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From the notebook

Hold Me Tight

Dr. Sue Johnson

Book Cover

Highlights

  • Introduction (Location 66)
  • Romantic love was all about attachment and emotional bonding. It was all about our wired-in need to have someone to depend on, a loved one who can offer reliable emotional connection and comfort. (Location 104)
  • The message of EFT is simple: Forget about learning how to argue better, analyzing your early childhood, making grand romantic gestures, or experimenting with new sexual positions. Instead, recognize and admit that you are emotionally attached to and dependent on your partner in much the same way that a child is on a parent for nurturing, soothing, and protection. Adult attachments may be more reciprocal and less centered on physical contact, but the nature of the emotional bond is the same. EFT focuses on creating and strengthening this emotional bond between partners by identifying and transforming the key moments that foster an adult loving relationship: being open, attuned, and responsive to each other. (Location 117)
  • PART ONE A New Light on Love (Location 157)
  • Love — A Revolutionary New View (Location 160)
  • Today, though, we can no longer afford to define love as a mysterious force beyond our ken. It has become too important. For better or worse, in the twenty-first century, a love relationship has become the central emotional relationship in most people’s lives. (Location 174)
  • One reason is that we are increasingly living in social isolation. Writers like Robert Putnam in his book Bowling Alone point out that we suffer from a dangerous loss of “social capital.” (This term was coined in 1916 by a Virginia educator, who noted the continuous help, sympathy, and fellowship that neighbors offered each other.) Most of us no longer live in supportive communities with our birth families or childhood friends close at hand. We work longer and longer hours, commute farther and farther distances, and thus have fewer and fewer opportunities to develop close relationships. (Location 176)
  • John O’Donohue puts it, “There is a huge and leaden loneliness settling like a frozen winter on so many humans.” (Location 183)
  • This drive to emotionally attach — to find someone to whom we can turn and say “Hold me tight” — is wired into our genes and our bodies. It is as basic to life, health, and happiness as the drives for food, shelter, or sex. We need emotional attachments with a few irreplaceable others to be physically and mentally healthy — to survive. (Location 194)
  • A NEW THEORY OF ATTACHMENT (Location 196)
  • Attachment theory, at first ridiculed and despised, eventually revolutionized child-rearing methods in North America. (Now when I get to sleep beside my child’s bed as he recovers from an appendicitis operation, I thank John Bowlby.) (Location 256)
  • LOVE AND ADULTS (Location 259)
  • Bowlby talked about “effective dependency” and how being able, from “the cradle to the grave,” to turn to others for emotional support is a sign and source of strength. (Location 270)
  • When they felt secure with their lover, they could reach out and connect easily; when they felt insecure, they either became anxious, angry, and controlling, or they avoided contact altogether and stayed distant. Just what Bowlby and Ainsworth had found with mothers and children. (Location 277)
  • sense of secure connection between romantic partners is key in positive loving relationships and a huge source of strength for the individuals in those relationships. (Location 281)
  • When we feel safely linked to our partners, we more easily roll with the hurts they inevitably inflict, and we are less likely to be aggressively hostile when we get mad at them. (Location 292)
  • Openness to new experience and flexibility of belief seems to be easier when we feel safe and connected to others. Curiosity comes out of a sense of safety; rigidity out of being vigilant to threats. (Location 304)
  • The more we can reach out to our partners, the more separate and independent we can be. (Location 305)
  • Those who felt that their needs were accepted by their partners were more confident about solving problems on their own and were more likely to successfully achieve their own goals. (Location 307)
  • A WEALTH OF EVIDENCE (Location 309)
  • loneliness raises blood pressure to the point where the risk of heart attack and stroke is doubled. (Location 314)
  • emotional isolation is a more dangerous health risk than smoking or high blood pressure, (Location 315)
  • Negative relationships undermine our health. (Location 318)
  • The quality of our love relationships is also a big factor in how mentally and emotionally healthy we are. We have an epidemic of anxiety and depression in our most affluent societies. Conflict with and hostile criticism from loved ones increase our self-doubts and create a sense of helplessness, classic triggers for depression. We need validation from our loved ones. Researchers say that marital distress raises the risk for depression tenfold! (Location 332)
  • Where Did Our Love Go? Losing Connection (Location 357)
