233: Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) with Ryan Rana

Welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch! This podcast is about the practice of Couples Therapy. Each week, Shane Birkel interviews an expert in the field of Couples Therapy to explore all about the world of relationships and how to be an amazing therapist.

In this episode, Shane talks with Ryan Rana about emotional avoidance & Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots, and watch it on YouTube – follow and leave a 5-star review.

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The Couples Therapist Couch 233: Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) with Ryan Rana

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In this episode, Shane talks with Ryan Rana about emotional avoidance & Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). Ryan is an ICEEFT certified EFT Trainer, Supervisor, and Therapist and has 25 years of experience in the therapeutic field in many different capacities. Hear how to start off assessing your clients, why EFT is all about risk, why blame is a survival strategy, how to avoid misdiagnosing clients, and why validation is so key. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

• Why did Dr. Ryan HATE Emotionally Focused Therapy at first? And what shifted his perspective?
• What is EFT all about?
• How to differentiate between first order and second order changes?
• How to establish a safety with your clients?
• Understanding how to engage Pursuer vs Withdrawer energy

Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below: 

 Show Notes

• 233: Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) with Ryan Rana
• [0:14] Welcome to The Couple's Therapist's Couch
• [1:20] Welcome Dr. Ryan Rana!
• [4:35] How long has Dr. Ryan been practicing and learning Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)?
• [6:08] Why Dr. Ryan hated EFT
• [7:50]  We have a cultural problem that prioritizes first order solutions
• [9:02] How to differentiate between first order and second order changes?
• [12:18] What does it mean to establish the structure of a cycle?
• [15:41] How much time would you take to understand the attachment and action response?
• [18:10] How to create safety during EFT?
• [20:52] Where is the best place to direct blame?
• [22:01] How to help your clients talk about the emotions behind their choices?
• [25:40] Why seeing the world in the unhealthy way feels so comfortable?
•  [27:32] How to work with emotional avoidance in clients?
• [30:52] Why we wear the mask?
• [35:52] How much are you explaining the mechanics vs. going into experiential practice?
•  [38:22] How do you get experiential with a couple?
• [41:52] Anything else to understand about the pursuer & withdrawer dynamics?
• [44:39] What happens when your client's protection mechanism triggers your own protection response?

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This podcast is about the practice of Couples Therapy. Many of the episodes are interviews with leaders in the field of Relationships. The show is meant to help Therapists and Coaches learn how to help people to deepen their connection, but in the process it explores what is most needed for each of us to love, heal, and grow. Each week, Shane Birkel interviews an expert in the field of Couples Therapy to explore all about the world of relationships and how to be an amazing therapist.

Learn more about the Couples Therapy 101 course: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/

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Transcript

Please note: Transcript is not 100% accurate.

Ryan Rana 0:00
And we have to find strategic, calculated ways to validate and validation it regulates their body, right? Because that's that sense of I am doing a good job right now. I'm performing well. I don't have to be on defense.

Intro VO 0:18
Welcome to The Couples Therapist Couch, the podcast for couples therapists, marriage counselors and relationship coaches to explore the practice of couples therapy. And now your host, Shane Birkel,

Shane Birkel 0:35
everybody, welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch. This is Shane Birkel, and this is the podcast that's all about the practice of couples therapy. Thank you so much for tuning in. Today I'm speaking with Dr. Ryan Rana. He's one of the best Emotionally Focused Therapists that I've talked to, one of the best at explaining Emotionally Focused Therapy and helping me understand how to use it in my practice. So I'm really excited to share this conversation with you before we get to that. Definitely go check out the couplestherapist couch.com. If you're enjoying the episodes, you can find all of them there, and a bunch of other training material about how to practice couples therapy. So thank you so much. Without further introduction, here is the interview with Dr. Ryan Rana. Hey everyone. Welcome back to the couple's therapist couch. This is Shane Buerkle, and today I'm speaking with Dr. Ryan Rana, certified Emotionally Focused trainer and supervisor. He co founded the podcast, the leading edge in Emotionally Focused Therapy with James Hawkins and the membership called success and vulnerability. Hey Ryan, welcome to the show. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, definitely I'm excited to get into things. You and I were just talking before we started recording. We have so many things to talk about, but maybe focusing a little bit on emotional avoidance and EFT. But why don't you tell everyone a little bit more about yourself? Yeah,

