Episode 40: Dr. Robert Grant on Internal Family Systems Therapy
“What’s healing is the self to part relationship. And that relationship gets built based on the part being able to tell its story without repercussions.”
In this episode of the Numinus podcast, Dr. Joe speaks with Dr. Robert Grant. Dr. Grant is an Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapist, a ketamine-assisted psychotherapist, a pulmonary physician, a professor of medicine at UCSF, a former researcher in HIV prevention and treatment, and a cofounder of the Healing Realms Center. The Healing Realms Center is a clinic specializing in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy.
Dr. Grant is especially well known for his work as an IFS therapist specializing in ketamine treatments. IFS was developed by Dr. Richard C. Schwartz. It is a therapy based on the notion that the human mind is made up of inner parts. And healing involves the cultivation of harmony among these parts. It is commonly used in the treatment of post-traumatic stress.
In this interview Dr. Joe and Dr. Grant explored:
How his research into preventing HIV led him to studying IFS
What “parts” mean in the IFS model
The three most common types of parts: Managers, Exiles, and Firefighters
What “self” mean in the context of IFS
How parts become burdened by trauma
The role of “self” in healing
The 6 F’s: Find, Focus, Flesh it out, Feel, beFriend, and Fear
What ‘unblending’ is
Why IFS fits so well with psychedelics
Here is more information on subjects mentioned in this episode:
Dr. Grant mentions a documentary in the beginning of the interview. He doesn’t remember exactly which one, but he believes this could be it
Annie and Michael Mithoefer, IFS therapists who helped conduct and design the MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD phase 2 trials by MAPS
More quotes from Dr. Grant from the interview:
“It was the human connection that was curative. And the mescaline was helpful maybe because it facilitated that connection.”
“Other people may trigger different parts of us that give us an opportunity to learn about our inner processes.”
“‘Self’ is the part of us that can see our own trauma without being re-traumatized.”
“Healing is a process of hearing out that inner dialogue. So we can really develop a relationship with our parts.”
“Sometimes spaciousness actually fosters connection because it allows us to see each other more clearly.”
“Parts are still there after the healing process. You’re not trying to get rid of them. You’re just trying to allow them to be seen and to play healthy roles that are playful, pleasant, and productive to a certain extent.”
Here are some highlights from their conversation:
Let’s talk about healing. That’s where I wanted to go next. You said things like, ‘this part needs to tell their story.’ And you gave the example earlier about, maybe someone coming to therapy because they feel confused about whether to stay in or leave a relationship. And that the purpose of the therapy is not to arrive at a conclusion, but to create space for these stories to be heard. Can you tell me what’s healing about having these parts express themselves?
It’s the beginning of the healing process. So I think that what’s healing is the self to part relationship. And so that relationship gets built based on the part being able to tell its story without causing a reaction or without having repercussions. So creating a connection between the self and the part by listening to their story is an essential step in the process of building those relationships.
We have a number of heuristics which are actually helpful. And if I can digress a bit, the founder, Rick Schwartz, in his most recent iteration of his book with Marta Sweezy, said that IFS could be conceived of as a psychodynamic theory. And so it is in this lineage of psychodynamic process. And because it does embrace the multiplicity of the mind, it allows for conflicting, psychodynamic relationships within the person.
What I like about IFS is that it goes one step in the direction of giving us tools for uncovering exiled or subconscious material. And so a classically trained psychoanalyst might expect to spend hours or days or years listening to the client on the couch, and eventually the subconscious material will bubble up, either in terms of dream interpretation or day time fantasies or behaviors that create ambivalence within them. I mean, they’ll just wait for it. And I love that idea of just waiting, witnessing. And so I have great respect for thoroughly trained psychoanalysts.
And IFS does give us some tools that allow us to move pretty quickly toward uncovering subconscious or exiled material. And so it has a toolbox that allows us to be expeditious. But I don’t think the process is very different from what a psychoanalyst would do. It’s just a little more guided and a little more intentional.
