaction as their problem not the last stroke helps.

Withdrawal and anger go together as connection is broken so withdraw to protect, then approach to get it back.

Distress always starts when one reaches for the other to make safe emotional contact but doesn’t get it. Ac

Couples fight for their lives when their emotional bond is threatened, as they will be isolated without support.

Basic aspects of emotional bond

1.       Do I matter to you (value, respect)?

2.       Are you there for me (will you support me)

3.       Will you come when I call (will you be responsive)

When a safe connection is lost, then couples go into a fight or flight mode.

Blaming and aggression at least gets a response, good way to manage withdrawal: but blame further distances and worsens the problem.

Withdrawal, close down and pretend not to care

Protesting is another response against the disconnection, again this drives the other further away.

Immobility is the response when feeling helpless.

Demon dialogue: blaming and a fear of rejection

The seven conversations to promote emotional bonds

1.       Accessibility: can I reach you

2.       Responsiveness: can I rely on you to respond to me emotionally

3.       Engagement: Do I know you value me and will stay close

First 3 conversations deescalate tension 4^th transforms it, final 3 help keep out of the snares of disconnection.

1.       Demon Dialogues

a.       Notice how your response to your partner affects them and how their response affects you

b.       Ask what lies beneath this disagreement, what are you really saying

2.       Finding the raw spots

a.       What are the softer spots beneath the argument connected with attachment needs and fears

b.       Look under anger for upset

c.       Learn how to speak about them without pushing the other away

3.       Revisiting a rocky moment

a.       Leaning what happened to spot it again

4.       Hold me tight

a.       Transforms so that the partner, is more emotionally responsive, available and engaged with the other

5.       Forgiving injuries

6.       Bonding through sex and touch

7.       Keeping your love alive

Securely attached couples recognises each other’s attachment processes.

Seven transforming conversations

Deescalating conversations

1.       Demon dialogues

a.       Find the bad guy

                                                               i.      Mutual game of blame

b.       Protest polka

                                                               i.      Demand\withdraw, criticize\defend

c.       Freeze and flee

                                                               i.      Both step back

Two ways to manage when we want to hold onto our connection but are not feeling safe

1.       Numb our emotions and avoid engagement and to deny our attachment needs

2.       We can fight for recognition and response.

In attack and counter attack, we put our feelings aside until we can’t connect with them.

Attack is self generating, the more you attack, the more dangerous you seem the more I attack\defend. However, the way to look at this is the accuser accused pattern is the bad guy, neither one of you.

“ContentTube” = partners go into detailed example to try to prove their point, and support their blame

Attack goes with attack\defend\withdraw

Protest goes with withdraw or ignore

Showing the other is at fault, prove the other wrong just pushes you apart

As you prove the other the bad guy, how does each of you see the other in the process? The bully?  The idiot? How do you describe the relationship?

Protest Polka

Demand-Withdraw or Criticize-Defend.

Freeze or flee.

Attachment relationships are the only ties on earth where are response is better than none.  Protest polka is about getting a response that reassures.

Protest polka one person is demanding, actively protesting the disconnection and explicitly criticising, the other withdrawing (implicitly protesting). So, one tries to change the behaviour of the other the other withdraws. In some ways the demand is for connection, the result is withdrawal. The demand might start to help the relationship then it might move into just a response which is better than none.

The circle, there is demand, there is shut down, perceived as shut out, there is more demanding. Shut down as a protection against doing wrong, shut out, then more demands 

When less distressed then

Disconnection

Soft and clear communication of this by a partner

Other partner more receptive

More distress

Disconnection

Distress and disappointment by a partner

Partner hears doom and indication of a failing relationship disconnects further

Stonewalling: lack of response: gets met with aggression to connect. Attack gets recognition, stonewalling denies it.

Relationship dance: Attack=defence and justification. Criticism=counter criticism. Blame=denial, excuse and re-blaming. Avoidance=>pursuing for connection. Criticism=>freezing, numbing and counter criticism

Protest polka as fighting for the relationship.

Withdrawal=partner shut out, excluded and abandoned.

Demon Dialogue 3 Freeze and Flee

If a relationship is a dance, then both are sitting out. Tension in the air, partners are frozen and numbed out to protect themselves from pain. Each is in self protection mode pretending they don’t feel or need

What can happen, aggressive partner can pursue, give up, go silent, will grieve the relationship and then leave.

Freeze and flee concerns the loss of relationship and a helplessness in terms of how to restore it.

