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Accessing and Deepening Emotions in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)

When One or Both Partners are Highly Cognitive or Emotionally Avoidant

Sam Jinich, PhDClinical Psychologist

Trainer in Emotionally Focused Therapy

• In this presentation, we will focus specifically on the challenges of accessing emotions when one or both partners are emotionally avoidant, have difficulty naming their emotions, are analytic or rigid in their willingness to explore beyond cognitive explanations.

• By using attunement skills, empathic reflections, evocative questions and attachment-oriented validations and reframes, EFT therapists explore, deepen and guide partners to have new heartfelt emotional experiences that deepens their bond.

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Dr. Sue Johnson

Love is a constant process of tuning in,

connecting,missing and misreading cues,

disconnecting, repairing,

and finding deeper connection. It is a dance of meeting

and partingand finding each other again.

Minute to minute and day to day.

Dr. Susan Johnson

“Emotion is like the music of the dance between intimates”

“If you change the music,

you’ll change the dance”

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Attachment longings and the need to connect

with others is universal.

““

LAWS OF LOVE

• Seeking and maintaining proximity, having a ‘felt security’ with another, is a primary need for humans.

• Proximity to a loved one whom we feel secure with tranquillizes the nervous system. Safety offers emotional balance/equilibrium.

• Isolation traumatizes. We are not wired to be alone or self-sufficient.

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Isolation and loss are inherently traumatizing.

Deprivation, loss, rejection, and abandonment by those we need most is traumatic.

WE ARE BIOLOGICALLY WIRED TO SEEK SECURE ATTACHMENT

John Bowlby

From the Cradle to the Grave“Throughout adult life the availability of a responsive attachment figure remains the source of a person’s feeling secure. All of us, from cradle to grave, are happiest when life is organized as a series of excursions, long or short, from the secure base provided by our attachment figures.”

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LAWS OF LOVE

• From the cradle to the grave, we seek a SAFE HAVEN with supportive others to turn to. They are our greatest resource.

• In moments of mis-attunement & disconnection, humans require co-regulation instead of self-regulation.

• The process of reaching and repairing increases the likelihood of safe synchronous connection.

LAWS OF LOVE

• We seek constructive healthy inter-dependency – A SECURE BASE to go out from into the world.

• Inter-dependency makes us stronger, more confident, exploratory and resilient.

• Secure connection can shape a strong coherent sense of self.

• To need is not a weakness, a sign of immaturity or a pathology.

• Denial of vulnerability is not strength.

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LAWS OF LOVE

• We are inescapably vulnerable in love: how we deal with this is the key factor defining relationships.

• Conflict between partners is like an inflammation or a virus that causes emotional distress and disconnection.

• Emotional disconnection is a wired-in threat that cues separation distress, panic, hurt and disorientation.

• Adults feel pain, because disconnection is a THREAT to mammalians. An alarm goes off within us. We protest this disconnection in very specific ways.

ATTACHMENT AND EMOTION REGULATION

Isolation, Rejection

Abandonment

DANGER

EmpathySupport

Acceptance

SECURE

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LAWS OF LOVE

Ø Secures will risk & reach.Ø Insecures will anxiously demand and control, or they will

avoid, dismiss and turn away. (“I will make you respond”. or “I will not care”)!

• We all use all strategies – but at times we get chronically stuck in one. We call these strategies: “negative patterns or cycles”. Strategies can only be revised with new corrective experiences with another.

• Vulnerability and Empathic Attunement in EFT leads to corrective, restructuring emotional experiences.

In moments of disconnection, distressed couples get caught in negative repetitive patterns of interaction where partners express reactive protective emotions rather than sharing their vulnerable primary emotions.

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PURSUERS….Pursuing behaviors such as criticizing, complaining and blaming

are viewed in EFT as:

A protest response to feeling alone, unimportant or abandoned by the partner.

An attempt to make their partner more accessible and responsive to them.

Attachment coping behaviors become heightened and intense and may include anxious clinging, pursuit and aggressive attempts to get a response from the other.

For pursuers, any response is better than no response!

WITHDRAWERS….Withdrawing behaviors such as shutting down, numbing out, getting defensive or pulling away are viewed in EFT as:

A protest response to feeling rejected, inadequate, unaccepted and not good enough.

An attempt to contain the interaction and regulate their fears of rejection.

Attachment needs are suppressed (to avoid shame, fear) by self-regulation. There is often a focus on tasks. Focus is on how to limit distressing engagement.

For Withdrawers, no response is better than making things worse or feeling badly!

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Common Attachment Fears for both Pursuers and Withdrawers:

• Being abandoned and alone.• Being unacceptable, unlovable or unworthy of care and

rejected.• Being overwhelmed and helpless, losing any coherent

sense of self.• Fear of being viewed as

“not enough” or “too much”.• Fear of being vulnerable or of

reaching to the other partner for contact, care and comfort and getting no response or an angry dismissive response.

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PRIMARY GOALS OF EFT

v Access, Expand and Re-organize key emotional responses.

v Create a shift in partner’s REACTIVE positions with one another by facilitating corrective emotional experiences.

v Foster and support the creation of a secure bond between partners through bonding experiences that redefine the relationship as SECURE AND CONNECTED.

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GOALS OFEMOTIONALLY FOCUSED COUPLES THERAPY

Process / expand emotional responses

Create new kinds of interactions / change the dance

Foster secure bonding between partners

Change in EFT involves fostering new vulnerable interpersonal experiences in therapy in order to restructure the couple’s bond. The goal is to create secure attachment between partners.

