Many partners and parents come to therapy asking to be taught new tools for communication. I often respond that clients will learn some tools during the process, but I’m not going to be teaching any.
Many clients want to know why not.
The short answer: Teaching tools doesn’t help most clients change.
If you’re open to being convinced, read on…
The problem most couples and families have is not a lack of skills but a lack of ability to use the skills they have. A common illustration of this that clients often describe is, “but my partner doesn’t have this communication problem with anyone but me.”
When strong distressing emotions comes up, our prefrontal cortex (the part of our brain that does problem-solving and decision-making) goes partially or fully offline.
Parents, partners, and children lose the ability to use the skills they have when their nervous systems are hijacked by strong emotions. Frustration, sadness, worry, shame, and fear limit our ability to communicate effectively. Bonding science researchers have proven this. When we experience something that limits our connection with an “attachment figure,” we experience near-instantaneous distress. Still face experiments with infants demonstrate this vividly. As we get older, we develop more sophisticated strategies to deal with the distress, so they are often not as clearly identifiable (even though we all go through the same basic neurological response when we are disconnected from a loved one).
When strong distressing emotions comes up, our prefrontal cortex (the part of our brain that does problem-solving and decision-making) goes partially or fully offline. We do not regain access to that prefrontal toolbox of skills until the distress is over. Even if we find a way to silence the alarm system and pretend the distress is over, suppressed emotions are still having a huge unseen impact on what we do.
This is why EFT therapists rely heavily on creating changes in experience instead of teaching tools. When we are experiencing strong emotion in the relationship session, EFT therapists help us notice, feel, and share them in a new way. This goes against what our protective alarm system is trying to get us to do. Past painful experience has taught us being vulnerable like that will get us hurt again. But when we take the risk with the therapist’s help, and we get a helpful response from our partner, our nervous system learns vulnerability could be safe with our partner. This starts to create new neural pathways. Finally, after experiencing these new events many times in session we start to trust we can be vulnerable and safe. Our alarm system gets set off less often with less intensity because of the new wiring created by new experiences. Now we can start to use those skills we have stored up in our toolbox.
Like the meme says, “Best we can do is a secure bond.” This will come with better access to dormant skills and new tools we have learned in the EFT process.
If you’re looking to slow down your automatic response so that you have better access to communication tools, Emotionally Focused Therapy could be a great fit for you.