So one of the heuristics that IFS has is called the 6 F’s, and so I can walk us through those. You want to find parts. So whatever part we want to find, we want to see what’s up for the person. It might be that a single part has very strong feelings that need to be heard out. Or there may be a pair of parts that want to stay in or want to get out, a polarized pair of parts. So you want to find the one or two or three that you’re going to work with on that day. And then you want to focus on them, let them know that you’re here to listen to them. And when I say you, it’s actually the client ‘self; is there to listen to them. Now, the therapist’s ‘self’ energy is also very important in this process, so that the therapist ‘self’ and the client ‘self’ are there to listen to the parts. So, you know, it’s intuitive that that’s reassuring. I mean, if you’re wanting to make friends with someone, what do you do? You focus on them. You look them in the eye and you focus and then you flesh out.
So that’s the third F. ‘Tell me more about that. Tell me what that was like for you. Tell me what was the worst part of that or the best part of that? What did you do with that?’ And then there’s this phrase that we use is, ‘how do you feel toward the part?’ And that’s actually a key step because, you know, if you asked me, Bob, ;how do you feel toward that part that’s carrying shame?; And if I say something like, ‘well, I actually dislike that part, it’s annoying. It bothered me my whole life. Why would I be ashamed of it?’ Those are not self qualities. So what that tells you when I answer that way is that it’s not a self to part relationship with being developed. You’re hearing from another part of me that is trying to exile that part carrying the shame. And so you would at that point having asked me how I feel toward the part, but having not heard from self, you would say, ‘okay, can you give attention to the part that wants to get rid of that shame and let’s find out about it. What is it trying to do? What is afraid will happen if we heard about the shame? What would it rather do if we didn’t have to suppress that part that had all the shame all the time?’
And, you know, and so we change the focus to the part that came up in reaction to the other part, and we continue to do that. And then we’ll ask, ‘how do you feel toward that part that wants to get rid of the shame?’ And, you know, at some point I’ll say, ‘well, I’m curious about what is it trying to do? And I want to know more. And that’s self energy. And so then that’s our green light to start doing the real work of developing self to part relationships. So the feel toward is one of 6 F’s.
And then and then you want to unblend as much as possible. You want the part to be able to see the self, and the self to see the part and and parts don’t like doing that. They like being connected to self. They like being connected to self so much that they stick to self, like a glove. And so one thing that I like to say is, ‘can we ask the part to give us some distance and spaciousness so that you can see it better and so it can see you better?’ So one of the beautiful things about connection is whether it’s between people or within our parts, within ourselves. Sometimes the spaciousness actually fosters connection because it allows us to see each other more clearly. And then, you know, that can be healthy and relationships as well. Sometimes that relationship I mentioned earlier, ‘do I stay and do I go out?’ Maybe there is a middle ground. It’s, you know, let’s just take some space and, you know, we don’t spend every day of our lives together. But we think we can walk and have some spaciousness. And that may be all the relationship wants or needs.
And it’s the same way within parts within ourselves, but sometimes asking them to unblend, they’ll say, ‘no, no, I cannot unblend.’ They’re desperate for more attention. But they said, ‘Well, no, it’s if you just give us some space, then I can see you better. You can see me better.’
So there’s unblending and then there’s befriending, just continuing to say, ‘it’s so great that I’ve been trying to protect Bob from feeling shame. You’ve done such a great job. And look how well he’s done in school and that has led to a career. And that’s so great.’ But do you really want to keep doing that all the time? And often they’ll say, ‘No, I’m exhausted.’ I’d rather that Bob, if there were a way for Bob to deal with his shame without me having to work all the time, I would like that, but I don’t think there is a way to do that. That’s why I’ve constructed this job. So the part may say that. You could say, ‘well, you know, I think there is a way to help Bob with the shame without you having to work all the time.’ Sometimes the part would say, ‘I’m not sure that’s possible, but I would want that. So, you know, let’s give that a try.’ And then you can ask, you know, that protective part to rest and it can stay close and watch if it wants, just in case something comes up that makes it afraid. It can step back in if it needs to. But that then gives you an opportunity to go back to that exile, which initially caused the protected part to come up. But that part now is befriended and it’s willing to rest. And so you can work with the exile material.
And then ultimately you would want to get to a point where whatever caused the burden of shame to come to that exile part, then that part can have a chance to leave that situation and unburden that shame. And then the whole system can appreciate that , ‘Yeah, there was a way to deal with the shame that didn’t involve having to compulsively work all the time.’