Ryan Rana 1:58
looking forward to it. That's one of my favorite topics. So, yeah, it's my honor to be with you. I appreciate the work that you're doing here, Shane, and I just first want to say how much I appreciate the listeners. I mean, what does it say about them, these people that have given their whole life to other people, to serve their communities and even to take their personal time to listen to a podcast about helping people. I mean, that really refreshes my heart. And, you know, in a society that's very divided right now, I think, and these people that are listening are stars. So can't tell you how much I appreciate your work, listeners and and it's my honor to be with you. Yeah, like you said, I'm a trainer with with iceft as the International Center for Excellence in EFT, that's Sue Johnson's organization. Of course, we're mourning the loss of her right now. She passed away this April, and was such a huge I could talk forever about sue a dear friend as well. But isef.com is a great place to visit. Great, great. All our research is there. You can find trainings there, and iseft has got it gotten trainings down to an art form. I would highly recommend their trainings, their externship, their core skill series. Every time I work for them, I'm like, Man, these people have got it down. I would, I would actually encourage people to go through externship and core skills, even if they don't like EFT, because it will accentuate whatever it is that you do like. So want to promote iseft. And then James Hawkins and I, our podcast, the leading edge on Emotionally Focused Therapy. It really parallels the great thing that you're doing here, except for we're really, really focused on EFT. And then the one I'm probably most excited about right now is online training platform, success in vulnerability.com, we started that during COVID, and we had no idea it was going to grow and be as successful as it has been. Our mission is to try to get as practical as we can, to take training right into the room with you. So we have modules and topics like severe escalation. We teach on it, we demonstrate it, we show real, real clinical examples. We give you exercises. So it's I'm pretty excited about that. In fact, we'd love to offer your listeners a $50 off a membership for a year with the code couples couch 50 off, which I think you'll have in your show notes. So would recommend put

Shane Birkel 4:22
that in the show notes, yeah, yeah. Happy about our SV work, yeah, yeah, thank you, yeah, that's great. How long have you been working in the field of couples therapy?

Ryan Rana 4:31
Yeah, this, this next month, will be my start, my 26th year.

Shane Birkel 4:36
Yeah, so long time. And how long have you been teaching Emotionally Focused Therapy or practicing and teaching? I should say, Yeah,

Ryan Rana 4:43
I went to train with Sue Johnson and George Fowler, who probably my primary mentors. About 2010 2011 and I became a trainer, 567, years after that. So about seven, eight years as a trainer, supervising some before that, I taught it. The classroom, the grad level for about a decade just before that, but pretty serious about EFT now for about 15 years.

Shane Birkel 5:08
Yeah, that's great. And you know, I think that obviously it's one of the most well regarded couples therapy models, and there's so many people who find it to be incredibly effective in their work with couples. And I've had several episodes. People can go back and listen to some of the other episodes as well, but I'm excited, you know, for you, and I maybe to focus a little bit on the emotional avoidance in couples therapy, in using EFT, because, you know, one of the things that I think we run into as couples therapists oftentimes is, you know, we're trying to do our thing. We're trying to we're like, I know what would be helpful to these people. And it's sort of like the people we're working with are like, what I don't this doesn't feel like what I want, or what what we came in here for. And, you know, so maybe that could be how we start the conversation. You know, when you're working with people like starting out like, what are you assessing? What do you what are you looking for? What opportunities are you maybe kind of looking like, which person might be a helpful one to start with, or something like

Ryan Rana 6:14
that? Yeah, good. Large question there. You know, I'll just start with this. I hated EFT as a grad student, and even, even when I started being in the classroom, I didn't like I didn't understand it. EFT takes a little bit of time. You got to look at it multiple times before you get it, so it's my fault. But obviously came all the way around on that one. And at risk of oversimplifying this, we know that if a relationship can repair their bond, they win if they can't repair their bond, you can do any number of other great things, and it's still not going to work, right? It's going to have really high relapse rates. And so I think so repairing a bond is kind of like riding a bike. You can talk about riding the bike, you can teach them all kinds of riding bike skills, you know you can teach the physics of the pulley system, but until you get on that bike and you can feel the rhythm and the balance of riding the bike, you can't, in fact, ride the bike. And so EFT is so experiential. We don't want to spend too much time talking about bikes. We want to get people on the bike. As a therapist, I want to get very close to you as you ride that bike. I want my hand just off or just on that handle to help you when you fall down, trusting that once you feel it, and I'm not just talking about emotions, I'm talking about behavior and emotions, once you can feel the balance of riding that bike, then it's like, oh, that's that second order change we're looking for, right? And so I think what you what you speak to, you said it very well. We have a we have a cultural problem. We have mostly Western cultures are fairly linear. We tend to think of things in a first order. It's not going well. So teach me new things, but those are sort of first order interventions. But people are stuck in second order problems. They're in a they're in a self perpetuating systemic feedback loop. So throwing first order solutions at a second order problem has such high relapse rate, so the burden becomes on us as a therapist is how to help people see it just enough to trust the process to come over and do second order experiential work. And so there is a little bit of a tension there, but it's a normal tension. And certainly, emotional avoidance is one of those things that we expect, you know, so when I when I teach my core skill series, I just try to be practical. I like, Look, don't expect your clients to be able to do any of this. Don't like they're not supposed to be able to access their emotions. They're not supposed to be able to respond to each other, not supposed to be able to communicate. If you want to use that word, don't see that as a problem. That's what the models are built for. But we can unpack that some more. Yeah, absolutely.

