By Cheryl Sparks, PhD, LPC
As EFT therapists, we work hard to help our couples find loving ways to reach for comfort and to facilitate healing responses. Especially when there is an attachment injury, we work to help them each express the pain with vulnerability and help the other to hear it with empathy. This can be really difficult when one person has wounded the other in a way that has damaged the relationship and violated their own values. Shame can overwhelm a person in this situation and make repair feel nearly impossible. Shame fuels the negative cycle into overdrive; when the injured person tries to turn to the other to protest their injury, shame can engulf their partner and emerge as an angry outburst (“How many times can I say I’m sorry?! You’re never going to let me forget it! I’m done with you.”) or cause the partner to stay silent and stuck in their shame and resignation.
EFT helps us to be able to understand these negative cycles and address both sides of the connection paradox that is happening here. First, the injured partner is protesting deep hurt—the part that is angry wants to hold the other to account for their actions. At the same time, the vulnerable part of them needs to be able to turn to their partner as their safe haven in this painful situation. I find it’s sometimes helpful to separate their reach into these two distinct functions—both a protest against the hurt or injustice and a reach for comfort. When I can help the protestor to understand the shaming impact of their protest on their partner, they can see that their words do carry weight and have a big impact (even if the other is confusingly silent). Then they can clarify whether they are looking for acknowledgement of their protest or turning to their partner to have their own hurt be seen and understood. I have seen this clarity make it much easier for the other partner to respond well.
Helping the responding partner embrace the dual needs of the injured partner can also be seen as two separate responses. First, it’s helpful to understand their own guilt or shame as useful when it helps them recognize that they have violated their own values and/or injured their partner. Then we can help them to own responsibility for the things they have done and go through the attachment injury repair model (AIRM). Secondly, I think it can be helpful for them to understand that they have another important role in repair: they are the safe haven that their partner needs. When they reach for comfort for their pain, they are turning to you because your loving presence is the balm for their wound. This isn’t a need to elicit more shame from you, but a need for your comfort and understanding. Neither has to keep feeling alone.
When we are clear that there are two related but separate needs there, we can help clarify which one is being sought, and help provide a bit of a buffer against the flight from the overwhelmingness of the shame and the courage to stay present. Of course both people’s hurt and pain deserves to be heard and comforted, and that’s what EFT helps us do—defeat the negative painful cycle that the injury was one part of and replace it with a loving, comforting cycle where both can reach for the support they need and give freely to each other.