So the healing process is really one of befriending the parts and airing them out and ultimately giving the exiled parts a chance to be retrieved from the hard situation and then to unburden the beliefs that were important to survive that hard situation. And then to have the rest of the parts come back into the situation, and ask them, ‘did you see what happened there?’ And some of them will come back in and say, ‘oh, yeah, wow, I’m impressed. I didn’t think there was a way to solve that problem. But yeah, there was.’ So great.
And some of them may come back and be a little frightened. Like the example I gave might say, ‘you know, I spent my whole life working obsessively to do well in school. And now what do I do? I don’t know what my job is.’ ‘It’s okay. You know, I’ll work with you. There’s lots of jobs that you could do. Maybe you can work on writing a book or something other than school.’ Maybe oftentimes the job that the protectors want to do has nothing to do with what they were doing. The part of me that wanted to do well in school might want to take up finger painting or, you know, writing poetry like I was doing in college. Maybe they want to go back and do that or, you know, like, hey, who knows? But letting them do what they want, it’s an important part of being a good self for them, a good self leader for them.
I mean the parts are there, they’re still there after the healing process. You’re not trying to get rid of any part. You’re just trying to allow them to be seen and to play their healthy roles, which are roles that are playful and pleasant and productive to a certain extent.
“I envision a day where people would be able to choose to do MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in a safe context to be either able to heal from something together or to grow together, and to support the relationship.”
In this episode of the Numinus podcast, Dr. Joe speaks with Dr. Anne Wagner. Anne is a Toronto-based psychologist and couples therapist, a researcher studying MDMA-assisted therapy, and the founder of Remedy Centre. Remedy is a social venture that provides individual, couples, and group therapy and reinvests the profit from these services into the Remedy Institute, which is “a new charity focused on supporting mental health innovation & research, including with psychedelics, training for aspiring mental health professionals, as well as low to no-cost therapy services for marginalized communities.”
More quotes from Dr. Anne Wagner from the interview:
“We’ve been doing the first trials that have been anything other than the inner-directed supported approach. So there’s a lot to ask, and a lot to investigate.”
“Not only does bringing someone along with you on your healing journey provide support, but it also provides the partner with their own support and healing.”
“It’s been really interesting seeing folks work with MDMA to help as a catalyst for that meaning-making process.”
“People take turns of who is struggling and who is okay. And that can be something that is really nice where they learn to ride the waves of that together.”
“I really try to help people frame their ideas around not expecting to have an expected outcome.”
Here are some highlights of their conversation:
Before we get to the trial that you’re planning, I want to ask you a quick one about the study going on right now. What’s interesting is that you described it as like a meaning making framework and so it’s very cognitive. And the trends and the buzz and all the excitement is around relational therapy, somatic therapy. Like these are the things that are bubbling up for me in terms of what approaches are being used in psychedelics. And this is a very cognitive approach.
I’m just curious how you think about that in the sense that I don’t know how many times I’ve heard like, ‘well, you can’t just do like cognitive therapy with someone doing MDMA. It’s just not somehow adequate to touch the depths of the experiences people are having.’ So just really curious about your thoughts there.
I respectfully disagree with thoughts that are the impressions that are there around it. And I think it’s partly because of the–it is possible to do cognitive therapy in a way that feels stiff and disjointed and doesn’t go into the depths. But I think if you’re delivering it in a way and working with the participant in a way that’s bringing in all of their experiences, it’s an incredibly rich way of working with everything that comes up.
And so of course, like even though it’s cognitively focused in terms of meaning making, we’re working with emotions, we’re working with sensations, we’re working with behaviours. It’s not excluding any of those components.
And it’s helping folks not only work with what has happened and the interpretation of what’s there, but also what’s happening now and what’s going into the future. It allows for the sense of my everyday life. ‘Oh, this is how this is going to change and this is how I can implement it.’ And that we find really effective.
It’s been really interesting seeing folks work with the MDMA sessions to help as a catalyst for that meaning making process because there is so much meaning making that happens in the MDMA sessions. And you’re just providing a bit of a frame to help that continue afterwards. So I always think of that as the catalyst.
