The Practice of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy: Creating Connection

Chapter 6: Facing the Dragon: EFT steps 5 and 6

Steps 5 and 6 promote identification of disowned needs and aspects of self and integrating them into the relationship and promoting acceptance of the partner’s experiences and new ways of interaction. 

• Step 5 is the most intrapsychically oriented stage in EFT. Change in therapy is more about what one is rather than what one is not. Therefore, when the self is experienced in a different way, the presentation of the self changed – i.e. the cringing man becomes the angry/assertive one.
• Step 6 is getting the partner to accept and respond to the partner’s new presentation.

Step 5 is the “watershed” stage – before that is building up to that, and steps 6-9 are the practicing and building on the change inherent to stage 5. research shows that those most emotionally engaged in stage 5 are the ones who reap most benefit from the EFT. 

In stage 5, the avoided/unformulated emotions are encountered, claimed and congruently expressed to the partner. i.e. the withdrawn partner encounters the anxieties provoked by the wife’s comments. In “owning” his fears of his wife’s criticism, he begins to strategize differently. I.e. the underlying fear, as expressed clearly may just invoke a different response in the partner. The owning of the disowned emotions leads to the partner’s empowerment. This is because there is a new focus on the deeper needs and not the secondary reactions to them, and because those emotions lead to action tendencies (i.e. a motivating kind of stand up and dealing with it kind of feeling). Accessing those primary emotions and their attachment-needs underpinnings become clearly articulated. This also relates to each partner’s sense of self, as the least known parts of the self are explored and integrated into the person and relationship. In short, it expands the sense of self and the person’s interactional experience. Deep emotions that are linked to person’s sense of identity and attachment (core sense of self and others) become available open to modification (i.e. through interaction with therapist and partner). 

Bowlby thought that emotional communication provides vital information for constructing and reconstructing working models of the self. The working models are intrinsically linked to the interactional patterns. They maintain the subjective reality and confirm the crucial element of reality called identity. The point of step 5 is to take ownership of this element of the self and related emotions and integrate it into interaction with one’s partner, and then redefine him or herself based on those new, and more fulfilling interactions 

In stage 6, the clinician helps the partner accept the new position of the partner, and responding to it congruently (i.e. you may have to work through the partner’s minimizing/doubting).  

Markers

In step 5, the therapist intervenes when:

• when emotions as touched upon in stage 3 are experienced in session. At this stage of the EFT, the client should be better able to identify how it relates to the assumed interactional position taken in the relationship. Therapist’s job is to validate the emotion [i.e. fear], as well as its related action [i.e. withdraw]

-The emotions are idiosyncratic versions of fear/helplessness/despair

-with the differentiation process, clarity is achieved

• the way in which emotion is experienced and understood
• experiencer ’s judgment about feeling this way
• the view of the partner implied in the experience
• usual ways of coping with the experience within the person and the relationship

-this is not an analysis/discussion of the above, but rather an experience of the above 

therapist should also intervene when person begins to explore underlying but is interrupted by the partner or exits into abstract cognitions.

-in step 6, the therapist intervenes when the following occurs:

• one of the partners reaches a sense of closure or synthesis of underlying emotions and is able to relate to the relate to the habitual responses to the other partner
• therapist asks for opening-up partner to share this to hearing partner and support the other partner hearing/process this, so that the experiences could be part of the reshaping of the interaction. At first, the hearing partner will not believe the other’s change, and test the shift in that shift, due to previous experience. The hearing partner must be responsive to the partner opening up. Systemically speaking, the therapist promotes this shift in the pattern of interaction, so that it will not be subsumed in the more established pattern. This step always starts with the therapist asking things like: “so, what is it like? What is happening when your partner speaks like that?

Interventions

-reflection and validation of emotional experience and the interactional responses are important in EFT; but, at this stage other interventions come into the fore:

• evocative responding: therapist is to focus on the emerging but unformulated aspects of partner’s emotional experience, and unfolding/expanding the experience gives the partner a grasp of the experience. The therapist is to use vivid/specific/concrete language. Metaphors are useful too! Evocative responding includes:
• expanding the felt sense of emotional experience with questions and reflection
• expanding the context of cue for the emotional experience
• expanding the formulation/meaning of the experience and how it organizes the person’s responses to the other – i.e. look at the implicit in the metaphors used by the  client and tracking and exploring the experience.

àSimple techniques like repetition refocuses the process on the more important elements, always bringing the client back to the emotional processes. The therapist can use images which the client used in subsequent sessions. 

Heightening

-therapist heightens:

• the emotional responses to make them more alive and present so to facilitate the client’s engagement with them
• the associated interactional positions which reflect (and re-creates!) those same responses

0heghtening gets the experience/resonance of those emotions in a way of creating a powerful experience in session, all of which influence behaviour outside the session 

Forms of heightening:

• heightening emotion: all of EFT interventions heighten emotions, but at this step, there is a deliberate attempt to do so in attempt to make the experiences more vivid and capture its significance for the person. This also impacts the observing partner towards more compassionate/caring responses
• heightening present and changing positions: encouraging each partner to own not only the underlying emotions, but also the actual position/ways of reflecting them à a conscious/actively taken position is better than the automatic responses with the dimly experienced emotion
• heightening the enactment of present problematic position
• heightening the enactment of an emerging new position

Empathic conjecture

In step 5:

Creating a compelling frame for compelling emotional experience in the session: i.e. client can correct and refine the therapist’s conjecture.

