"I hate you! Don't leave me!" Sound familiar?

How Accessible are you and your partner to each other? How Responsive are you and your partner to one another? How emotionally engaged are you with each other? A.R.E. you there for each other? These are the real questions underneath we are looking for the answers to when we are with our partners! Yes, REALLY!!

Being human means we need others. Current research has shown that the human brain is hardwired, much like an animal with instincts, to know that being in close proximity to others is our greatest chance for survival. We were not designed to be alone, and thus being alone codes as "dangerous" to our brains. We can go into a primal panic if we feel we are all alone and in a perceived threatening situation. 

The greatest punishment for hardened criminals in prison is solitary confinement; in some states they are banning this form of isolation because it is so cruel and inhumane. Because we need others to survive and thrive in this world, we can feel off-balance and insecure when we don't feel close to another, especially when we don't feel valued, seen, heard or important to our partner. So how does the need for proximity, closeness, and emotional safety play out in your relationship?

When we're in the midst of a fight with our partner about whose turn it is to do the dishes, it's hard to believe the REAL problem is lurking below the surface and that it often has to do with how accessible, responsive, and engaged your partner feels to you--but that is likely exactly what is happening! Especially if that kind of argument happens in a similar way time and time again. 

Lets see how this plays out with Arwin and Blair, a young couple in their early 30's, who you will be introduced to in the Hold Me Tight® Tri-Cities retreat. See if this sounds familiar to you and your partner when you have difficulties.

Both Arwin and Blair were professionals with their own careers when they got married in their late 20's. They had a pretty connected and happy relationship, had lots of friends and family, and enjoyed being together with lots of activities to keep them busy. After several years they felt it was time to have a family. Shortly thereafter Arvin got pregnant and Blair landed a job oversees. They were excited, it was a new adventure for both of them, and they loved traveling!

So Arwin quit her job, they moved, and she began to rely solely on Blair for financial and emotional support. Soon after they settled into their life, Arwin had the baby. Blair had to work long hours at his new job to get established. He felt the burden to provide for the family. Arwin was at home with a new baby who needed lots of attention. Everything had changed for both of them. They didn't have family or friends in this new culture and country, and it was expensive to call friends or family back home very often. 

Arwin felt lonely, and began to need Blair in ways she had never had to rely on him before. She was anxious as a new mother and unsure of herself. Blair needed Arwin's support and confidence as he was gone long hours of the day trying to prove himself with a new boss. Blair began to feel overwhelmed at Arwin's new demands on him for his time and attention. They didn't know how to reach for each other in ways to garner the support they needed during this difficult transitioning time for their family. Neither of them felt the other was accessible, responsive, or engaged in the way they each needed.

So a typical argument went like this...Blair was just arriving home a little after 7pm from work. Arwin had dinner on the table at 5:30 pm, the time they had agreed on for dinner to be served. As Arwin fed the baby, put her down to bed, and left the food on the table to grow cold, she sat down and waited in a fume for Blair to come home. When he arrived she was cold, aloof, and curt with him. "I'm sorry," he said sheepishly, "I totally lost track of time while I was trying to get that last report on the bosses desk for first thing in the morning." "The food is cold," Arwin said, with an even colder stare. Blair immediately felt defensive feeling her anger, but he didn't dare speak for fear she would verbally attack him. He just sat down to eat, not knowing what else to do. Arwin started in, "Where were you? Why didn't you have the decency to just call me? Don't I matter at all to you? Dinner is suppose to be at 5:30, now you've missed seeing the baby. She won't even know her dad! Am I just supposed to sit and wait and wait and wait for you to finally show up?" Blair felt defeated and like a shmuck, but didn't say anything, he kept eating. "Don't you have anything to say?" Arwin kept the pressure going, "I've waited all day to have some adult conversation and you just sit there after being almost 2 hours late and say NOTHING to me!" A long tense moment of silence. "I hate you!" Arwin screamed as she stormed out of the dining room. Blair sat confused. He didn't understand why she was so unreasonable and distraught.

Arwin and Blair are caught in a negative pattern that Dr. Sue Johnson, the author of Hold Me Tight®

calls the "protest polka." The more Arwin protests the distance between them, the more Blair withdraws. The more Blair withdraws, the more Arwin protests--around and around. 