I came up with this analogy the other day that has stuck around for me. I’d be curious if you’re on board with it. If you get a bacterial infection like strep throat or something. Your body could probably heal it, right? No problem. You’re healthy, you have a functioning immune system. It might take a little bit longer and you may not feel so great, but you can probably handle it. Or you can go to the doctor and get a medicine to help your body heal some health problems.
And I’ve started to think about maybe psychedelics in general or MDMA for couples where there may be something broken or something challenging happening in the couple that if they were to go for walks and go out for dinner and whatever, take the time to invest in themselves, they could probably heal through it. But MDMA is a medicine that might help speed up or deepen that process in some way. Which means that there may be situations in some future state where you can go to the clinic with your partner and get MDMA couples therapy to accelerate healing that might otherwise happen organically. Your thoughts on that?
Yeah, I do think that that’s a possibility. I think the medicine analogy is an interesting one because I actually had this conversation earlier this week with someone who was raising the point that I think sometimes people think that the taking of the pill is the thing that will cure them and be helpful. And it’s actually nothing. Like as far as we know, there isn’t anything inherent yet in the taking of that pill with MDMA in particular, that would have that effect.
It’s the psychotherapy, the psychological process that happens after that would create that shift. So I do think, though, that the experience, the MDMA session as being something that can help speed it up. It can help you do a good piece of work, a good chunk of work in a quick period of time. That’s true. And so that’s where I think it could exactly be really helpful.
I envision a day where people would be able to do that and choose to do that as something to either–with support and in a safe context–be able either to heal from something together or to grow together in a different way and to support their relationship. That would be fantastic to have that capability and that possibility.
Episode 24: Love, Attachment, and Couples Therapy with Dr. Sue Johnson
“Relationships are the keystone of our lives. They are as important to us as our next
breath.”
In this episode of the Numinus podcast, Dr. Joe speaks with Dr. Sue Johnson. Sue is a pioneer in the field of couples therapy. Alongside Dr. Les Greenberg, Dr. Johnson developed emotionally focused couples and family therapy (EFT), which is a couples therapy based on the newest research surrounding relationships: attachment theory. She is also the author of many books like Hold Me Tight, Created for Connection, and Love Sense and is the founder of the International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy (ICEEFT), which offers training to therapists in EFT.
Dr. Johnson and Dr. Joe spoke about:
What is emotionally focused couples and family therapy (EFT)?
What is attachment theory?
The importance of building a securely attached relationship rather than focusing on communication skills over emotions
How we are bonding mammals
The 3 factors that define the quality of intimate relationships
The 5 stages that an EFT therapist guides their clients through
The differences between EFT and more conventional therapies
The state of the modern world and EFT’s perspective on it
If you’d like to seek services in couples therapy and EFT, please visit our site for more information.
Could you take us through the basics of attachment theory and how that informs emotion-focused couples therapy?
One way of thinking of what EFT is about and capturing it very fast is that EFT–you could think of EFT as a model, as a conversation between Carl Rogers, which is my basic training as an individual therapist. It’s a conversation between Carl Rogers who believes that it’s the therapist’s job to believe in people’s ability to grow. Who was dedicated to non-pathologizing and to listening to people and believing that acceptance and a powerful safe connection was healing in itself.
So it’s a conversation between Carl Rogers who invited therapists to listen to their client’s experience, to take it seriously, and to reflect that back in a way that allowed their client to continue to process it and engage with their experience in a different way, to create corrective emotional experiences.
And then you have Salvador Minuchin who would come in and say that you have to look at people in the context of relationships. And that you have to look at the dance, the drama in people’s relationships and how those dramas take over people’s lives and define them. You have to find ways to understand these powerful feedback loops that you see people caught in throughout their lives. Where they almost create the interpersonal problems that they have.
‘My only way of dealing with my emotions is to shut down and shut you out. When I shut you out, I alarm you.’ Because you are a bonding mammal, your brain is designed to be alarmed by the person you count on shutting you out. So when I shut you out, you become alarmed and you become angry with me. And then I hear everything I’ve ever been afraid of, which is you’re going to reject me. I’m not good enough. So I shut down more.
