|
14th Issue Summer 2012
the EFT community news |
Lorrie Brubacher, M.Ed., LMFT
Certified EFT Supervisor & Trainer Greensboro Charlotte Center for EFT |
What do EFT therapists listen for moment-to-moment and how do they choose their next move based on what they have just heard or observed? One of the most practical and unique features of EFT as an experiential therapy is the guidance provided by prototypical client reactions or "markers" of internal experiencing. In Creating Connection, Sue Johnson says that markers signal to the therapist to pay attention and to intervene.
This is the first of several articles highlighting markers to listen for while attuning moment-to-moment to each partner and to the impact partners are having on one another in each here-and-now moment. The first article features verbal and non-verbal micro-process markers signaling for therapist attention and response. The second will focus on responding to these markers in the de-escalation of Stage One and the third will examine markers in the emergence and transformance of the bonding events of Stage Two.
Pay attention! Non-verbal micro processes:
Therapists who seem to have a magical ability to tune into partners’ emotional experiences in the negative cycle are simply paying exquisite attention to non-verbal micro-processes. The leading edge of unaccessed emotion that is driving the negative cycle, is frequently hinted at in the non-verbal micro-processes occurring within the verbal “noise”. These range from: subtle bodily movements such as pulling back, voice tightening, or a slight shrug; grand gestures such as broadly sweeping an arm, turning away, a chopping motion with the hand; physiological signs of arousal, such as deep sighs or sudden gasps; and blocking behaviours, such as facial muscles tightening or going blank. Pay attention! These limbic brain, bodily arousal markers indicate that the attachment fight-flight system is activated.
Soft, simple, slow, explicit tracking of these markers is the first and fundamental response towards creating more secure connection. Reflect what has happened, make a process replay, evoke with R.I.S.S.S.C., use evocative questions to access different elements of emotion – the cue, the bodily arousal, the meanings or the action tendency. Conjecture with a metaphor about a client’s core experience when for example you see a tightened, blank response,
Soft, simple, slow, explicit tracking of these markers is the first and fundamental response towards creating more secure connection. Reflect what has happened, make a process replay, evoke with R.I.S.S.S.C., use evocative questions to access different elements of emotion – the cue, the bodily arousal, the meanings or the action tendency. Conjecture with a metaphor about a client’s core experience when for example you see a tightened, blank response,
“The blood drained from your face, as though you feel frozen stiff when…”
and repeatedly check for non-verbal and verbal indications from each partner that you are accurately resonating with them.
Listen to the leading edge of the words
Verbal micro-processes:
As partners react to cues that signal danger, the emotion implicit in their responses is often hinted at in the words they use. For example:
“I am just numb”
probably does not indicate that the client feels nothing, but rather that he or she has a sensation of numbness or a freeze response that the therapist can actively evoke. To do so, the therapist slows the process and unpacks the emotional response, helps the client identify the specific cue that has triggered him or her, the meaning he or she has made of that cue,
“What does that say to you?”, the bodily response, the action tendency,
“What do you feel like doing / typically do in these moments?” and the fleeting primary emotional response to danger that happens just before the numbness (secondary emotion) appears,
“What was it like in the split second, just before you went numb?” |
The therapist can actively evoke the client's sensation of numbness or freeze by slowing the process, unpacking the emotional response, helping the client identify the cue that triggered her and the meaning she made of it. |
Similarly,
“I don’t want to be afraid”
implies fear. The therapist responds using empathic reflections, evocative questions and empathic conjectures in the cycle context and right at the leading edge of what the client has expressed but not fully put into words,
Therapist: “You say, ‘I don’t want to be afraid’, ”(repeat slowly) 'I don’t want to be afraid', (repeat
slowly) “but I wonder if a little part of you isn’t just that.. afraid, maybe?”
Client: “Uhuh, maybe a little bit, yes.”