But what is really going on between Arwin and Blair? Arwin is feeling lonely. She doesn't feel she has enough access or responsiveness from Blair so she is upping the ante to try and get some kind of response! Without saying so, Arwin is really seeking to know she is important to him enough that he is thinking of her, and that he will comfort her in the distress of being so alone and isolated in her new environment. Blair is nervous about his new role as a sole provider, fearful he isn't good enough to be what she needs from him. When Arwin blows up at him for being late even after he apologizes, he feels like he can't ever get it right for her. He goes silent to keep from making it worse between them, which leaves Arwin feeling even lonelier, which then turns to an angry protest. The angrier she gets, the more silent and fearful he becomes, which just makes her more angry! This is a never-ending circle that feeds on itself and ironically creates the very thing they are most afraid of, being unimportant, unvalued, and alone without each other!

Do any of the steps in this move seem familiar to you and your partner? Do you get stuck in negative patterns that seem to repeat over and over again, even with different subjects but a similar theme of hurt, anger, tension, and distance?

In our Hold Me Tight® Tri-Cities retreat the first (of seven) conversations you will have with your partner is to discover the negative pattern you get caught in and ways to get out of it! You will together begin to uncover the steps of your negative dance and start to see what is driving it, so the two of you can take control of the cycle rather than the cycle controlling your relationship.

So come, come to the Hold Me Tight® Tri-cities couple retreat for a REAL treat! You don't wan't to miss the conversations that can lead to A.R.E. with your partner!

WAIT! What just happened???

Have you ever been talking with your partner and suddenly something is said, something else is said, and then in a matter of seconds things are bad and you don't know what happened? Or you felt something shifts and then boom, things are bad between you? It's like it flew by you so fast and they, or you get defensive/angry/shut down and you have no idea what you said, or what they said that caused it? Then it's awkward and you don't know what to say or do. The moment flies by, you know something wasn't good, there's distance, but you don't know what happened and maybe are afraid to say something?

Awkward Distance

After a few of these kinds of things happen between you, it starts to get a little unnerving to broach the subject, you don't know what went down, don't know how to make sense out of it, maybe are a little afraid to bring it up. With enough time things maybe are a little better, so you don't want to bring it up to rock the boat--so this awkwardness creeps up between you.  It makes it hard to talk to each other unless its just household basic things like, "will you take the garbage out?" or to inform each other, "Friday is girl's night out, I'll be home late." There's not much if any emotion in your conversation, very little to no sharing after a while, and before long this is just how it goes between you.  There can even be some tenseness between you that even over time dissipates until there's just coldness and distance.

Freeze 'n Flee

In Emotionally Focused Therapy (or EFT) terms, Sue Johnson the co-founder of EFT calls this withdraw/withdraw pattern "freeze 'n flee."  Both partners have withdrawn from each other and are afraid to make things worse, or fear making their partner upset and risk incurring their anger. Unexpressed anger and fear are often the main unidentified emotions underneath this negative pattern in a relationship.

As an EFT therapist, I find this pattern occasionally with non-confrontational couples. They often are pleasant and polite to each other, highlighted with some occasional tenseness. Or sometimes couples become withdrawn from each other after years of trying to connect and the above scenario continues and no one knows how to repair or come back together. They live parallel lives and both are extremely lonely and feel isolated.  They have an unspoken agreement that no one will risk talking about what is happening. Dr. Johnson says, and for good reason, that this pattern of a relationship is dangerous; the withdraw/withdraw pattern is at most risk for divorce and breaking up. Why? Because there's no emotional engagement.

We Need Connection

Without emotional engagement with our partners we are at risk and vulnerable to find our basic human needs for connection and love elsewhere. Affairs, both emotional and sexual, are not uncommon in this kind in a withdraw/withdraw relationship pattern. Like water and food, we need connection and love to sustain us. If we don't get it in our primary relationship with our partner, we will find our needs in other places. It might be working excessively to feel like we're important or valued in our job, it might be watching TV and escaping because it's too painful to face the disconnection of your relationship, it might be drinking alcohol or taking pain pills to numb out the loneliness, or it might be chatting with an old flame on Facebook and becoming involved. We will find a place to get our needs met in some kind of way because we just can't be without feeling loved, and if we can't find that feeling of love with our partner, we will do something to take the pain of not having it, away.

Fear Gets in the Way

If this pattern is happening between you, it's important to recognize that both of you are hurting, lonely, and longing for connection but both are afraid to open up and talk about it. The fear is the thing that keeps you from reaching each other, fear of each other's reactions, fear of being blamed or attacked, fear of not knowing how to be enough for your partner, fear of being too much for your partner, fear you can find a way through it...What is the fear for you? Can you name it? 

