"We're All Turkeys in the Same Turkey Soup": Why Attend A Hold Me Tight Workshop for Therapists and Their Partners
by Lisa Blum and Silvina Irwin on 03/06/15
There are exquisite moments between partners that arise in
the sacred space of mutual vulnerability, risk taking and openness with each
other. These are the moments that
allow secure attachment to grow. These
moments anchor me in my work, and I treasure them. I have the privilege of experiencing this with the
couples I work with in my office, as well as in the Hold Me Tight Workshops
that I facilitate with my dear friend and colleague Lisa Blum.
Prior to facilitating my first HMT workshop, I found it hard
to imagine that in a workshop setting people could have these incredibly
powerful and intimate experiences with one another. I can say now that at each one of the 15 workshops that we have facilitated it
happens. I have been blown away by
the power of this workshop, as it is in this safe, open group setting that we
can truly witness and experience the universality of the struggle to love and
be loved.
I often hear fellow EFT therapists express their longing to
experience for themselves the power of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), but
they feel like couples therapy per se is not necessarily needed in their own
relationship. Or perhaps they
cannot solve the dilemma of who to consult as their therapist since all the EFT
therapists in their community are a either friend or colleague.
As therapists, I am sure that most of us have dissected our
own relationships, decoding ourselves and our partners as “pursuers” or “withdrawers”,
and outlining our own negative cycles. Maybe we have even shared this insight
with our partners. But how many of
us have felt rather alone in this process? How many have wished to download what you now understand
about attachment, love, and secure bonding into your partner’s brain? Perhaps your partner has read Hold
Me Tight – and that’s a HUGE gift to the relationship, and gives you a
shared language. But unless you’ve made the time at home, and your partner has
also been generously willing to do all of the exercises with you, it can still
leave you longing for a fuller experience of EFT.
Here are 4 common therapist struggles:
- I want to share my knowledge of love and secure
bonding with my non-therapist partner.
How do I do that short of having them attend an EFT externship or just
independently read a bunch of books?
We don’t have consistent time at home to focus on “us” with the kids,
late nights and many demands on our time.
- I want to experience the power of Emotionally Focused
Therapy with my partner, but we would need some guidance and structure to get
us there at first.
- As a therapist, I focus so much on helping my couples and
clients to heal and thrive, that I am depleted and don’t have the energy to
bring to my own relationship.
- I want to attend a Hold Me Tight Workshop, but feel
embarrassed that as a therapist myself, I find myself needing help too. I wonder what other couples in the
workshop would think of me?
A wonderful solution to the therapist’s dilemma is to attend
a Hold Me Tight workshop specifically for Therapists and Their Partners. It is not therapy – but it is deeply
therapeutic and very informative.
You and your partner together will immerse yourself for an entire
weekend in nurturing, deepening and healing your relationship. Together you will walk the EFT map, and
can resource this map to keep you tethered to one another in the face of your
relationships struggles for years to come. You will be amongst your colleagues, and feel validated that
our struggles in love and relationships are universal. As Sue Johnson put it so perfectly “We
are all just turkeys in the same turkey soup”! It’s also a chance for therapists’ partners to join with
others who share the unique experience of being partner to a healer.
EFT is at its heart a present-process experiential
model. “Knowledge comes from
experience; everything else is information,” as Albert Einstein said. The added bonus is that by
participating in this workshop, you will experience and learn the EFT model. You will learn more about the science of
love underlying the EFT approach, as well as experience the process of
outlining your negative cycle, learn to step aside together from these negative
patterns that cause so much pain and keep you distant from one another, and how
to reach for each other to bring each other close again.
As a therapist who has committed his or her career to
walking alongside those who are hurting, and helping to heal broken hearts, how
often have you turned your focused attention on nurturing YOUR most important
relationship? We know that being
in a secure relationship with your precious other is one of the strongest
predictors of psychological and physical health and longevity, and it is also a
protective factor in the development of vicarious trauma in therapists. Take the time now to nurture and care
for yourselves through this workshop.
We hope you can join us at our next Hold Me Tight Couples
Weekend Retreat, exclusively for Therapists and Their Partners, April 17-19,
2015. You can learn more at www.EFTResourceCenter.com.