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15th Issue Fall 2012
the EFT community news |
Lorrie Brubacher, M.Ed., LMFT
Certified EFT Supervisor & Trainer Greensboro Charlotte Center for EFT |
It sounds reassuring to have a map to follow to achieve de-escalation, but what are the markers of client experiencing that an EFT couple therapist looks for in order to orient herself on this map?
This is the second in a series of toolbox articles highlighting markers to watch for while attuning moment-to-moment to each partner’s experience and to the impact partners are having on one another in each here-and-now moment. The first article (Summer 2012) featured verbal and non-verbal micro-process markers signaling for the therapist’s attention and response. This article focuses on markers of present moment emotional experience in the de-escalation process. The next toolbox will consider markers of present moment experiences of the cycle.
Markers of present moment emotional experience
1. The manner in which an event is described or recounted presents numerous markers of present moment emotional experience that can be reflected and evoked in an attachment context without getting distracted by the content:
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a) Marker: Strong emotional responses interrupt the story.
Task: Reflect and validate the strong emotion, framing it in an attachment context: “You feel deprived of his attention; you are starving for her acceptance.” b) Marker: A partner is incongruently unemotional while recounting a story with a seemingly powerful emotional impact.
Task: Reflect and be curious about the meaning of the partner’s emotional detachment and the incongruence between the intensity of the words and the lack of apparent affect. Use your curiosity to unpack the emotion process signaled by this marker: “You say, ‘All my actions are driven by fear – fear she wants to destroy me,’ as though you were reporting a simple fact - and I can’t help but wonder how very, very terrifying this must be.” |
2. Marker: Emotionally intense beliefs or rigidly held appraisals are stated as facts.
For example:
For example:
“He feels like he is so perfect and I can’t ever get him to hear me. So I have to stop trying.”
“She never knows how I feel and I know she doesn’t even care.”
“Nothing can ever change because I failed to be the husband she wanted and now nothing I ever do can make it up to her.”
These are cognitive appraisals or attachment meanings created to make sense of the unbearable or as-yet-unaccessed primary emotion. These bullets or harsh jabs call for an attachment reframe to soften the blow and to make some coherence out of what is happening in the moment. Remain clear about whose emotion you are reflecting and exploring. These rigidly held assumptions are not truths to be reflected about another person. For example, it would not be helpful to reflect in the first example above:
“You feel defeated by his feeling so perfect.”
There is no indication that he feels perfect but rather that this is the explanation she makes of his habitual responses in the cycle.
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Task 1: Reflect/reframe these statements as
“What you say to yourself?” Task 2: Evoke and unpack the process of emotion that happens before this appraisal is made:
• Understand the cue by asking: “What tells you that she doesn’t care how you feel?” • Evoke the bodily felt limbic sense of attachment danger:
“When she says or does that, or when you see that look on her face or hear that tone of voice, (replaying the cue) what happens inside your body?” • Evoke awareness of the habitual response or action tendency:
“When that happens, how do you typically respond?” • Evoke primary emotion:
“When you do that, what do you feel on the inside? Is there anything tender that you might feel, even for a split second, before you feel that annoyance?” |
3. Marker: Attachment issues are identified only as a problem with the partner and no personal ownership is taken, such as:
“She is never satisfied with me,”
or,
“He can never be counted on” (negative working models of other).
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Task: Frame these problems as central to the relationship distress:
“Seeing your partner as largely the problem here, must leave you feeling pretty helpless about how to improve your relationship.” Validate:
"How difficult it must be to feel that she is never satisfied with you.” Evoke the emotional and behavioral responses:
“How is that, for you to believe that you cannot count on your partner?”; Be transparent about the need to further explore and join together as detectives to discover how they are caught in a cycle or a dance that seems to be hurting both of them and keeping both of them from getting their mutual needs for acceptance and intimacy met.
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4. Marker: Powerful and conflicting emotions are present at the same time.
There could be intense anger mixed with twinges of primary fear or futile helplessness tinged with shame or worthlessness. Another common example is seen in expressions of hurt – the complex blend of anger, sadness and fear of loss.
There could be intense anger mixed with twinges of primary fear or futile helplessness tinged with shame or worthlessness. Another common example is seen in expressions of hurt – the complex blend of anger, sadness and fear of loss.
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Task: Begin by validating the obvious (secondary) anger in criticism, for example, and the futility or nervousness in withdrawal. Until a client is ready to stay with the leading edge of the emotion long enough to reformulate the reactive emotion as fear of abandonment or rejection, the therapist needs to stay in the present moment with him or her by accepting and validating the secondary reactivity first. Gradually the client may move slowly into the leading edge of the more vulnerable emotion, with gentle conjectures or evocative questions.
With hurt, validate what is most accessible, such as the anger and evoke or conjecture about another part such as sadness or even fear of losing: “I get the part of you that flares up in anger when you see her shut down (validate). I wonder if perhaps there is an edge of fear too in your heart as you say, ‘There she goes – she just shut down! Will she ever let me back in?’.” |
5. Markers of attachment significance in a replay of the last fight.
Partners reactively recount their last fight – as though looking for the therapist to choose sides or to solve the problem.
Partners reactively recount their last fight – as though looking for the therapist to choose sides or to solve the problem.
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Task: To stay out of problem solving and the content trap, EFT therapists engage partners in moment-to-moment experiencing, by noting and responding to markers of attachment significance. Reflect obvious emotion and ask evocative questions to access each element of the emotion process. For example, with an anxious client, validate the obvious surface frustration, the assumptions and explanations made to explain what the other partner did. Possibly conjecture at the implied loneliness and how that relates to their fury. With an avoidant partner, validate the apparent numbness and the hints of helplessness and inadequacy, and how that relates to their dismissive actions.
Also focus on the typical sequences of how they interact and protect selves with attacks and counter attacks such as “The more you hide, the more I panic and chase you; the more you criticize, the more I sink and defend myself.” |
6. Marker: Repeated stories of pivotal moments or sore points that have obvious significance for one partner seem unimportant or confusing to the other.
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Task: Stay with each partner in turn, validating the emotional significance for one and the confusion for the other. Expand the significance of the event for the troubled partner, using it as a reference point for each one’s emotional music and track how the dance unfolds:
“It sounds like how you guys often get caught in this distancing dance - Jane, you continue to rage at Tom for forgetting your mother’s birthday, and Tom you shrug and say ‘it’s not such a big deal, I can’t be perfect.’ It’s almost as though your attempts, Jane, to get Tom to hear your pain, touch that place in you, Tom, that dreads to hear you have failed Jane, so you brush her off. And Jane, your pain grows deeper with the sense he doesn’t care.” |
The first four markers described above have focused primarily on partners’ inner emotional experience, whereas the last two markers open the door to exploring the cycle as it is triggered in-session. When you can use these markers to enter and expand your clients’ world, partners begin to experience themselves and each other in a new light, thus paving the way toward de-escalation. Following the attachment-based map of delineating and de-escalating negative cycles becomes much easier when we recognize that our clients are giving us markers along the way to guide our responses.
To download a PDF copy of this article click on the link below:
| 15_recognizing___following__markers_–_part_2_-_responding_to_verbal_and_non-verbal_micro_process_markers_in_the_de-escalation_of_stage_one_-_lorrie_brubacher.pdf |
