Attachment%20theory%20

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Attachment theory Emotionally Focused Therapy

• Mark Young, Ph.D.
• Gonzaga University
• WAMFT Workshop Series
• Oct. 23, 2009

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What is Attachment?

• the capacity to form and maintain healthy
  emotional relationships which generally begin to
  develop in early childhood
• Enduring bond with special person
• Security safety within context of this
• relationship
• Includes soothing, comfort, pleasure
• Loss or threat of loss of special person
• results in distress

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• Having close connections is vital to every aspect
  of our health mental, emotional, and physical.
• Hawkley U. of Chicago
• Calculates that loneliness raises blood pressure
  to the point where the risk of heart attack and
  stroke is doubled.
• House U. of Michigan
• Emotional isolation is more dangerous health risk
  than smoking or high blood pressure.

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• Patients with congestive heart failure the
  state of their marriage is as good a predictor of
  survival after four yeas as the severity of the
  symptoms.
• Conflict with and hostile criticism from loved
  ones increase our self-doubts and create a sense
  of helplessness
• These are classic triggers for depression
• We live in a epidemic of anxiety and depression

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• The California Divorce Mediation Project reported
  that the most common reason for divorcing given
  by close to 80 of all men and women was
  gradually growing apart and losing a sense of
  closeness, and not feeling loved and appreciated.
• Severe and intense fighting were endorsed by only
  40 of the couples.

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Whats the good news?

• Hundreds of studies now show that positive loving
  connections with others protect us from stress
  and help us cope better with lifes challenges
  and traumas.
• Simply holding the hand of a loving partner can
  affect us profoundly
• Research has found that this act literally calms
  jittery neurons in the brain.

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Whats the good news?

• People we love are hidden regulators of our
  bodily processes and our emotional lives.
• In 1939, women ranked love fifth as a factor in
  choosing a mate
• By the 1990s, it topped the list for both women
  and men.
• College students now say that their key
  expectation from marriage is emotional security.

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10 Central Tenets

• 1. Attachment is an innate motivating force
• Seeking and maintaining contact with significant
  others is innate.
• This occurs throughout the life span.

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10 Central Tenets

• 2. Secure dependency complements autonomy
• No such thing as complete independence or
  overdependency
• There is only effective and ineffective
  dependence
• Secure dependence fosters autonomy and
  self-confidence
• The more secure attached we are the more separate
  and different we can be.
• Health means maintaining a felt sense of
  interdependency, rather than being
  self-sufficient and separate from others.

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10 Central Tenets

• 3. Attachment offers a safe haven
• The presence of attachment figures provides
  comfort and security while perceived
  inaccessibility creates distress.
• Proximity is the natural antidote to feelings of
  anxiety and vulnerability
• Positive attachments offers a safe haven that
  offer a buffer against effects of stress and
  uncertainty.

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10 Central Tenets

• 4. Attachment offers a secure base
• Gives base from which individuals can explore
  their world and most adaptively respond to their
  environment.
• Secure base encourages exploration and a
  cognitive openness to new information.
• When we have this felt security, we are better
  able to reach out and offer support for others.

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10 Central Tenets

• 5. Accessibility and Responsiveness builds bonds
• Building blocks for secure attachment are
  emotional accessibility and responsiveness
• One can be physically present but emotionally
  absent
• Emotional engagement and the trust that this
  engagement will be there when needed is most
  crucial.
• Any response, even anger, is better than none.
• Emotion is the key.
• If there is no engagement, no emotional
  responsiveness, then the message is your signals
  do not matter to me and there is no connection
  between us.

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10 Central Tenets

• 6. Fear and uncertainty activate attachment needs
• When an individual is threatened attachment needs
  for comfort and connection become salient and
  compelling, and attachment behaviors are
  activated.
• Attachment to key others is our primary
  protection against feelings of helplessness and
  meaningless.

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10 Central Tenets

• 7. The process of separation distress is
  predictable
• If attachment behaviors fail to evoke comforting
  responsiveness and contact from attachment
  figures, a predictable process of protest,
  clinging, depression and despair, ending
  eventually in detachment.
• Depression is a natural response to loss of
  connection
• Anger can be seen as an attempt to make contact
  with an inaccessible attachment figure.

