“Hold Me Tight” Workshop
March 27, 28 and 29 in Soquel
Safe and secure marriages and long term relationships bring overwhelmingly positive benefits to our health and happiness. Children in secure and safely connected families are healthier and are much better at adjusting to life’s challenges. Unfortunately, about 40-50% of American first marriages end in divorce, and the rate for subsequent marriages is even higher. On the average, men living alone die eight to 17 years earlier than their attached male friends, and women living alone die seven to 15 years earlier.
There is now a scientific understanding of love. We can now say why we need it, how to keep it alive and how to repair it when it goes awry. We know that, “Love is a basic survival code, that an essential task of our mammalian brain is to read and respond to others, and that it is being able to depend on others that makes us strong.” (Sue Johnson, Ph.D., Love Sense, 2013)
Here are several new findings:
- Adult romantic love is an attachment bond.
- Hot sex doesn’t lead to secure love, rather, secure attachment leads to hot sex — and also to love that lasts.
- Emotional dependency is not immature or pathological; it is our greatest strength.
- Being the “best you can be” is really only possible when you are deeply connected to another.
- We are not created to be selfish, we are designed to be empathic, to feel with and for others.
I was drawn to studying this new science of love because I went through experiences similar to everyone else’s. I married a good man, and we started a family. We worked hard and wanted the best for each other and our boys, but love seemed to slip away… life seemed to get in the way.
Researcher John Cacioppo, a psychologist at the University of Chicago, contends that in Western societies, “Social connection has been demoted from a necessity to an incidental.” Since Mike and I had both been married before, we were determined to work this out. In fact, one of our vows was to do to anything it took. Unfortunately, we had fallen into a typical pattern of discontented lovers, what EFT calls “recrimination and withdrawal.” We couldn’t quite seem to reach each other often enough. We were out of step with each other.
I was a successful psychotherapist so I sought out all the experts. But after using several different models of therapy we felt even more distant. As Dr. Johnson says, “Distressed partners no longer see each other as their emotional safe haven. I was also not happy with how I was raising my sons. I felt that by not showing love in my relationship with Mike I was a poor model for them. Everything I tried failed.
Serendipitously, “Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples and Families” (EFT), came into our lives. A colleague in Utah suggested EFT; he had read that it was the most successful form of therapy using real science and that it worked in 75% of couples and even in difficult situations.
We immediately enrolled in a Hold Me Tight workshop, an introduction to EFT.
That was five years ago. Now we are reaping the benefits of bonding. We now know that, “Love is a constant process of tuning in, connecting, missing and misreading cues, disconnecting, repairing, and finding deeper connection.”
I have been studying and applying the model ever since that first workshop. The comment I hear most often from my clients about EFT is that, ‘this makes sense.’
To bring EFT to the Central Coast, my colleague, Cypress Morales Redmon, LCSW, and I are holding the first ever Hold Me Tight Workshop at the Land Of the Medicine Buddha retreat center 5800 Prescott Rd, Soquel, CA (accommodations available) Friday March 27, 5-9 p.m., Saturday March 28, 10-5, Sunday March 29, 10-1. Consider investing in the most effective work to strengthen your bond and create the relationship you want.
•••
Check out our web site http://eft.works/spring2015 or call (831) 460-9865