And this kind of feedback loop that I’m talking to you about–some folks who are trained just in individual therapy don’t really think in this sort of systems, process oriented level.
So it’s a conversation between Carl Rogers, Salvador Minuchin about how to intervene. You’ve got to look at the relational systems people are involved in and the pattern of interactions, the drama in their–how people move their feet in the dance. And you’ve got to look how people put their emotions together, their emotional life. And you got to look at it in a non-pathologizing way. But that’s still not enough.
If you’re going to work with close relationships in couples and families, and even individual therapy, you have to have this awareness if you’re going to be effective.
You have to listen to John Bowlby who basically said, ‘we’re bonding mammals,’ and gave us a map to our basic needs and basic fears. He basically said–and this has been borne out now by so much science in our world–emotional isolation is traumatizing for human beings and evokes pretty dysfunctional responses because when you’re afraid, your whole world narrows down, and your response repertoire usually narrows down, your ability to explore and open up narrows down. And many, many of us then get completely stuck.
So Bowlby said that we have to understand ourselves as bonding mammals and how these relationships with others are the keystone of our lives. They are as important to us as our next breath.
John Bowlby basically said that all the dysfunction that you see–if you want to call it that–in your clients, all the places that people get stuck, are distortions of things that in other contexts would be perfectly reasonable, healthy responses. I think Rogers would have agreed with that.
Bowlby said that when people feel safely connected, they are able to be expansive and learn and grow. People need safe haven, secure base relationships. They need safe haven people to go to with their vulnerability where they will receive comfort and reassurance and get their emotional balance. We give clients emotional balance in EFT. They need their loved ones to provide a secure base to go out from.
What we understand now is that as adults, there is something called constructive dependency. The strongest among us and the ones that are able to grow and change and be resilient can turn to other people in our minds, and also in our lives, and use those other people as a resource. And that’s constructive dependency.
I’d love to hear you talk about these sorts of patterns of disconnection that happen–I believe you called it the tango. Maybe you could just give us examples of the tango.
Patterns of disconnection in couples in our society–the most popular show in town is that one person starts to tune into the fact that there is emotional disconnection. They’re asking the question: Are you there for me? And somehow the answer comes back ‘No’ or ‘Maybe.’ So they start pushing to change the dance, to change the relationship. So they became more anxious, more demanding. They start sounding critical. ‘Why don’t you…’ ‘You never…’ ‘How could you?’ ‘Can’t you see that…?’ And they start pushing.
The trouble is that neither partner is not often very clear about what they’re pushing for. They might say, ‘I just want you to do chores.’ But when you really hear it, it’s not about chores. It’s about, ‘I want to know if I say something to you that matters to me that you care. I want to know that my pain matters. I want to know that my happiness matters. I want to know that I matter to you.’
So we see this pattern of pursue, withdraw–I get angry with you and more desperate, and you reason with me or don’t become emotionally available. You turn away. You shut me down. You shut down and shut me out. The more you shut down and shut me out, the more desperate I become. We’re obviously reducing a complex phenomenon to something simple. But that’s the most popular dance that creates distress in relationships.
So we help people see that dance. We help them see how it leaves them both desperate and alone. And then we help people move into being more open and connected with each other.
And the tango that you talked about, which is the thing that we do in almost every session across the stages of therapy, whether we’re trying to help people see the negative dance they’re caught in in stage one. Or moving into stage two, helping them create new moves in their dance like really open up to each other and help each other with their fears and needs, help each other so that their feelings of vulnerability have a solution. And the solution is the connection with the other person. The connection with the other person is the solution to the problems.
Once people are connected safely, they can deal with almost any of the other problems they come in with like sharing chores or parenting or finances or what to do in bed. You can’t talk about any of those things effectively if you don’t have some sort of team.
The way the therapist does this is that they do something called the EFT tango. I dance Argentinian tango. So that label is mine [laughs]. But the reason I called it the EFT tango is because most people think of tango in terms of ‘Dancing with the Stars,’ which is horrible. Real tango–which you can see in any city in the world right now–is all about attunement. It’s not about the steps at all. The steps can be amazingly simple. It’s about tuning in, being able to stand up with a perfect stranger, listen to some beautiful music, and tune in to that stranger’s signals, that stranger’s intention, that stranger’s body moves and emotional tone, and then come together and move together with this music as the structure. So that’s why I called it the tango.
