Christian Counseling Uncovers What You Are Really Saying When You Fight

References The Path to a Secure Bond: Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy by Susan M. Johnson and Paul S. Greenman
“You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (I Peter 2:5 NIV) While delivering a sermon from this passage, Ryan Kelly of Desert Springs church said, “Bricks were made to be with other bricks.” Christians are the bricks God uses to build his church. We need one another for support. Alone, we are good for little more than serving as a doorstop or being thrown through a window, as Kelly said. This is why it causes such painful tension in marriage when one spouse feels emotionally wounded by their mate. They went to them for support, but their mate let them fall.

Dr. Susan Johnson calls these “attachment injuries.” They disturb a marriage’s emotional support system, and usher in a harmful cycle of defensive stonewalling and desperate pursuit. Emotionally focused therapy helps spouses with attachment injuries recognize how their negative interactions during conflict stem from painful emotions or feelings of rejection. By addressing these unmet emotional needs, emotionally focused therapy helps couples find healthier ways to communicate their emotional needs to their partner.

Stage 1: Conflict Reduction

Deidre and Tom started counseling because they have been drifting apart ever since Deidre’s miscarriage two years ago. 

Step 1: Assessment– Reestablish an alliance between the spouses. Uncover the main bones of contention.

Step 2: What does their cycle of conflict look like? How do fights typically play out?

Step 3: What are they feeling when they take certain stances? What feelings motivate their behavior during these cyclical fights?

Step 4: Approach the problem like a start-to-end map (picture a Candy Land Board). The fight has specific stages from beginning to end. What emotions and attachment needs accompany these points?

During Stage 1, the counselor builds a rapport with Deidre and Tom. They discuss what their emotional experiences have been like in their marriage, and how they go about finding safety, security, and comfort (i.e., “satisfy attachment needs”). The counselor sits down with each partner and has them outline their actions during a conflict. How are they feeling when they do certain things? What actions from their partner trigger certain reactions from them?

Example – Diedre feels dismissed by Tom when she tells him is upset. When she had her miscarriage, she told him while he was walking in the door. He said, ‘You can always have another baby,” and continued walking up the stairs. She still tries to go to him with her problems, but ends up screaming at him that he does not care when she is upset, and then refusing to speak to him for rest of the day.

Counselor – You feel ignored and hurt when you think Tom isn’t listening because it makes you feel like he doesn’t care about your problems. Then you lash out at him in an attempt to elicit some kind of response. When that doesn’t work either, you pull away. You feel like he doesn’t care about you, so what’s the point in trying?

Spouses often find themselves interacting with their partner in ways they know are unhealthy, but they cannot help but behave this way. Figuring out what emotions fuel this negative behavior and addressing them is an essential part of adopting better ways of engaging one another.

Stage 2: Understanding What You’re Both *Really* Saying

Lashing out at your spouse is an unproductive way of trying to show them how you feel. Sitting down with your spouse and telling them how you feel during these negative episodes can dramatically shift (for the better) how you both see one another. 

Step 5: Spouses need to understand what unmet needs or aspects of their personality shape their negative interactions with their spouse.

Step 6: Try to understand and accept how your spouse is changing the way they approach conflicts and express/respond to emotional overtures.

Step 7: Take more opportunities to tell your partner about your needs and invite emotional engagement. This is the period when the partner who withdraws becomes less resistant and the partner who criticizes becomes less antagonistic.

Once spouses have an idea of how they feel during negative exchanges, and how these emotions shape their behavior, it is a good time for them to share this information with one another.

Example – Deidre turns to Tom and describes how she feels when it seems as if he is not listening to her problem. “It feels as if you don’t care about me. I’ll be upset about something, and you give me some sort of brief response and go back to whatever you’re doing. I feel so unloved and alone. Yelling seems like the only way to get you to notice me. When that doesn’t work, I stop talking to you because I tell myself you never listen, so what’s the use in reaching out to someone who will just ignore me?”

Articulating these feelings to your spouse helps in two ways: it is an opportunity to practice healthier ways of communicating, and it lets your spouse know what you’re feeling during these negative exchanges. After all, the negative things you have been doing were attempts to tell your partner how you feel. You lash out because you want them to know you are hurt, and you need them to respond. The point of this stage is to exchange those negative methods of communicating for ones that will actually work.

Example – Tom had no idea Deidre felt this way. His family did not talk about their feelings much while he was growing up. He tells Deidre that when she comes to him with a problem it’s not that her pain does not matter to him, rather that he has no clue what to do about it. Then he feels so overwhelmed by her anger that he is at a loss for how to respond. “When you come to me when you’re upset, it feels like someone has given me a kit to assemble, but left out the instructions. Having you tell me what you really want from me makes me feel less bewildered.”

Stage 3: Integrating better ways to talk with your spouse

A major source of marriage problems is couples entrenching themselves in unhealthy cycles of interaction. Once they figure out what unmet emotions fuel these negative exchanges, they can start replacing them with ways of communicating that will actually tell their partner how they feel.

Step 8: Affirm new solutions to old relationship problems.

Step 9: Couples need to make sure they understand how to follow through these new patterns of handling conflict, and why they are more productive. How do these new patterns help you express your needs and feelings in a healthier way?

Example – Now that Deidre better understands how foreign comforting others is for Tom, she is more specific about how she asks him for comfort. She may say, “I could really use a hug,” or “I need you to agree with me about how horrible my boss is.” In turn, when she notices Tom seems particularly out of sorts, she encourages him to share why he is upset, either by talking about it or writing it to her in a letter (more accommodating of his discomfort with talking to people about feelings)

Christian Counseling for Couples Who Struggle to Communicate

Often your emotions seem so obvious that you cannot understand why your spouse does not see that is what is going on. Instead of waiting for your partner to become a mind reader, consider making an appointment with a professional Christian counselor. Their office provides a neutral ground for you and your spouse to take a break from the aggression, and just talk about your emotional experiences. A professional Christian marriage counselor can help dispel misunderstandings about why you both act as you do. Let them teach you how to replace anger with empathy.

Photos
Professional-Christian-marriage-counseling Freedigitalphotos.net
How-to-deal-with-marriage-problems Freedigitalphotos.net user nuttakit
Candy Land Flickr user Peggy Dembicer