-this approach is not about insight but about connecting to the experience

-empathic conjecture is used more in this step than in any other step of EFT 

Empathic conjecture is not:

• replacing one set of cognitive labels for another
• abstract intellectual summary of experience
• instruct to the client as to the better way of be or view things
• attempt to get insight into self or other

Empathic conjecture is

• therapist’s empathic immersion in the client’s experiences in the here-and-now
• therapist’s sense of the relational context/positions/patterns/infer the psychic experience behind the position.
• Orientation of EFT’s empathic conjecture is the Attachment Theory
• Therapist’s own emotional processes which indicates how the other is may be processing the situation

-the ideal conjecture is respectful. Tentative, specific and just one step ahead of the client’s experience, as the client is formulating it. 

Fears addressed in empathic conjecture is:

• other’s responses
• attachment fears
• nature of the self

-this focus is important because fear constricts the inner emotional processing and interpersonal engagement, thus narrowing of interpersonal responses 

Disquisition in step 6

-disquisition is a form of conjecture, used in step 6 to normalize any negative responses to the other’s new experiencing and emerging new position 

Step 5 focuses on the intrapsychic, while step 6 focuses on individual responses (less interpersonal).

-therefore, reframing the interaction in attachment terms is still done as interpsychic at this point. The interpersonal part is still there is stages 5-6, but is central to stage 7. but, even when focusing on the intrapsychic, some interactional restructuring takes place. 

Restructuring interactions

-choreographing is more explicit/conscious/active and uses elements from the newly synthesized experience. 

Couple processes and end state

-reprocessing of primary emotions related to the sense of self, in relation to the other. The experience of connection with the other develops and changes. Key longings/wishes emerge and are articulated. Before this stage, this partner feels not entitled to those emotions or wouple place them in a place of vulnerability with their partner. Therefore attachment behaviors start to change as emotions are organized and re-processed. i.e. the withdrawn partner becomes more in-charge of the relationship. Attachment insecurities become re-processed and become a recognized part of the interaction. What happens in this stage is:

• intensification/heightening of emotions experienced at step 3 of the EFT process, due to differentiation and symbolization of experience. With that, there is recognition of the significance of this experience to the self in relation to the other.
• Owning of experience as belonging to self with inhabiting/living out the experience, there is also ownership of the action tendencies (the impulses related to the experience).
• Expanded experiencing/owning of the experience/position in the cycle also involves accessing the core concept of the self, with the intense emotions associated with it. Experiencing the pain of how one is negatively defined in an attachment relationship accesses a partner’s sense of self in a clear/poignant fashion which allows for exploration and eventual reformulation

Changes seen in step 5:

• withdrawer re-engagement
• softening of the other partner

-usually the observing partner is one step behind the other

-the partners seeing the other’s engagement in intense exploration of emotional experience, not only acts differently but also acts differently. Biggest change is a new perception of the partner (i.e. seeing the partner cry or be angry for the first time). This is new information for the observing partner, which fosters connection and a sense of a common humanity (which was lost during the conflict).

-Observing the intense emotional reprocessing invokes a sense of compassion/curiosity/sense of being moved.

-observing partner is invited to a new kind of dialogue which may at first come across to the partner as “dangerous”, but this sense will fade. Responsiveness takes the place of defensive reactivity

-owning one’s position reduces the need for blame and invites the other partner to take responsibility for his position 

-responsiveness of the withdrawn partner leads to openness of the critical partner. Usually, it is the withdrawn who is a step ahead in the EFT process. 

Changes seen in step 6:

* evolution of a new kind of dialogue between partners. Partners are to go through their experiences and therapist is to stay with them and track their experiences. Intrapsychic component: helps the observing partner process the partner’s new responses and respond to it.

• Step 6 has an intrapsychic component in the sense that it is working on the observing partner’s experience and responses. The interactional component of step 6involves structuring a new dialogue. The experiencing partner may be framed as “needing the observing partner’s help in remaining engaged [i.e. taking positive risks].
• the experiencing partner is helped stay out of the negative cycle while the observing partner is helped become and remain accessible. Eventually the observing partner will make it to stage 5 [seeing the experiencing partner involves their own insecurities], at which point the other partner would have gotten to stage 7, but might also show reservations around taking a risk to trust the partner.
• some testing may have to take place for the partner to take risks. Those tests are to be reflected, validated and placed in the context of the cycle. The second time of step 6, [after the “testing”] should be easier/smoother
• For the observing partner, step 6 is to understand the partner and then learn how to respond appropriately
• For the experiencing partner, step 5 and 6 is to switch from the withdrawing/attacking tendencies of the negative cycle to a more engaged way of interacting with the partner.
• i.e. therefore the withdrawer will remain engaged, responding to the attacker’s softening up, or less common, the attacker will soften in response to the withdrawer engaging.

-sometimes, the observing partner will react to the partner’s engagement with distress (i.e. as this may evoke memories of attachment “crimes”/traumatic incidents in the relationship). Some individual sessions could be provided for working this out. This issue will be discussed in detail, later in the book.