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10 Central Tenets

• 8. Finite number of insecure forms of engagement
  can be identified.
• There are a number of ways that we have to deal
  with the unresponsiveness of attachment figures.
• Only so many ways of coping from a negative
  response to the question Can I depend on you
  when I need you?

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10 Central Tenets

• 9. Attachment involves working models of self and
  others
• Attachment strategies reflect ways of processing
  and dealing with emotion
• These models of self and others come from
  thousands of interactions, and become
  expectations and biases that are carried forward
  into new relationships.

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10 Central Tenets

• 10. Isolation and loss are inherently
  traumatizing
• Attachment theory describes and explores the
  trauma of deprivation, loss, rejection, and
  abandonment by those we need the most and the
  enormous impact it has on us.
• These events have a major impact on personality
  formation and on a persons ability to deal with
  other stresses in life.

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What creates close connections?

• No Connection
• Lack of emotion
• Unresponsive
• Emotionally unavailable

• Connection
• Emotion is key
• Are responsive to one another
• Are emotionally available to one another

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Accessibility Responsiveness

• Building blocks of a secure bond.
• Partner can be physically present but emotionally
  absent.
• Emotional engagement and the trust that this
  engagement will be there when needed is crucial.
• When there is no engagement, no emotional
  responsiveness, the message reads you dont
  matter to me.

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Accessibility Responsiveness

• Emotion is central to individuals being
  accessible and emotionally responsive to one
  another
• Any response, even anger, is better than none.
• It is in our closest relationships where our
  strongest emotions arise and where they seem to
  have most impact

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Accessibility Responsiveness

• Emotion tells us and communicates to others what
  our motivations and needs are
• They can be seen as the music to the
  relationship dance

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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 lovers attachment cues.

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Responsiveness Can I rely on you to respond to
me emotionally?

• This means tuning into your partner and showing
  that his or her emotions 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.

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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 means the very special kinds
  of attention that we give only to a loved one.
• We gaze at them longer, touch them more.
• Often we talk of this as being emotionally
  present.

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Close Connections

• In these moments of safe attunement and
  connection
• Both partners can hear each others attachment
  cry and respond with soothing care,
• Forging a new bond that can withstand
  differences, wounds, and the test of time.

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Close Connections

• Often found in small moments of time
• Its in these moments of safe connection that
  change everything
• They provide a reassuring answer to the question
  are you there for me
• Once partners know how to speak to their need and
  bring each other close, every trial they face
  together simply makes their love stronger.

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Close Connections

• These moments of connections create new patterns
  in the relationship a new dance
• If you know your loved one is there and will come
  when you call, you are more confident of your
  worth and your value.
• The world is less intimidating when you have
  another to count on and you know that you are not
  alone.

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Two Main Processes

• Vulnerability ? Compassion
• One becomes vulnerable and the other responds
  with compassion.
• Vulnerability ? Vulnerability
• One becomes vulnerable and the other responds
  with becoming vulnerable as well.

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Founder Key Concepts

• Susan Johnson
• Leslie Greenberg
• EFT is collaborative combining Experimental and
  Rogerian techniques with Structural systemic
  interventions.

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• EFT is based on clear, explicit
  conceptualizations of relationship distress and
  adult love.
• These conceptualizations are supported by
  empirical research on the nature of marital
  distress and adult attachment.
• Key moves and moments in the change process have
  been mapped into nine steps and three change
  events.

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Goals of EFT

• To expand and re-organize key emotional
  responsesthe music of the attachment dance.
• To create a shift in partners' interactional
  positions and develop new cycles of interaction.
• To foster the creation of a secure bond between
  partners.

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View of distress in EFT

• Relationship distress is maintained by absorbing
  negative affect.
• Affect reflects and primes rigid, constricted
  patterns of interaction.
• Patterns make safe emotional engagement difficult
  and create insecure bonding.

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View of Distress

• Rigid repetitive interactional patterns
• No exits no detours/ repair impossible
• Rigid narrow positions fight/flight/freeze
• Most common patterns
• Criticize, complain, express contempt
• Defend, distance, stonewall
• Results self reinforcing cycles or
  reactivity/self protective strategies

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• Partners cannot attune to one another because
  they are so absorbed in their own negative affect
• Cannot communicate because of their own state.
• Gottman 1979 absorbing states of negative
  affect everything leads in, nothing leads out.