  • We have to dive below to discover the basic problem: these couples have disconnected emotionally; they don’t feel emotionally safe with each other. What couples and therapists too often do not see is that most fights are really protests over emotional disconnection. Underneath all the distress, partners are asking each other: Can I count on you, depend on you? Are you there for me? Will you respond to me when I need, when I call? Do I matter to you? Am I valued and accepted by you? Do you need me, rely on me? The anger, the criticism, the demands, are really cries to their lovers, calls to stir their hearts, to draw their mates back in emotionally and reestablish a sense of safe connection. (Location 381)
  • The longer partners feel disconnected, the more negative their interactions become. Researchers have identified several such damaging patterns, and they go by various names. I call the three that I consider the most basic “Demon Dialogues.” They are Find the Bad Guy, the Protest Polka, and Freeze and Flee, (Location 409)
  • most dominant of the trio is the Protest Polka. In this dialogue, one partner becomes critical and aggressive and the other defensive and distant. (Location 412)
  • Eventually, the what of any fight won’t matter at all. When couples reach this point, their entire relationship becomes marked by resentment, caution, and distance. They will see every difference, every disagreement, through a negative filter. (Location 429)
  • The demand-withdraw pattern is not just a bad habit, it reflects a deeper underlying reality: such couples are starving emotionally. They are losing the source of their emotional sustenance. They feel deprived. And they are desperate to regain that nurturance. (Location 447)
  • Happy couples do not talk to each other in any more “skilled” or “insightful” ways than do unhappy couples, Gottman has shown. (Location 451)
  • KEY MOMENTS OF ATTACHMENT AND DETACHMENT (Location 459)
  • When marriages fail, it is not increasing conflict that is the cause. It is decreasing affection and emotional responsiveness, according to a landmark study by Ted Huston of the University of Texas. Indeed, the lack of emotional responsiveness rather than the level of conflict is the best predictor of how solid a marriage will be five years into it. The demise of marriages begins with a growing absence of responsive intimate interactions. The conflict comes later. (Location 498)
  • Emotional Responsiveness — The Key to a Lifetime of Love (Location 506)
  • THE BEGINNING OF EFT (Location 529)
  • These negative patterns always started when one partner tried to reach for the other and could not make safe emotional contact. That was the moment when the Demon Dialogue began. Once a couple grasped that they were both victims of the dialogue and were able to show more of themselves, to risk sharing deeper emotions, then the conflicts calmed down and they felt a little closer. (Location 558)
  • They blame and get aggressive to get a response, any response, or they close down and try not to care. Both are terrified; they are just dealing with it differently. Trouble is, once they start this blame-distance loop, it confirms all their fears and adds to their sense of isolation. (Location 605)
  • Once partners know how to speak their need and bring each other close, every trial they face together simply makes their love stronger. (Location 614)
  • If you know your loved one is there and will come when you call, you are more confident of your worth, your value. And the world is less intimidating when you have another to count on and know that you are not alone. (Location 616)
  • A.R.E. (Location 636)
  • Accessibility: Can I reach you? This means staying open to your partner even when you have doubts and feel insecure. It often means being willing to struggle to make sense of your emotions so these emotions are not so overwhelming. You can then step back from disconnection and can tune in to your lover’s attachment cues. (Location 638)
  • Responsiveness: Can I rely on you to respond to me emotionally? This means tuning in to your partner and showing that his or her emotions, especially attachment needs and fears, have an impact on you. It means accepting and placing a priority on the emotional signals your partner conveys and sending clear signals of comfort and caring when your partner needs them. Sensitive responsiveness always touches us emotionally and calms us on a physical level. (Location 641)
  • Engagement: Do I know you will value me and stay close? The dictionary defines engaged as being absorbed, attracted, pulled, captivated, pledged, involved. Emotional engagement here means the very special kind of attention that we give only to a loved one. We gaze at them longer, touch them more. Partners often talk of this as being emotionally present. (Location 645)
  • THE SEVEN CONVERSATIONS OF EFT (Location 649)
  • first conversation, Recognizing the Demon Dialogues, I encourage the couple to identify the damaging dance they get into, when this dance happens, and how each partner’s moves escalate their confrontations. (Location 654)
  • PART TWO Seven Transforming Conversations (Location 802)
  • Conversation 1: Recognizing the Demon Dialogues (Location 805)
  • Find the Bad Guy could just as easily be called It’s Not Me, It’s You. (Location 856)
