The powerful emotions that come up in couples therapy are anything but irrational.
They make perfect sense.
Partners have acted like they were fighting for their life in therapy because they were doing just that. Isolation and the potential loss of loving connection is coded by the human brain into a primal panic response. This need for safe emotional connection to a few loved ones is wired in by millions of years of evolution.
Distressed partners may use different words but they are always asking the same basic questions.
"Are you there for me?"
"Do I matter to you?"
"Will you come when I need you, when I call?"
Love is the best survival mechanism there is, and to feel suddenly emotionally cut off from a partner,
disconnected, is terrifying.
We have to reconnect.
To speak our needs in a way that moves our partner to respond.
This longing for emotional connection with those nearest to us is the emotional priority, overshadowing even the drive for food or sex. The drama of love is all about this hunger for safe emotional connection, a survival imperative we experience from the cradle to the grave.
Loving connection is the only safety nature ever offers us.
Taken from "Hold Me Tight" Dr. Sue Johnson
They make perfect sense.
Partners have acted like they were fighting for their life in therapy because they were doing just that. Isolation and the potential loss of loving connection is coded by the human brain into a primal panic response. This need for safe emotional connection to a few loved ones is wired in by millions of years of evolution.
Distressed partners may use different words but they are always asking the same basic questions.
"Are you there for me?"
"Do I matter to you?"
"Will you come when I need you, when I call?"
Love is the best survival mechanism there is, and to feel suddenly emotionally cut off from a partner,
disconnected, is terrifying.
We have to reconnect.
To speak our needs in a way that moves our partner to respond.
This longing for emotional connection with those nearest to us is the emotional priority, overshadowing even the drive for food or sex. The drama of love is all about this hunger for safe emotional connection, a survival imperative we experience from the cradle to the grave.
Loving connection is the only safety nature ever offers us.
Taken from "Hold Me Tight" Dr. Sue Johnson
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