>You’re acting like a two-year-old!!!

OMG, you are about to rip your hair out – you HAVE a two-year-old, or maybe you’ve RAISED your two-year-olds, you do NOT need your partner behaving like one, too! More importantly, when do YOU get to have YOUR meltdown? (i.e., you’re freaking out, too, you’re just holding it down as best you can…)

Here’s the most amazing thing I learned this week – The part of our brain that regulates attachment never matures

Really?

Really. Apparently, our limbic system reacts to incoming emotional information as though we were two-year-olds; whether we are actually fourteen or forty! Sure, as we age, we (hopefully) learn how to cope when our “emotional buttons” are pushed; instead of flailing about on the ground and tantruming, maybe you get defensive, or “hold it in”, and shut down. I guess that coping style is what we call “maturity”… The feeling you’re coping with is going to be different, depending on how attached you are to the person in front of you… This is why you can put together a reasonable, intelligent-sounding  response to your boss’s input at work, (which you call ‘feedback’) but when you come home to your partner, who spews similar criticism, you feel angry and offended; and you either retreat or verbally vomit all over your partner.

Your brain codes attachment as safety, so any perceived interruption in our connection is interpreted as a threat to your very survival. Like a subliminal advertisement, that fear flashes throughout your body and gets ready to fight for your life. In the split second before you feel the anger at your partner, your entire body is rocked by fear, and immediately directs you toward your oh-so-very-mature coping strategies (anger, defensiveness).

You are not a stupid person; you know that calling your partner terrible names and screaming at them is probably not going to get them to see the error of their ways; but you just don’t know what else to do. You don’t know why you keep fighting until you’re exhausted and the sun is coming up, although nothing is getting resolved. More importantly, you don’t know how to get OUT of that cycle. This is where Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT for short) becomes so valuable. It helps you slow things down enough to see what’s happening for you that sets you off and sends you in hopeless circles.I love this stuff! What do you think?

*Read the full article here


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