Shane Birkel 8:59
I just wanted to ask, you know, when you're talking about first order and second order change, you know? So if I, if I go in and say, you know, my partner won't talk to me about finances or something like that, a first order change would be okay. Just start talking to your partner about finances, right? Let's schedule it every Thursday. The two of you are going to talk for 20 minutes about finances, right? That is sort of like creating a solution to the problem, right? The tangible kind of solution. So would a second order change be something more like, well, what's getting in the way? Why does it feel so difficult when you ask to talk about finances. Why is it difficult for your partner? What's happening for you? And how do we understand that better? To create a scenario where that you know could because obviously you know that what you know people know. People can read the books or Google it. They know what the first order changes they need to make are, but what's. Exact way of them actually following through on it. Yeah, well

Ryan Rana 10:03
said, well said, you know, I just got a new keyboard here. I'm looking at it. It's one of those fancy Apple Magic keyboard, I don't know, and it won't delete the way I want it to. So it's driving me crazy. And so I just google how to delete on it, and it's like, oh, hit Command D, and it works. So boom, that's a first order problem with the first order solution, just give me the answer, and I got it. So now I'll remember that the rest of my life on this keyboard. But, but, and clients come in and they're asking for that, the problem is that's not what's really happening, right? So once, so money being a really common you know, thinking about Dr gottman's research being one of those chronic problems that reveal an attachment problem. So so whenever someone says that, I instantly think I don't necessarily say this to them. I might, it depends on the situation, but they have a they have a negative feedback loop cycle that's preventing the repair of their bond. And then that's that distance that cycle is showing up in the content of money. So I want to join them there. I want to honor the frustration and the perspectives. I want to be with them. But then I want to, I want to try to install an attachment way of looking at the cycle that prevents the repair. So some people think we're just going to dive into the emotion about money, and that's a that's a misunderstanding about EFT. We're going to we're going to first establish a structure of their negative cycle that keeps that distance going, and from there, we're going to try to drop more towards the heart level, right? Because, why? Why is money a problem? Because money is symbolic. Do you see me? Do I matter? Are you with me? Do you have my back? You know? Are we really on the same team, or are you just about yourself, right? So those are attachment panic problems that show up in the context of money. But if I just solve the money problem, it's not going to solve that, right? So I joke around or say this, sometimes I could, I could get a Brinks truck full of $5 million and back it up and pour it on your patio, and your relationship won't heal from that, because we never address this the deep sense of us,

Shane Birkel 12:12
yeah, yeah, that's great. Can you say a little bit more about what that means to establish the structure of their cycle.

