Top Highlights

• Find the Bad Guy is a dead-end pattern of mutual blame that effectively keeps a couple miles apart, blocking reengagement and the creation of a safe haven. Couples dance at arm’s length.
• Marriage researchers have labeled this next dance Demand-Withdraw or Criticize-Defend. I call it the Protest Polka because I see it as a reaction to or, more accurately, a protest against the loss of the sense of secure attachment that we all need in a relationship.
• The third dance is Freeze and Flee, or as we sometimes call it in EFT, Withdraw-Withdraw. This usually happens after the Protest Polka has been going on for a while in a relationship, when dancers feel so hopeless that they begin to give up and put their own emotions and needs in the deep freeze, leaving only numbness and distance. Both people step...
• Moreover, because we learn with every new relationship, our strategy is not fixed. We can be critical in one relationship, and withdraw in another.
• Demon Dialogue 1—Find the Bad Guy The purpose of Find the Bad Guy is self-protection, but the main move is mutual attack, accusation, or blame. The starting cue for this pattern of responses is that we are hurt by or feel vulnerable with our partner and become suddenly out of control. Emotional safety is lost. When we are alarmed, we use anything t...