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Research

• 70 73 recovery rate in 10-12 sessions.
• Two-year follow- up on relationship distress,
  depression, and parental stress results stable
  60 continue to improve.
• Depression significantly reduced.
• Best predictor of success female faith in
  partners caring (Not initial distress level).

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Principles Concepts

• Looks within at how partners construct their
  emotional experience of relatedness
• Looks between at how partners engage each other.

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Focus of EFT The 4 Ps

• Experiential
• Present
• Primary Affect
• Systemic
• Process (time)
• Positions / Patterns
• The counselor is a process consultant

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4 Ps

• Present experience
• Deal with the past when it comes into the present
  to validate clients responses as it relates to
  how they coped/survived
• When emotion is re-experienced it is now in the
  present
• Focus is on current positions/patterns
• Dont ask why, focus on what is.

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4 Ps

• Primary emotions
• Validating and moving from secondary to primary
  emotions
• Stay with emotions, create safe haven
• Organize the emotion of a past experience so that
  client can engage in the here now

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4 Ps

• Process patterns
• Look individually how each person is processing
  in the moment
• What happensthen whatthen what
• Positions
• The position each partner is taking in the
  relationship
• Work to create new position new patterns

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Stages Steps

• Stage 1 De-escalation
• Stage 2 Restructuring the Bond
• Stage 3 Consolidation

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Nine Steps of EFT

• Steps 1 4 Assessment Cycle De-escalation
• Alliance assessment Creating an alliance and
  delineating conflict issues in the core
  attachment struggle.
• What are they fighting about and how are they
  related to core attachment issues.

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Nine Steps of EFT

• Steps 1 4 Assessment Cycle De-escalation
• 2. Identify the negative interaction cycle, and
  each partners position in that cycle.
• Goal is to see the cycle in action and then
  identify and describe it to the couple and work
  to stop it.

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Nine Steps of EFT

• Steps 1 4 Assessment Cycle De-escalation
• 3. Access unacknowledged emotions underlying
  interactional positions.
• Goal is to help each partner to access and accept
  their unacknowledged feelings that are
  influencing their behavior.
• Both partners are to reprocess and crystallize
  their own experience in the relationship so that
  they can become emotionally open to the other
  person.

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Nine Steps of EFT

• Steps 1 4 Assessment Cycle De-escalation
• 4. Reframe the problem in terms of underlying
  feelings, attachment needs, and negative cycle.
• The cycle is framed as the common enemy
  (externalizing the problem) and the source of the
  partners emotional deprivation and distress.

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Nine Steps of EFT

• Steps 5 7 Changing Interactional Positions and
  creating new bonding events
• 5. Promote identification with disowned
  attachment emotions, needs, and aspects of self,
  and integrate these into relationship
  interactions.
• Goal is to help the couple redefine their
  experiences in terms of their unacknowledged
  emotional needs.

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Nine Steps of EFT

• Steps 5 7 Changing Interactional Positions and
  creating new bonding events
• 6. Promote acceptance of the other partners
  experiences and new interactional responses.
• Goal is to work to get each partner to accept,
  believe, and trust that what the other partner is
  describing in terms of underlying emotional needs
  is accurate.

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Nine Steps of EFT

• Steps 5 7 Changing Interactional Positions and
  creating new bonding events
• 7. Facilitate the expression of needs and wants
  and create emotional engagement and bonding
  events that redefine the attachment between the
  partners.
• Goal is to help couple learn to express their
  emotional needs and wants directly and create
  emotional engagement.

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Nine Steps of EFT

• Steps 8 9 Consolidation/Integration
• 8. Facilitating the emergence of new solutions to
  old relationship problems.
• Without the old negative interaction style and
  with the new emotional connection and attachment,
  it is easier to develop new solutions to old
  problems.

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Nine Steps of EFT

• Steps 8 9 Consolidation/Integration
• 9. Consolidating new positions and new cycles of
  attachment behaviors.
• Help couple clearly see and articulate the old
  and new ways of interacting to help the couple
  avoid falling back into the old interactional
  cycle.

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Overview of Process

1. Develop an alliance, identify cycle, identify and
   access underlying emotions, and work to
   deescalate
2. Engage the withdrawer
3. Soften the pursuer/blamer
4. Create new emotional bonding events and new
   cycles of interaction
5. Consolidate new cycles of trust, connection and
   safety, and apply them to old problems that may
   still be relevant

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eft.ca

• www.ocfi.ca
• holdmetight.net

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