Bowlby: we use the eyes of those we love to reflect our understanding of ourselves.

When we become disconnected we act like we did when we were children.

Play and practice

Fill in

When you x then I don’t feel safely connected to you

I tend to y, to manage difficult feelings in the relationship, I do this in a hope of z

As this pattern keeps going I feel x

What I say to myself about this relationship is y

The more I y the more you

Maybe we can warn each other

Conversation 2 Finding the raw spots

Vulnerability: emotionally naked, unprotected. Most of us have sore spots, that are deeply painful when touched.  When this is activated we can move into demon dialogues.

Raw spot:  a place of hyper sensitivity where attachment needs haven’t been met and have been repeatedly ignored, rejected or dismissed, leading to someone feeling emotionally deprived or deserted.

So, a raw spot

Gets activated

Powerful emotions via memories, or via connection to current concerns

Relational difficulty and both parties confused.

Blame is put on the raw spot partner and back to demon dialogues

Possibly rubs against the sore spot of the other, and back to demon dialogues.

Withdrawal and rage are the hallmarks of demon dialogues and hide our vulnerability of emotional disconnection of sadness, fear, and shame.

Raw spots

See them in action as

1.       Rapid change in emotion

2.       Disproportionate emotional reaction

3.       There is a strong somatic reaction

a.       When we are afraid blood flows into the legs

b.       When we are angry blood flows into the hands

4.       We get ready, ready to act

a.       Fear: flight or freeze

b.       Anger: fight

c.       Shame: hide

d.       Sadness: grieve and let go

Identifying raw spots

When you see a raw spot

What is the sense of relational disconnection

What is the trigger

What happens in your body

How do you interpret this?

How do you then act?

We live in a society where we are supposed to be strong and invulnerable, so we are less inclined to face our needs our sorrows, our softer feelings.  So, we can ignore or deny them.

Vulnerability seems to put the power into the hands of the person we show it to. Likewise, the vulnerability in our partner can be threatening, as we don’t know what to do, it can activate our own vulnerability, yet in a child we respond.

The emotions you deny in yourself are possibly hard to access in others as it might trigger your own, you need to defend yourself from yours and from the others.

To have a really secure bond you need to show it all your vulnerabilities and your strengths, if you ignore the former they can’t be tended to and they will continue.

Our attachment alarm system gets turned on by a deprivation of care, soothing, and comfort.

The second trigger to the attachment system, is a sense of emotional abandonment. So, either abandonment or deprivation can provoke a sense of helplessness.

A person’s problem in relationship can look for a relational solution, so withdrawal and a sense of abandonment, anger, which then provides a connection

Vulnerability dance

When I think of sharing my softest feelings with you here, it is hard to do. My worst fantasy is that what will happen is ________.

I moved in the dance by ________, and I felt ________.

When I heard/saw ________, I just felt ________.

When we get stuck in our cycle and I _________ (use an action word, e.g., push), I feel _________ (surface emotion). The emotional trigger for my sense of disconnection is when I see/sense/hear _________ (the attachment cue). On a deeper level, I am feeling _________.

Conversation 3 Revisiting a rocky moment

So secure couples can stand back see the problematic interaction, see their part in it, their partners and declare a cease fire, with the expectation that their partner will follow suit.

With a distressed couple this is much harder as the partner is seen as they enemy.

Success for a distressed couple

1.       Tread on each other toes and not go into demon dialogues

2.       Rub each other’s raw spots and not go into demon dialogues

3.       Be able to deal with the fact that their biggest fear and comfort is their partner.

De-escalating disconnection

1.       Name and stop the collective game

a.       Attack and defend, looks to blame, find the villain, uses I and your pronouns. Victory for one means defeat for the other, in time no one wins. Notice this and the spiral of disconnection that is happening

2.       Name your own moves

a.       I was complaining, what were you doing

3.       Name your own feelings

a.       Do it in parts, part of me is angry

4.       Owning how you contribute to your partners feelings

a.       Notice how our ways of dealing with our partner can knock them off balance and activate their attachment fears

5.       Asking about your partners deeper emotions

a.       In the row what raw spot is affected, what attachment vulnerability is touched. What are the softer feelings that are activated, what are the fears that are activated.

6.       Share your own deeper, softer feelings

7.       Standing together

a.       Generate a common cause and a common ground, make the dance difficulties, the relationship difficulties the common cause

Two parts of de-escalation:

1.       How a partner responds in conflict and attachment threat, has a big impact on the other partner

2.       A partner’s negative reaction can be their best way of dealing with attachment fears

One useful question to a couple can be for one to stand back and say what’s happening here

Fear narrows our perception, so we only see the scary.