  • To help them recognize their Demon Dialogue, I suggest that they: • Stay in the present and focus on what is happening between them right now. • Look at the circle of criticism that spins both of them around. There is no true “start” to a circle. • Consider the circle, the dance, as their enemy and the consequences of not breaking the circle. (Location 885)
  • Now see if you can remember a similar incident with your spouse. What did you use to “win” the fight and prove your innocence? How did you accuse your partner? What are your usual comebacks when you feel cornered? (Location 923)
  • Unlike the obvious attack-attack pattern of Find the Bad Guy, the Protest Polka is more subtle. One partner is demanding, actively protesting the disconnection; the other is withdrawing, quietly protesting the implied criticism. Dissatisfied partners, missing each other’s signal, often complain of a fuzzy “communication problem” or “constant tension.” (Location 939)
  • If I appeal to you for emotional connection and you respond intellectually to a problem, rather than directly to me, on an attachment level I will experience that as “no response.” This is one of the reasons that the research on social support uniformly states that people want “indirect” support, that is, emotional confirmation and caring from their partners, rather than advice. Often men say that they do not know how to respond on an emotional level. But they do! They do it when they feel safe, most often with their children. The tragedy here is that a man may be doing his best to answer his wife’s concerns by offering advice and solutions, not understanding that what she is really seeking from him is emotional engagement. His engagement is the solution for her. (Location 1060)
  • Being able to recognize and accept protests about separation and exit the Protest Polka is crucial to a healthy relationship. If a safe, loving bond is to stay strong and grow, couples have to be able to repair moments of disconnection and step out of common dead-end ways of dealing with them, ways that actually exacerbate disconnection by destroying trust and safety. (Location 1100)
  • This is the Freeze and Flee dance that frequently evolves from the Protest Polka. This is what happens when the pursuing, critical partner gives up trying to get the spouse’s attention and goes silent. If this cycle runs its course, the aggressive partner will grieve the relationship and then will detach and leave. (Location 1150)
  • The extreme distancing of Freeze and Flee is a response to the loss of connection and the sense of helplessness concerning how to restore it. One partner will usually tell a story of pursuing the mate, protesting the lack of connection, and mourning alone. (Location 1155)
  • Conversation 2: Finding the Raw Spots (Location 1245)
  • What exactly is a raw spot? I define it as a hypersensitivity formed by moments in a person’s past or current relationships when an attachment need has been repeatedly neglected, ignored, or dismissed, resulting in a person’s feeling what I call the “2 Ds” — emotionally deprived or deserted. The 2 Ds are universal potential raw spots for lovers. (Location 1253)
  • There are two signs that tell you when your raw spot or your partner’s has been hit. First, there is a sudden radical shift in the emotional tone of the conversation. You and your love were joking just a moment ago, but now one of you is upset or enraged, or, conversely, aloof or chilly. (Location 1326)
  • Second, the reaction to a perceived offense often seems way out of proportion. (Location 1331)
  • The truth is, we will never create a really strong, secure connection if we do not allow our lovers to know us fully or if our lovers are unwilling to know us. (Location 1427)
  • We want and need our lovers to respond to our hurt. But they can’t do that if we don’t show it. To love well requires courage — and trust. (Location 1431)
  • Conversation 3: Revisiting a Rocky Moment (Location 1556)
  • To reconnect, lovers have to be able to de-escalate the conflict and actively create a basic emotional safety. They need to be able to work in concert to curtail their negative dialogues and defuse their fundamental insecurities. They may not be as close as they crave to be, but they can now step on each other’s toes and then turn and do damage control. They can have their differences and not careen helplessly into Demon Dialogues. They can rub each other’s raw spots and not slide into anxious demands or numbing withdrawal. They can deal better with the disorienting ambiguity that their loved one, who is the solution to fear, can also suddenly become a source of fear. In short, they can hold on to their emotional balance a lot more often and a lot more easily. This creates a platform for repairing rifts in their relationship and creating a truly loving connection. (Location 1572)
  • DE-ESCALATING DISCONNECTION (Location 1593)
    1. Stopping the Game. (Location 1595)
    1. Claiming Your Own Moves. (Location 1601)
    1. Claiming Your Own Feelings. (Location 1609)
    1. Owning How You Shape Your Partner’s Feelings. (Location 1615)
    1. Asking About Your Partner’s Deeper Emotions. (Location 1625)
    1. Sharing Your Own Deeper, Softer Emotions. (Location 1637)
    1. Standing Together. (Location 1645)
  • Conversation 4: Hold Me Tight — Engaging and Connecting (Location 1828)