Therapist: “Can I get you to stay – to stay with that little bit of fear? Can you feel it here right
now?” (pause - look for non-verbal confirmation from her that you are resonating with her).
“Each time he turns to his mother and not you, your fear gets a little bigger? Is that it?” (check
in with her, track her non-verbal response).
“Are you feeling that fear right now?” (give her time to check and respond).
“Where in your body do you feel it?” (Allow time for her to discover and respond - points to
her stomach and her throat).
“It is much, much safer to get angry and blame him for not letting go of his mother, than to
share this fear with him, isn’t it?” (conjecture).
“In your typical cycle, you don’t feel safe enough to share this fear - you don’t even want to feel
this fear yourself and you get angry and blaming instead? Is that it?” (tracking).
“It makes sense then that when you sense he holds back from you, you swallow your panic,
get this knot in your stomach and lump in your throat, and you lash out at him.”
Other verbal micro-markers of implied emotion, on the leading edge of the words, call for the therapist’s attention and fine-tuned response: When verbal expression contains poignancy, e.g.
“It’s chilling,”
reflect, heighten or conjecture about the poignant element in the cycle.
“It’s chilling? hmm, kinda like when you hear her say this, then a chill runs right through your body?”
Re-direct clients who veer away from the leading edge of their experience:
When clients give rehearsed descriptions, with a tight seamless quality and there seems to be no way to enter the client’s experiencing, be transparent in observation, use tracking, an evocative question, make a process replay of what has just taken place or find a metaphor to conjecture about the client’s core experience in the cycle,
“You describe that really well and as you describe what must have been very difficult, I find myself wondering ’What must this be like for you?’” (transparency/evocative question).
Or,
"Several times when I have attempted to ask you how this is for you, you've kept right on talking (transparency and tracking) almost like you're feeling an urgency to get every detail out, before your story is crushed?" (conjecture, based on the criticize/demand, withdraw/defend cycle).
|
When clients begin rambling, practice respectful interruption,
"I'm just going to slow you down here, o.k.?" and re-focus on some emotional handle or process replay,
“A moment ago your voice quivered as you said, to him 'Do you really mean that?’" |
Respectful interruption. |
When clients speak in vague, general terms with flat or distant descriptions, use immediacy of language, shifting the vague to vivid, the general to specific, the abstract to concrete, the global to the personal and the “then” to “now,” using emotionally evocative language. To a partner who relentlessly avoided emotion and spoke incessantly,
the therapist says: "Do you feel anything as your wife says ‘I can’t take the loneliness anymore?’”
He replies: “Feel anything!? You should see me when I go to Dieppe!”
Therapist replies: “And it comes up here again when she says ’I can’t take the loneliness anymore?’”
Verbal and non-verbal micro-processes signal to the therapist to pay attention and to respond sensitively to the tiniest slices of implicit and emerging emotion. Many markers retain relevance throughout the steps and stages:
- A verbal or non-verbal marker indicating an alliance rupture points to the timeless significance of responding with basic empathy and validation to the disengaged or confrontative partner.
- A partner’s sudden non-verbal response to his or her partner indicates some significant attachment fear has been touched, even for a nano-second. This marker directs the therapist to slow the process and replay the moment to evoke or focus on the implicit emotion in the non-verbal response.
- An abrupt exit on the part of one partner or a sudden lapse back into the negative cycle indicates a need to firmly and gently redirect the process back to the exploration which was taking place just before the “exit.”
Since clients’ in-session engagement with emotional processing is predictive of success in EFT, it is vital that therapists become skilled at tuning into and responding to verbal and non-verbal micro-process markers. Reviewing video recordings of one’s own and others’ therapy sessions is perhaps the best way to fine tune one’s ability to be guided by process markers and effectively privilege process over content.
To download a PDF copy of this article click on the link below:
| 14_recognizing___following_markers_-_part_1_-_verbal_and_non-verbal_micro-process_markers_-_lorrie_brubacher.pdf |