Reacting harshly can give a sense of control when you feel helpless.

Complaints can get the other to take notice of you when you feel abandoned.

Recognise your impact on your partner

Pattern of you will listen to me, you can’t make me. So, loss of connection, criticise\complain, get some connection even if bad, get aggressive as the attention bond is threatened, and aggressively demand it back.

So, attachment threat, anger to retrieve it, withdrawal to manage it, stokes attachment threat more. 

Attachment threat=>aggressive protest=<withdrawal =++attachment threat.

Play and practice

1.       Each write down a brief description about the same difficult incident that happened 2-3 weeks ago

a.       What were the moves that you made and what were the moves your partner made

2.       Put in the feelings and how your feelings helped shape your partners

a.       What are the soft feelings, the raw spots that have been activated

3.       Given the information above how you would have stood together at the end of this incident

4.       Repeat on an unresolved task

Conversation 4 Hold me tight: Engaging and connecting

Conversations 1-3 stop the problems, conversations 4> improve the connection

Accessibility, responsiveness and engagement=ARE conversation

This conversation declares our core attachment fears

What am I most afraid of

Handles open doors, words and phrases can be handles to open different parts of ourselves.

Play and practice

Take a situation, work out what the worst about your fears is, say them to your partner, have your partner respond.

What do I need most from you?

This declares our core attachment needs.

Conversation 5 Forgiving injury

Sometimes small events can have grievous effects and they are held by partners. They are traumatic and turn our world upside down.

Hypervigilance, numbing, avoidance are all indicators of traumatic stress.

When there is urgent need for our partners support it is pass or fail, and if fail then this can wipe out many previous supportive incidents and also mean that there is reluctance to ask for support.

There is also betrayal if you ever loved me how could you do x..Not be there if I needed you, have an affair, treat me so unkindly, so there is a sense of abandonment.

Partners can create traumatic stress for their mate, as they don’t know how to manage themselves or their way of managing doesn’t attend to their mate.

Partners try to forget or bury traumas but that doesn’t work as it can for raw spots or everyday hurts.

To manage

1.       P1 Show hurt

2.       P2 Validate hurt

3.       P2 Empathy

4.       P2 remorse and guilt

5.       P1 Forgiveness

6.       P1 Reconciliation

7.       P1 Willingness to trust

Six steps to forgiveness

1.       Hurt partner speaks about their pain

a.       Aim to do this in how it was for you, rather than blaming. Use when then.  Allow the wound to be seen and acknowledged by the partner

2.       Injuring partner acknowledges the wound. Be empathic, understand how it is a wound for them.

a.       Injuring partner can retreat into shame and self-blame

3.       Partner says how they don’t want to do this again and takes active steps

4.       Injuring partner takes ownership

a.       I did this

b.       Validate their pain as legitimate

c.       Acknowledge how I created to this

d.       Express shame

5.       Injured party can express what they need right now to bring the trauma to a close

6.       A new narrative can be formed what happened, what its effects are, how the rupture was dealt with

a.       How to prevent future injuries

b.       How to live with any wound\vulnerability

You were sending out distress flares, I thought you were burning the house down.

Affairs that go a long time undermine our sense that we can be familiar and know our partner, therefore we can’t define our own reality.

Play and practice

1.       Think of a time when you were hurt by someone but not your partner

a.       What was the worst moment of it

b.       What conclusions did you draw about this person?

c.       What were you longing for

d.       What protective moves did you make

2.       Ask yourself

a.       Support

                                                               i.      Did I feel deprived of support?

                                                             ii.      Did my pain get dismissed?

b.       Was I devalued

c.       Was I taken advantage of

d.       Does my partner represent a danger to me?

3.       Reflect on how hard it is to apologise for your short comings

a.       Ways to avoid apologising

                                                               i.      4 second apology and what’s for dinner

                                                             ii.      Minimizing apology, well I did it but its explainable because

                                                           iii.      Forced apology, I guess I’m supposed to say sorry

                                                           iv.      Instrumental apology, I guess I need to say sorry or we will never.

4.       When have you hurt a loved one?

a.       Simple statements work

                                                               i.      I pulled away I let you down

5.       Now turn to a specific injury in your current relationship

a.       Vague hurts are difficult to work with

b.       Express what was needed

6.       Injuring partner explains how they came to hurt their partner

a.       Help make your actions more predictable

7.       Injuring partner

a.       Empathise with your partner for the injury they suffered

b.       Own what you did and apologise

8.       Injured party

a.       Can you accept the apology, so that you really understand what they did why, and to understand what they felt about it, contrition, embarrassment, guilt?