Once you can begin to identify the fear that makes you step back and withdraw from your partner, can you then recognize any other emotion underneath it? Do you feel hurt? Hurt by something your partner did, said, does, continues to do that really hurts? Can you put words around that hurt and share it with your partner? Does the sadness and loneliness start to come up? What feelings do you have? Can you start to share some of these feelings with your partner?

Slower is Faster

When we can slow down and look at our feelings under the surface "calm", and try to understand ourselves and our partners reactions, we can begin to get some traction away from this awkward disconnection of withdraw/withdraw. Lets look at an example. 

Tim and Audrey were a cute couple when they were in their 20's. Both were quiet and thoughtful people, liked by many, and seemed like a perfect fit with each other. They loved the outdoors, they shared a common religious foundation, and had some of the same dreams and aspirations for a family, for community connection, and to contribute to the world. They were pleasant, no fuss kind of people, and really appreciated that about one another. Conflict rarely happened, and they seemed happily married to their friends and associates.  But early in their marriage little things would happen between them where Tim felt a jolt inside when Audrey would say something about his family to him, he didn't know what to say, so he reacted by shutting down and saying nothing. It seemed to Tim that he was just able to bounce things off without it affecting him, he didn't realize himself that he was shutting down. Audrey felt his shut down but didn't know how to identify or speak about it, but it was unpleasant when she would get his cold response or no response. After a while she stopped saying anything about his family and avoided saying much at all to him about any topic that he seemed tense around. She didn't want to rock the boat or make things worse.

Tim and Audrey are caught in a withdraw/withdraw pattern. In order to see and understand what is happening for them, they really need to slow down their interactions and begin to share more with each other what is happening inside for them. The hard part is that they are both afraid to talk about what is really happening. Their reactions are so fast that they can't see it. At this point the negative withdraw/withdraw pattern has a hold on the relationship. They are stuck and getting more and more distant with time--like two slow boats drifting away without a paddle! Tim and Audrey really need some help to see their negative pattern, slow down what happens underneath, and begin to find their way back and reconnect. If I were their therapist, I would recommend that they first attend a couple's retreat that gives them the education about the new science of love to help them see what is happening, why, and what to do about it! 

Hold Me Tight®

Hold Me Tight® Tri-Cities couple's retreat is based on the empirically validated couple's treatment by Dr. Sue Johnson, that research has shown to make a difference in 90% of couples. We walk you through 7 conversations that have the power to help you slow down, see what is happening between you, understand each other differently, and most importantly it will help you begin to change the patterns that are causing you to drift apart!  

 In a HMT Tri-Cities couple retreat we talk about the new science of love and what that means for you as a couple.  With this new science we now understand what love is, what creates it, what destroys it, and how to revive it! In this unique retreat we help you and your partner understand and then experience what is a proven method to find each other again. We know how to create a loving bond and how to shape that love in a way that helps you as a couple create and/or strengthen your bond with each other.

So, what's more important than your relationship? 

Come, enhance what you have, re-kindle your relationship fire, or repair the rift that is between you! Come to a Hold Me Tight® Tri-Cities and find your love again!

Visit http://www.holdmetighttricities.com for more information, dates, times, and to register!  

"We Don't Need to Go to Therapy!

I make a living as a counseling psychologist, and I do alright. However, I think I would be making a LOT more money if I had a dollar for every time I heard a client say in my office that "my husband said he didn't think we needed to come to therapy." Or "My wife made it clear early on what she thought about going to therapy, so we never went until now (15 years later!)." Something of this version is not uncommon at all to hear, as that person is now sitting in my office broken-hearted when their spouse left them, or they come together when their relationship is dangling by a thread.

MYTHS ABOUT COUPLE THERAPY

I find it very unfortunate and disconcerting that negative views of therapy, either individual or couple/family therapy still abide today. Often there is a lot of shame around the fact that someone is struggling to the point that they are reaching for solutions, and this is most saddening to me.  Our early colonizing Americans prided themselves on "rugged individualism" stemming from our early Euro-American ancestors and pioneers. "Do it on my own" or "figure it out for yourself" or "If it is to be it's up to me" are some milder spoken phrases that really imply "suck it up, and deal with it" or worse"quite whining" when we find ourselves in emotional pain or distress individually or as a couple.  These phrases whether spoken to us by others, or internally said to ourselves, inflict more shame and pain on top of our already hurting hearts and lives. Some of the sad myths that circulate about attending therapy keep us from getting the help we need in a timely way, and can increase the pain we're already feeling. Some of those myths are:

If we just ignore it, it will go away. 