EFT therapists help couples to have new conversations and corrective emotional experiences to foster a more secure loving bond and a more heartfelt connection.

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EMOTIONS ARE THE TARGET AND THE AGENT OF CHANGE

Emotionsviewedthroughanattachmentlens,arethetargetand theagentofchangeinEFT.

Emotionallyfocusedtherapistsfacilitateemotionallymovingenactments byguidingpartnerstovulnerablysharewiththeirpartnerabouttheirpain,sadnessandfears.Theyguidepartnerstomoregentlyspeakabouttheirlonelinessandtheirlongingforcloseness.

Interventions for accessing emotions in eft

RISSSC

REAVE

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RISSSC ² RISSSC is the EFT stance² RISSSC is the “how” of interventions² RISSSC is how the EFT therapist

holds the client in the present moment, promotes safety and builds a strong alliance.

² RISSSC guides the client into deeper emotional engagement with his or her emotional experience.

Repeat

Images

Slow

Soft

Simple

Client words

REFLECT

VALIDATEEVOKE

ATTACHMENT REFRAME

ENACT

ATTACHMENT REFRAMED VALIDATION

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Process Research Findings in EFT

2 Key predictive elements of change in the therapeutic process:• Depth of Emotional Experiencing• Gradual shaping of interactions to help partners clearly

express fears and needs and to be more responsive to each other.

Johnson and Greenberg, (1988)

Accessing and Enactingemotions is much harder

with cognitive and avoidant couples

Itismoredifficultfortherapiststointerveneeffectivelyif:• Oneorbothmembersofthecouplehaveaveryconstrictedandrigidwayofprocessinghis/herexperienceandofinteractingwiththeirpartner.• Whentheyinterrupteachother,interruptthetherapist.• Theyareuncomfortablewithemotionsandtheyusestories,lotsofdetails,humorandtheybat-awaytherapeuticinterventionsor“exit”whenevertheygetclosetohaving orwitnessing anemotionalexperience.

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Tip #1: Reflect the Process

Move away from content and go to a Process Level. Notice the avoidance.

“So this is hard for you. It’s not comfortable to feel disconnected when we don’t know how to deal with our partner’s reactions”

Clients struggle and fight each other looking for solutions, not realizing that insisting on a solution is the problem.

CLIENT: “Why didn’t you do what I asked. If you can’t do ___ then how can I count on you?”

EFT therapists interpret this as: “Are you there for me? Do I matter to you? Will you care about the things that I care about? Are we a team?

Reflect the Process: THERAPIST: “When you’re not sure that you can count on him, that he cares about this because it matters to you, you react by demanding and pointing out his faults, he shuts down and then you lose your connection to him further.”

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Tip #2: Seed Attachment

Follow the client and help them focus on their attachment fears or unmet attachment needs. If they change the channel on you to focus on content, change the channel back to the Attachment Channel. Walk around looking for the attachment themes. Reflect it back to them.

“You don’t understand how when you make a critical comment, he reacts the way he does, how he gets so quiet and shuts down. He needs to see that you view him as competent, that you love him and approve of him and that you think well of him and would still choose him. This is why it’s such a big deal… because you matter so much to him. When he thinks that he has disappointed you and that he has not met your expectations or when he doesn’t feel special, valued or prioritized by you, that’s painful to him.”

People go into their heads when they are scared of their emotions. EFT therapists help them by making it safer for them. We normalize it. We validate it. We frame it in Attachment terms. We attune to their fears. We access them and we help them disclose them to each other.

1. Reflect the Process2. Access, heighten and evoke more vulnerable emotions3. Facilitate enactments4. Process the enactments

Highly cognitive people will attempt to block you in-between these steps but stick to the EFT process laid out above. Trust the model.

Tip #3: Don’t get caught up in their intellectual conversation

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Tip #4: Know where you are going.

When you get lost, go back to the last moment when you were last working on emotional content. Ask an evocative question, reflect the answer, validate it, deepen it and then try to enact it. (REAVE)

Conclusion

• Normalize emotional experience, both positive and negative.• Clarify thoughts and then relate these to emotions.• Use questions, reflections, and interpretations to draw

out primary emotions.• Describe the emotions through metaphors and images.• Discourage the partners attempt to distract him or

herself from experiencing emotion.• Facilitate greater acceptance of a partner’s experience

by reframing it in attachment terms.

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Conclusion

• Create a safe atmosphere. This can be more easily achieved by normalizing the experience as an expression of both positive and negative emotions.• Encourage partners to respond to each other in a caring

and supportive manner when one expresses an emotion. (e.g. processing an enactment)• Avoid overwhelming the individual by appropriately

timing and moderating the questions asked. The timing and delivery of the interventions are as important as the interventions themselves.• Engage with one partner’s experience, reflect it and

then invite their partner to enter it on the same engaged level.

LEARN MORE ABOUT EFT

Sam Jinich, PhD &San Francisco Center for EFT

www.sfceft.com

International Centre of Excellence in EFTwww.iceeft.com

Northern California Community for EFTwww.ncceft.com

Hold Me Tight Workshop for Coupleswww.HoldMeTightWorkshop.com

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WHold Me Tight Workshop with

Dr. Sam Jinich and Dr. Michelle Gannon

San Francisco, Esalen and TiburonVisit

HoldMeTightWorkshop.com

San FranciscoJuly 28-29, 2018September 15-16, 2018EsalenJune 22-24, 2018July 8 – July 13, 2018Costa RicaSeptember 1-2, 2018TiburonNovember 3-4, 2018