If I were to describe it for you very simply, the EFT therapist, whether they’re working with individuals, couples, or families–move one is that you stay in the present moment. You stay in the present moment and you look with your attachment glasses on at the patterns that are happening in front of you. You look at the emotional patterns and the patterns between people if you have more than one person in the room or even if you have an individual person who’s talking about their relationship with mother, etcetera.
You Matter to Your Partner… and That’s the Problem
When couples are not getting along, the last thing they feel is important to one another. Instead they feel like enemies, roommates or even worse, like strangers.
When I tell couples the reason they are having relationship problems is because they matter so much to each other, I often receive quizzical looks.
John and Linda sit in my office telling me that they repeatedly argue about how much time John spends in his “man cave” playing video games and watching sports. Linda rolls her eyes and says that “real men” don’t enjoy such brainless activities. John snaps back that Linda’s obsession with yoga doesn’t seem like rocket science. Linda starts to cry and John lets out a big sigh and stares down at the floor.
John and Linda have only been in my office for 5 minutes, but they have already shared enough for me to know how important they are to one another.
Embedded in their arguments fraught with anger and blaming is a subtext of pain and disconnection as well as a longing to be loved, wanted and accepted. Using Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), an evidence-based couple therapy founded by Dr. Sue Johnson, I help couples see through the fog of their distress and identify what they are really fighting about.
After a few sessions of EFT Linda shares that when John plays video games she feels unimportant and like he doesn’t want to spend time with her. She explains that she feels invisible and that the only way she can get his attention is by getting angry and complaining. John seems confused and says that with Linda always “on his case” he feels like a huge disappointment to her, and wonders why she would want to spend time with someone she seems so turned off by.
He adds that by staying away from Linda he can avoid more arguing. Linda complains and blames as a way of protesting the disconnection between her and John. She wants a reaction from John because any reaction no matter how negative is better than no reaction. John withdraws and shuts down in order to protect the relationship from further damage.
Once partners realize that the arguing and distancing are their attempts to preserve the relationship, they are able to stop seeing each other as the enemy and start understanding how much they matter to one another. Linda takes John’s hand and says she didn’t realize her blaming was making him feel like a disappointment. John’s body visibly relaxes. He tells Linda he feels sad that she has felt invisible.
By reaching underneath their anger and sharing their softer feelings, John and Linda have found a way to connect.
As an EFT therapist, one of the main things I do is help partners speak from the heart when they feel disconnected from one another.
So often when we feel hurt by our partners we react in a way that scares them off. When we attack or shut down, our partner feels threatened, and cannot see that the reason we are so upset is because they matter so much.
We are more sensitive to our partners than we realize or would like to admit. What they say or don’t say, can knock us off our feet. A sigh of exasperation, a distracted look, or a tone one notch higher than usual can send a cold wind blowing through an otherwise peaceful moment.
And that’s ok. In relationships, we are going to make mistakes and hurt each other. We are human and imperfect and disconnection is inevitable. What matters is how we react when the disconnection happens.
Do we blame or withdraw? Or do we reach for our partners and share from the heart, so that they know we are upset because they are the most important person in our lives.
It’s risky, and it’s vulnerable to let our partners see how much we need them.
But it’s an invitation to connect. And that kind of invitation is very difficult to turn down.
The Blame Game
When we argue with our partner, we usually walk away feeling like they were wrong, and we were right.
As we clench our fists and feel the tension in our shoulders, angry thoughts race through our minds: They shouldn’t have spoken to me that way! They should have picked up the dry cleaning! They should have remembered our anniversary!
We’re angry and we feel righteous and justified in our anger. The trouble is, when we walk away feeling “right”, we are also walking away from our partners.
One part of us feels like we won, but deeper down we know that if there is a tension between us and we are distant rather than close, that nobody has won in this situation.
Funny enough, what we know from attachment theory and years of research with couples, is that all of these disputes are actually partners’ attempts to connect to and feel closer! So how is it that that in our attempt to get closer to each other, the result is just the opposite? And if being right is in fact our ultimate goal then why, when we walk away feeling “right” don’t we feel the joy, elation and satisfaction that winning generally brings?
