Cycles Include Fight-Flight Responses
“The only thing you need to get caught in a negative cycle is to matter to each other.” (A. Lee)
Couples’ Negative Dance
Couples in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) are on a journey that leads to a safe and secure bond that includes changing their destructive dance or cycle into one that is more like a harmonious dance of reaching, connecting, and responding. Couples begin EFT sessions with an insecure attachment bond in which they cannot reach or connect to one another for support in times of need
Endless Negative Dance
Couples seek marriage counseling because they are caught in an endless dance of several different loops. The NY Times once compared couples therapy to “piloting a helicopter in a hurricane.” EFT believes the problem is not conflict; all families have conflict. Conflict is just a symptom. The real issue is emotional disconnection.Couples are often caught in the same fight over and over but the content of the fight has changed. The conflict is a dance, a self-perpetuating cycle. Couples become hopeless in finding the exit to these following typical negative cycles:
Pursue-Withdraw Negative Cycle
Pursue-withdraw: The critical, demanding pursuits of a more anxious pursuer triggers avoidance and distancing in the anxious avoidant withdrawer partner. The distancing and avoidance of one partner creates more anxiety in the other and that partner becomes more critical in his/her pursuit. The pursuing partner may say things like, “Even when he is home, he is working on his computer and I can never connect with him.” or “She never seems to listen to what I am saying. Its like she detaches from hearing me.” The Withdrawer will often say things like, “I just wish she would stop being so angry with me so we can just get along.” or “I never feel like he is happy with me no matter how hard I try.”Other cycles can include attack-attack, withdraw-withdraw, “Find the Bad Guy/Girl” (“Its your fault”, “No its your fault!”). Overtime, the cycle can change and the Pursuer becomes burned out in his/her pursuing of the other and essentially stops trying. The Withdrawer can then panic because of fear of losing the other and become more of a pursuer in the relationship.
Cycle Is The Enemy
An EFT therapist tracks the couples negative cycle and helps each partner identify and own their positions in the dance. The message of the EFT therapist is that the cycle is the enemy rather than either partner. A big part of the journey is in learning a new dances. This is a major goal of Emotionally Focused Therapy and helps couples feel safer and more of a team to tackle other problems that they couldn’t before due to the cycle.