This is just not true, especially in the case of couple's therapy. If there are continual negative patterns in your relationship where you feel hurt, ignored, not good enough, unhappy, disconnected and lonely, these are not likely to go away, but often become even bigger and more painful over time. Time does not heal all wounds, when there is an infection in the body, time makes it worse. A LOT worse, and can kill you if you don't get treatment. In the case of a marriage, perceptions of our partner can become narrower and narrower in a negative view, as John Gottman, a foremost relationship researcher coined it, Negative Sentiment Override, can take over and everything in the relationship begins to be colored as if our partner is our enemy and doesn't love or care about us. This is a dangerous place to be, and the longer it goes on it can be the beginning of a death keel to the relationship, or can take a very long time to recover from even with help.

We don't need therapy, we can figure it out on our own

Sometimes, this may be true. Sometimes we can have stressful things happen in an otherwise connective relationship. If you and your partner have a history of being able to turn to each other, soften and repair so you can find your way back to a loving and connective relationship--then you're right--you might not need therapy. However, if you don't have a history of being able to repair, to approach each other with tenderness and kindness, giving each other the benefit of the doubt and being able to share your hearts with each other--stress can and will only make things worse between you over time. What I often see in my practice is that couples managed their relationship okay until life stressors intensified and the couple didn't know how to turn to each other for support and comfort. This is when the couple begins to struggle. They lose the ability to keep their emotional balance together and their relationship can topple into distress and can flounder for many years. The statistics say on average a couple waits 6 years after things go south before they seek treatment! Getting help instead of just living with it is vital.  It is also very, very important to get a trained couple's therapist who can help you and your partner move through your stuck places, reconnect, and heal.

You're the one that needs to go to therapy, there's not a problem with me!

I see a fair amount of individuals starting out in therapy with me, but usually by the end of the first session they tell me that the real reason they are there is to fix their relationship! It's really hard to do couple's therapy with only one partner, or make anything between you and your partner better without both of you being there. If there is a problem between you and your partner, just one of you coming is not going to fix it.  No matter how thin the pancake, it ALWAYS has two sides!  If your relationship isn't working, if your partner is complaining about how they feel the need to get therapy together, listen to them and respond!!  One of the saddest things I hear more often than I'd like is, "my wife wanted to go to therapy years ago, and I told her she could go but I'm not!" This said by a man whose wife has filed for divorce or separation and he's in therapy--by himself.

 Or the couple that finally makes a quick stop at my office as a way to say "we did everything, even therapy and it didn't work" just before the each land in a lawyer's office for a divorce. This approach is more like avoiding preventative screenings and denying obvious symptoms for years until late stage 4 cancer has completely metastasized and then saying treatment didn't work! You can wait too long to get help and sometimes the relationship won't recover.

If we go to therapy then we REALLY are screwed up!

To this myth I ask, who is sickest, those who go to a doctor, or those who don't?  If you have a broken arm or a broken bone does it mean you're messed up to go to a doctor? If you have a persistent fever and go to a doctor for medication, does it mean you're weak and something is terribly wrong with you? Yet, somehow in our culture we have a lurking belief that to see a therapist means you are weak and terminally flawed and should hang your head in shame or hide it from the world that you need help! There is no shame in getting help, we are all in this struggle of life together and life can get messy and difficult! Many, many couples struggle to feel a sense of security between them and need therapeutic intervention to find their way.  It doesn't mean you are weak to seek help, quite the opposite. Only the truly courageous and brave are willing to push past the stigma that is unfortunate in our society, and seek help for their struggles.

GET HELP, GET IT EARLY

I can't emphasize enough how important it is when your relationship is floundering to get help, and get it before little things become big things. When I have a young newlywed couple come to me and talk about the struggles they are having with their relationship, I applaud them! While they still have positive sentiment in their relationship taking care of those negative patterns before they become deeply rutted and fixed negative dynamics between them is so important!  On the other hand, I have many, many older couples, sometimes in their late 40's, 50's, or even 60's, come to me after a life-time of deeply rutted negative and fixed patterns of interaction with each other. They love each other, but they don't know how to connect and their bond is very damaged. It can take years to help them repair and create love again in their relationship. 

