Save Your Marriage With Self Talk

You can save your marriage with self talk. What is that? You talk to yourself. Everyone does. You have an inner voice that talks constantly. Among other things, it tells you how to navigate your connection with the people who are important in your life. Your brain instantly assigns meaning to everything your significant relationships do or say and then tells you what to do to get or keep your connection safe and secure. These are called “Attachment Messages.” What are your attachment messages and are they right?

You Can Save Your Marriage With Self Talk Because You Are Created For Connection

When God created Adam, and Adam was all alone, God said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” Human beings are designed for relationship so that having a secure attachment with other people is as big a need for us as air, food, and water. When disconnection happens in our relationships, like God said, it is not good. Research shows that loneliness and relationship distress are as serious a health risk as smoking or high blood pressure.

That’s why your brain is always on alert for threats, damage, or breaks in your connection and then tells you how to react to restore that connection to a place that makes you feel safe and secure. It’s a survival mechanism that you developed from childhood. When you were little, your developing brain was making sense of everything that happened in and around you, telling you whether something was safe or not, and how to behave to bring people close to you and keep them there so you can stay safe. The way your brain makes sense of the world and the messages and instructions it gave you as a child has not changed as you moved into adulthood.

Attachment Self-Talk Isn’t The Same For Everyone

You might assume that the messages your brain tells you and the instructions it gives you are true and that they are the same for everyone. That’s not so. The exact same thing that you experienced could happen to another person, and the meaning their brains would attach to it and the way they would tell themselves to react to it could be totally different.

Johnny might have grown up with parents who didn’t give him much attention or affection, so his brain told him that it was because he is too needy and he suppress his needs and emotions and be self-reliant. Doing so helped him not feel the pain of rejection because if he doesn’t rely on others, he won’t be hurt. Sally also grew up with parents who didn’t give her attention or affection, but her brain told her that it was because she didn’t matter and so she should amplify her needs and emotions to make her parents pay attention to her. Doing so helped her feel that she mattered because, even though her parents gave her negative attention, it was still attention.

The messages and responses are different from person to person. But the common denominator is that in childhood everyone of us learns what threatens our need for connection and what we can do to feel as secure as possible in that connection.

Your Attachment Beliefs and Behaviors Are Driven By Your Attachment Needs

In order to feel secure and safe in our connections with the people who are important to us, our brains are constantly checking, not only to see if the connection is secure in general, but whether very specific needs or longings are being fulfilled. If they are not, then the negative self-talk and resulting negative behavior gets triggered.

What are the specific needs and longings/cravings that you and all human have? You need to know that:

• You matter

• You are loved

• You are accepted

• You are good enough

• You are seen and heard

• You are not a burden/problem

• You won’t be rejected or abandoned

But you and all people also have attachment fears. Some common attachment fears are:

• I don’t matter

• I am not loved

• I am not accepted

• I am not enough

• I am not seen or heard

• I am a burden/problem

• I will be rejected or abandoned

If your attachment longings are met by the most important people in your life, you will feel secure, safe, and close to those people. This will make you more resilient and able to handle the challenges of life. But if your attachment fears come true, or even if your brain tells you that they are true, you will feel insecure, unsafe, and detached. This will make you less resilient and less able to handle life’s hardships.

Self-Talk And The Negative Cycle

What you tell yourself when your attachment longings are threatened and your attachment fears are aroused sets off what we call “the negative cycle.” When your partner does or says something that your brain sees as a threat to your attachment, it sends you a message that you don’t matter, you’re not loved, you’re a problem, etc., and it tells you to either pursue or withdraw. The one thing your attachment distress will not do is tell you to turn to your partner and be vulnerable and ask for them to meet your attachment need. Instead, you will either go on the attack trying to draw them close (which has the opposite effect, of course), or you will go on the defensive trying to protect the relationship from further damage. The more you pursue, the more your partner withdraws, the more your partner withdraws, the more you pursue. And you get caught up in a vortex of conflict, a negative cycle.

How can you change your self-talk and get out of this negative cycle? By seeing with a therapist like me who is trained in Emotionally Focused Therapy. An EFT therapist is able to help you and your partner or you and your family identify your unmet attachment needs that are driving your negative cycle. The sessions are designed to then walk you through experiences that will repair and correct your negative self-talk and negative responses to one another so that your attachment fears lessen and your attachment needs get met.

If you are struggling in your relationship with your partner or your family and would like to break out of your negative conflict cycle, I urge you to read more about Emotionally Focused Therapy. Then, if you would just contact us, we would love to schedule a free thirty-minute consultation with you and get you started on the road to reconnection.