Frequently, when working with couples, I ask, “What is it that being right will do for you? How will it help if your partner says he or she was wrong?” Ultimately what comes up is that we want to feel that our partner understands us, and more specifically, that they understand how their actions or lack of action impacts us.
When we feel our partners don’t understand how we feel, or see our perspective, it can feel frustrating and lonely. When our partner promises to help us with something and then forgets, we say, “I can’t believe I reminded you ten times and you still didn’t do it!” when what we really want them to know is that when they forgot, this made us feel unimportant and at the bottom of their priority list.
When our partner raises their voice and calls us lazy or stupid, we may snap back, “You’re a monster, just like your father!” when what we really mean is “your words sting, it hurts when you talk to me that way.”
The trouble is, that in our attempt to be “right,” rather than pulling our partner close so that they can see our hurt, our blaming stance pushes them away and makes them feel the need to defend themselves.
As humans, when we are under threat, all of our energy goes into surviving that threat, and our ability to tune into our partner’s emotions becomes zilch.
In my couple sessions, when one partner turns and shares how hurt and vulnerable they feel, they are often surprised at the empathy this pulls from the other partner.
Suddenly their partner can lower their shield of defense, because they are no longer facing an attack.
Instead they see that the person they love is in pain. The message shifts from “you’re wrong” into “you are so important to me, and therefore your words and actions impact me a lot.”
This new message pulls for closeness, understanding and soothing, rather than defensiveness and stonewalling. Often when a new message of vulnerability replaces a blaming message, partners say, “Wow, I didn’t know you felt that way, I really feel like giving you a hug right now.”
Sitting in the therapist’s chair watching this scene unfold, I often feel my eyes tearing up, touched by this special moment of connection between two people. So next time you find yourself walking away from your partner feeling “right”, I encourage you to ask yourself whether being “right” is really what you are longing for?
If so, then I would encourage you to stick to your position. But if what you are longing for is in fact to feel understood, soothed and held by your partner, I would encourage you to take the risk to share your softer feelings.
You may just be surprised by the response you get.
Kokin trained at the University of Ottawa with EFT founder Dr. Sue Johnson. The hiring reflects the growing presence of EFT in the field of couples therapy, and Dr. Johnson’s approach represents a real paradigm shift. “EFT isn’t your traditional couples therapy,” explained Numinus Clinic director Dr. Joe Flanders. “It’s a cutting-edge approach that’s really catching on and making a difference in couples’ lives.” Kokin has been on staff at the Numinus Clinic since September 2013.
About EFT
EFT is different from traditional couples therapies that teach teach negotiation and problem-solving skills. EFT based on the premise that humans are wired for connection, and that every person has a basic need to feel safe, respected, valued, and loved. When connections break down, couples resort to unhelpful coping strategies such as nagging or withdrawal, creating a vicious cycle of negative interactions. EFT therapists like Kokin help couples identify maladaptive patterns and move toward honest, open, and loving relationship patterns in which both partners’ needs are met. “If a relationship is like a dance,” Kokin said, “rather than teaching you new steps to the old dance, EFT gets to the heart of the problem and teaches couples a completely new way to dance.”
About Jessica Kokin
Kokin has trained with experts in EFT, including founder Dr. Sue Johnson, author of the classic EFT book Hold Me Tight and Lovesense, a recent release about the new science of love. Kokin is presently completing her rigorous training to become officially certified in EFT, and Dr. Johnson couldn’t be more pleased: “Jessica is a wonderful, creative young clinician who has immersed herself in this empirically validated model of therapy. She can lead couples from despair and disengagement to a more caring connection.” Johnson added, “I’m so pleased that Jessica will be helping to expand the EFT community in Montreal.”
EFT at Numinus
The Numinus Clinic is pleased to now offer Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy. “EFT is part of the new generation of evidence-based treatments for couples in trouble. I’m thrilled that Numinus has some very talented therapists who specialize in this area,” said clinic director Flanders.
To make an appointment to see Jessica or any of the Numinus therapists, call 1-833-NUMINUS (686-4687)or email info@archive.numinus.com.