 I'm an avid gardener. I love to plant fruit and vegetables and harvest fresh homegrown food from the labor of my own hands. The one thing I don't like about gardening, however, is pulling weeds. One year I was extra busy and avoided weeding the garden for several weeks at the beginning of the growing season. What had been just a few weeds that could have easily been handled in a few minutes, had spread and began to completely overrun my garden!  The weeds were stunting the growth of my newly planted tenderlings by taking up the water supply and invading the roots of my poor little plants that were struggling to survive.  It took me half a day to get the weeds under control while. Had I been attentive to my fledgling garden just for a few minutes every other day things would have never gotten to that point and threatened the survival of my garden. The analogy applies to our relationships. Early prevention and repair is essential, and if a couple is unable to make that repair themselves, they need to find a trained and skilled therapist to help them learn how to repair.

Caveat Emptor: Find A Trained Couple's Therapist

In my master's program before I began practicing therapy, I had one course on family treatment. Yet, I was told after I graduated I could hang my "shingle" and advertise for individual as well as "couple" therapy without more training. This is not an uncommon thing for those coming out of grad school programs unless they are specifically a marriage and family therapist, which I was not. I didn't have the training nor skill to treat couple's back then and fortunately, I refused to see them until I got more training! Doing couple's treatment is VERY different than working with individuals, and requires a different skill set. Learning to work effectively with couples takes a lot of training and experience! In fact, working with someone who does not have very specific training to do couple's therapy can make matters worse. As Dr. Bill Doherty says, therapy without a well trained therapist can actually be DANGEROUS!! Yikes!!

 We don't want to make things worse when things are already bad! Yet, indeed well-intentioned but untrained in the nuances of working with couples, the untrained therapist can send a couple over the edge into what Doherty calls, marital suicide! However, there is a solution to this problem! 

EMOTIONALLY FOCUSED THERAPY FOR COUPLES

We are so very fortunate today, as it was but just a few decades ago we didn't have any where near the amount of knowledge or research and training we do today to help couples and families. Dr. Sue Johnson  found in her doctoral program that the literature was woefully lacking on how to approach couples and families in a way that really got to the core of the matter. Over the course of the next 30 years not only did she discover a map for how to help couples from distress to resolution, she published myriads of articles backing up her findings.  She and others continue to research and assert Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) as the most empirically validated and successful treatments for couples and families that exists today.  When engaged with a trained and certified EFT therapist, between 70%-90% of couples completely resolve their distress and/or get better, and have lasting change that holds up over time. Their relationships continue to improve for years after treatment is over! This is unparalleled success in the world of couple's therapy where the statistics of treatments other than EFT have at most a 35% success rate and that is not lasting. Follow-up studies with other treatments show a decline in the couple's relationship with time.

The reason why EFT is so successful is because we finally have cracked the code to love and discovered the real root of couple distress! Click Here to see a video of Sue talking about this form of therapy. Because of all this amazing research and the efforts of Sue Johnson, we know what causes distress between couples, we know what repairs it, and how to do that within the session! Even better, Dr. Johnson has created an International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy that offers extensive training and certification in this form of treatment! EFT continues to spread far and wide and many, many therapists are gaining the training and skills to duplicate these amazing statistical successes in their own home offices. 

HOLD ME TIGHT®

In addition to the trainings and certification programs, Sue Johnson has created a program or workshop for couples that therapists offer around the globe. Hold Me Tight® workshops are based on her best selling book

by the same name, and are life-changing for many couples. She also has a New York Best Selling book that I personally recommend, Love Sense. Couples come for two fun-packed days of educational and experiential time with their partner where they learn a new way to relate and connect with each other. Instruction, video examples, and seven conversations the couple have with each other during the two days are the essential components of these relationship-changing workshops. Therapists trained in EFT who volunteer come and assist at the workshop to give you and your partner excellent support in the conversations, as needed. A Hold Me Tight® workshop is a great way for a couple to come, learn together, experience a difference in their relationship, and discover if they need further therapeutic support after attending. If requested, referrals to therapists in the area that are trained in EFT can be made.  Hold me Tight® Workshops are held all over the country, check out the link to find one closest to you. 

Hold Me Tight® Tri-Cities 

Hold Me Tight® Tri-Cities is held bi-annually in the beautiful Richland, Washington. Dr. Carol Ann Conrad, EdD a certified EFT therapist and Supervisor with over a decade of experience treating couples and families, has been leading these workshops locally for several years. Come and have a great time with your partner whether you just want to enhance what you already have in your relationship, need some help in finding the connection and spark again, or are trying to decide to stay together, this workshop is for all couples. Don't wait--nothing is more important than your relationship and your family. They are worth investing your time and money!