Hand to Hold Guest Presenter David Griffin, LPC, speaks at Hand to Hold's Quarterly Discussion Series entitled “Maintaining Emotional Engagement: Re-focusing the Eyes of Your Hearts” on February 18, 2011. When our worlds have been turned upside-down by an early birth, medical complications or the loss of a child, we seldom have the time or energy to nurture each other. Hear guest presenter, David Griffin, shares tools you need to make your relationship with your partner a safe harbor. For more information, visit www.handtohold.org.

2. Maintaining Emotional Engagement Re-Focusing the Eyes of your Heart

8. Focused attention

9. Heightened energy

10. Elation (mood swings)

12. Intensely heightened energy

13. Elation as things go well

15. The Key to Successful Marriages Communication and conflict resolution work not because it teaches the skills, but because it builds stronger emotional bonds and helps couples repair damage to the emotional system.

16. The Key to Successful Marriages Likewise, forgiveness, apology, restitution, and reconciliation seem particularly valuable because it helps repair damage to the emotional bond.

17. The Key to Successful Marriages Of course, couples need to develop additional ways to build “stronger emotional bonds” and quickly terminate conflictual interactions that are likely to seriously injure emotional connections.

20. Emotional Engagement When you hear the word “attachment,” what comes to your mind?

21. Emotional Engagement:Attachment Individuals have more or less secure attachment styles in their close relationships with others. These are based on early interactions with primary caregivers from childhood (especially the mother). Based on the work of Bowlby (1969).

23. Emotional union with long-term partner

24. Nest (home) building

25. “Mate guarding”

27. Emotional Engagement:Marital Attachment With these fears, couples begin communicating through “negative interactional cycles.” These cycles create a combination of patterns: “blamer-withdrawer” and “criticize-defend.”

28. Emotional Engagement:Marital Attachment When couples are able to recognize these styles, and have committedintentto change, they can move into healthier and more emotionally nurturing ways of loving each other. Defensive posturing gives way to emotional connection and compassion for each other.

34. Emotional Engagement:through the Lens of Attachment Two Kinds of Anger Anger of Despair: “I long for you to see me, understand me and respond to me, but my attempts become entangled with hostility and anger and my anger of hope becomes an anger of despair.

35. Emotional Engagement:through the Lens of Attachment My longing for closeness gets lost in the heat of my emotions and my natural attachment protest gets caught in a web of despair.”

37. Flee—cool down, shut down, withdraw, walk on eggshells

39. Criticize/Pursue—Criticize/Pursue

41. How do each respond?

44. Remember the definition of ‘trust’?

47. The withdrawer will now engage.

48. There will now be expressions of needs and wants, thus creatingEmotional Engagement / Secure Attachment

49. Emotional Engagement Now emotionally connected, as a couple you can come together to find solutions to hot topics and issues as they no longer trigger attachment fears. You are now able to feel secure in your marital relationship.

50. Who Else Can You Trust? Sheri & Bob Stritof, Marriage Guides since 1997 http://marriage.about.com/cs/difficulttimes/ht/handlecrisis.htm

55. Take it one day at a time.

58. No-Fault Divorce No-fault divorce is a divorce in which the dissolution of a marriage requires neither a showing of wrong-doing of either party nor any evidentiary proceedings at all.

59. No-Fault Marriage We approach our spouse with a no-fault framework. The goal is to acknowledge everyone’s part in the struggle, and to feel the pain of the struggle, but without finding any fault.

60. No-Fault Marriage The key element is doing it without finding fault anywhere … to accept ourselves and the situation, to recognize our fears and needs, and to accept that each contribute 100% to the relationship and its struggles.

61. No-Fault Marriage Though it is difficult to do, it changes everything to look at relationship difficulty without laying any blame. No blame towards your partner. No blame towards yourself.

62. No-Fault Marriage One client regularly scolded her husband for being emotionally unavailable. Feeling judged and rejected, he reacted to the scolding by making himself more unavailable. Blame maintains stuckness.

63. No-Fault Marriage When that same client finally spoke to her husband in an accepting, vulnerable way, telling him that she loved and missed him, that the separation saddened her, he immediately became more available.

64. No-Fault Marriage Of course non-blaming doesn’t mean we avoid holding someone responsible for their actions. It usually makes sense to explain to a spouse that his or her actions were hurtful to you. The important thing is to respectfully address your spouse’s behavior, not attack their personhood.

65. No-Fault Marriage This is the no-fault marriage. Find a place within yourself where there is no blame of other or of self, where there is no victim. Feel the pain, the discomfort, the sense of powerlessness. Accept these feelings.

66. No-Fault Marriage Make friends with them. Respect them. Eventually the pain and sense of powerlessness will pass. When they do, you will begin to find the energy to take care of yourself.From Jonathan Goodman-Herrick's book,THE HEART OF RELATIONSHIP: FIVE ULTIMATE TRUTHS

67. Stress Management Resources 1. Hope / Faith 2. Time 3. Money 4. Energy

68. Stress Management Resources 5. Intelligence 6. Patience 7. Support of Others In a marriage that works together, you can double these resources!