A strategy for noticing you’re in the cycle & starting to defeat it.
One of the first things that will help improve the effectiveness of EFT therapy is to focus on catching yourself in your cycle with your partner. It is much easier to catch your partner in the cycle and call them out. However, most of the time calling out our partner just ends up pulling the two of you further into the old cycle.
It’s more effective to work on noticing and catching yourself in the cycle. If you catch yourself, even if you’re not able to get out if the cycle yet, it’s still a win. We cannot change something we don’t notice, so noticing yourself acting out your own part of the cycle is the first step.
If you’re serious about learning to catch yourself and not your partner, here’s a process to help:
1. Write down your 6 typical parts of the cycle: (use the cycle diagram & behaviors list if helpful)
• Your behaviors– things you typically say or do (or behavior impulses that you experience but don’t act on)
• Your reactive emotions (annoyance, upset, frustration, anger, grumpy, numb, etc)
• Your thoughts about why your partner is doing what he or she is doing or what they are probably thinking about you
• Your vulnerable emotions (disappointed, sad, despair, worried, scared, etc)
• Your physical sensations – what you feel physically in your body when in the cycle (tense, pressure on my chest, sick feeling, small, etc)
2. Pick one or two signals (from above) that you think will be the easiest to catch yourself doing, thinking, or feeling. Some people find it easiest to notice physical sensations. For other people noticing specific thoughts or catching yourself saying or doing something is easier. What you focus on as a signal that you are in the cycle with your partner might change during the course of your EFT journey. Pick signals that you will most readily be able to identify now.
3. Pay attention to yourself and watch for the signal.
Early in Kim and I’s EFT journey, the signal I could readily catch myself doing was walking out of the room. A frequent pattern started with me bringing up a concern. After a brief argument I would give up on being heard and walk out (often from the living room into the kitchen). I would catch myself staring at a dim reflection of myself in the microwave door, and think, “I just did it again. I walked out.” Later in our journey, after catching myself I would remember how scared Kim felt when I walked out on her.
You may be asking, “Once I can catch myself in the cycle, how do we get out?” Initially you don’t need to do anything else. Just catching yourself is a success. Later, you might start calling yourself out. For me that involved walking back into the living room and admitting, “I just did it again! I walked out on you. I don’t know what else to do. I know it scares you. I still don’t know what to do, and I’m going to walk out again.” (Kim has told me that when I could acknowledge that my walking away was effecting her, this helped ease her fear, even though I still walked away again.)
If you persevere, with the help of your EFT therapist, you will eventually be able to do more than notice you’re in the cycle. You will also be able to stop yourself sometimes and get out of your cycle with your partner. Hang on until then. You can get there.