Conversation 6 Love and bonding

We waste time trying to find the perfect lover instead of trying to create the perfect love: Tom Robbins

We’ve been taught to see sex as an end in itself.

Emotional connection creates great sex and great sex creates emotional connection.

When you feel safe and secure you can adventure with sex.

Satisfied partner see sex as one source of intimacy.

Dissatisfied partners see sex as the main problem.  Sexual distress seems to be an indicator of other problems.

Sealed off sex

Reduces sexual tension, feel good about sexual prowess but isn’t intimate.  The focus is about sensation and performance. Practiced mostly by men.

Solace sex

We have this when we need reassurance we are valued and desired, the goal is to relieve attachment fears.

Touch hunger in men: sex and sport are where they are allowed to get it.

What demands do you place on sex? To show you are valued, to prove you have prowess, to allay your attachment needs? Too stronger burden on sex makes it harder.

The precious, only for you, only with you.

Synchrony sex

Where emotional and sexual connection come together. Uses attunement like a mother and baby do.

In a secure relationship the sexual excitement comes not from infatuated passion of first encounters but rather from the risk involved in staying open to moment to moment physical and emotional connection.

Most sexual problems in the northern hemisphere are low sexual desire in women and premature ejaculation in men or lax erections.  Women typically feel alone and disconnected, they either push for solace sex or shut down.  Passion is not a constant but waxes and wanes, with seasons, events, physical health

Accessibility, responsiveness, and engagement, an A.R.E. conversation.

Play and practice by yourself

1.       What does your sex life make you feel like?

2.       In bed with your partner do you feel safe and connected.

a.       What helps

b.       What hinders

3.       What is your dominant sexual style

a.       Sealed off

b.       Solace

c.       Synchrony

4.       What are your four most important expectations for sex?

5.       What would you put in your brief guide to being your lover

Play and practice with your partner

1.       How often do you need stellar sex?

2.       What do you do when sex isn’t working physically, or emotionally

3.       Write out if I was perfect in bed I could, and I would, and you would feel more

4.       Share 4 instances with your partner

5.       Tell your partner times when your sex with your partner was perfect

Conversation 7 keeping love alive

If you’re bored in marriage you’re not paying attention.

Heraclitus All things flow, nothing abides

Fear or marriage as habit and boredom, to an actively engaging with love, which either you can or not do.

Relapse prevention

1.       Danger points to demon dialogues

2.       Celebrate positive moments

3.       Plan rituals around separation and reunion

4.       Help each other identify attachment issues and work out how to defuse

5.       Create a resilient relationship story

6.       Create a future love story

Love as a continual story of making and losing connection.

Danger points

Work out where your relational triggers are into disconnection

Celebrate positive moments

Tell your partner when what they do or say creates a sense of belonging

What are the moments when you feel wanted, cared for, special

Marking moments of separation and reunion

Rituals provide the framework to community, they order the passing of time in terms of the community. Time is a community activity.

Creating a resilient relationship story

Emotional volatility can destroy a sense of history and the couples ability to write a consistent story line. We use stories to make sense of our lives. We use stories to guide our future.

Resilient relationship story gives details of how you were stuck in the mud but found ways to move out of that.

3 adjectives to describe your relationship when it was stalled

2 verbs that capture you moved in your negative dance and how you were able to change the pattern

key moment when you saw each other differently, acted differently and were able to reach out for each other

3 adjectives as to how you describe your relationship right now

1 thing you are doing to keep your connection

Create a future love story

Personal dreams for 5-10 years

Holding on to positive change, creating new models

How will you implement what you have learnt?

Play and Practice

1.       Are there any danger points in your relationship right now?

a.       Name the emotion

b.       How can your partner help with this?

2.       Can you identify small positive moments in your relationship?

a.       Does your partner know about these, if not tell them?

3.       Any relationship moments when it shifted to another level

4.       Do we have ritual for belonging, separating and union?

5.       Think of a problem-solving discussion that ends in frustration

a.       What are the attachment needs?

b.       How could you express them?

6.       Craft the beginnings of a resilient relationship story

a.       Find three words to describe your bond

7.       Create a future love story, the relationship you will have in 5-10 years.

a.       What can you do to take the first step towards it?