Ryan Rana 12:23
Yeah, so, you know, Sue and others, we really took the work, if you want to, if you want a random read that, it blew me away. Actually, it's, it's an author named Magda Arnold. She's one of the sources that Sue used to develop our, you know, steps and stages and later the tango little mini models in the EFT. But she wrote a book called memory in the brain. I actually picked it up two months ago, and you would have thought it was written, you know, with Dan Siegel and Alan short UCLA, she gets into brains and neurotransmitters and all this stuff. But anyway, she has a process called appraisal theory that Sue Johnson has taken, over the years and developed that we call affect assembly. And so we're going to add an organizing structure. And of course, we're always going to be, you know, EFT is all about the use of self. We're always using reflection, validation. We're trying to be with people. We're trying to do therapy with them, not just teach them. So our humanistic presence is what EFT is all about. But we also want to have structure. So appraisal theory is that behaviors that that I might do that are harmful to the relationship, or I just, I'll leave that vague. It starts with my response to danger. So a misunderstanding of attachment theory and EFT is about adult attachment theory, not talking about childhood per se, but attachment theory, back to the way baldy wrote it. It's a threat mitigation system. So attachment is is a as a wired in instinct to seek proximity to others in the face of distress. So if you're really going to understand what's happening for me in this context of of poor money management, it starts with something activate. Something triggers Ryan's body to danger cue. And by the way, I might not even know that. Oftentimes the client doesn't even know that's happening, right? So that's where you're going to use yourself and your interventions to walk me through what I actually observe in my partner, which sends me a danger cue. And then what, what attachment meaning in fills with that things like, I don't matter. They don't care about me. They're just about themselves. So blame of self, blame of other. And then it loads the emotions, fear, hurt, her sadness, that never gets talked about, by the way, before it brings up my action tendency, right? So those are the four elements.

Shane Birkel 14:46
You mean it never gets talked about within the couple usually, like, like, it never comes to the level of consciousness.

Ryan Rana 14:52
Yes, if I'm really afraid, oftentimes, what I do is I get critical, or I go away, right, right? And that's where EFT. Is trying to revive and redeem that missing conversation, because if a couple could just say, Hey, hang on a minute. I appreciate your perspective. This scares me. Yeah, right, and here's where I am, and if that, if my partner can respond to me and we can repair that bond money cannot be a problem, right? We'll either figure out money or honestly, won't care that much because we're really connected, and that's hard to believe until you see it 1000 times, like I have, right? But that's the structures that we're talking about. What's someone's trigger? What's the emotion that comes behind that? What's the attachment message and what's their action tendency? Do they go away? Do they get critical or some other variant? We're

Shane Birkel 15:39
going through this really quickly, but like, how much time would you take, typically, to sort of, like, get the lay of the land, you know, trying to understand each person's sort of attachment and the cycle and, you know, all the things you're talking about that are going on between them?

Ryan Rana 15:58
Yeah, yeah. You know, according one of my fellow trainers, Catherine de Bruin, she came to Arkansas years ago before I was a trainer, and her first comment was, people think that EFT is all about safety, but it's not. EFT is actually all about risk. I love that quote. It's so true, and so because what really reshapes a bond is people's ability to get their heart back in the game, which is inherently risky and vulnerable, right? So, but before, but there is an order to this. Before you can ask people to risk, we have to establish safety. And so this is one of the ways that we establish safety, is our attachment reframe with those four elements I just went over. And so we go over and over that until we establish safety, until people can start to see their moves right in a non shaming way, and with a lot of presence from the therapist, when that is established and people can kind of see their cycle. We're minimalist when it comes to insight, but there is some that's needed. I need to understand that there. Here's the pain for me, here's my protection moves. And then, most importantly, here's now how my protection moves land on my partner. So I'm going to continue to use those four elements we call affect assembly or tempo. Is a is a nickname George Fowler and others, success and vulnerability.com. Kind of added to help people remember those same four elements. We're going to continue to do that until it slows down, until, until people have that minimal insight to sort of see the game that they're actually and I think sometimes people, I don't know if you're a board game person or not, but some people are continuing to do the moves like they're playing the game, sorry, when they're really playing Monopoly. And so that's what we're trying to do, is to help them see, hey, here's the game that you're in, right? And so that's where that that attachment metaphor, that attachment system, is so helpful for us, because when people can go, oh, okay, so you're saying my behavior makes perfect sense. But here's the cost in the relationship, when people can start to see that cycle. Now we have enough safety to go for more risky vulnerability.

Shane Birkel 18:03
Yeah, and you talked about the you mentioned blaming, and I don't know if it comes from our culture or if it comes from, you know, people's families growing up, or whatever it is, but I think that most of us, for whatever reason, have have some of that mindset embedded in us, where, if I'm struggling with something like talking about finances with my partner, I do go to that place of like, figuring out whose fault it is, like, Is it their fault? Is it my fault? Getting very critical and blaming and shaming of and I think would you say that part of creating the safety is moving away from that sort of blaming mindset. It's sort of like validating, like, oh, it makes sense that you struggle with this because of these reasons. You know, like, kind of, kind of like helping them feel like there's no, you know, there's no bad guys here. You know, both of you are just struggling in these different ways, something like that.

Ryan Rana 18:59
Very much so, and I think that's a huge target for us, and what we call stage one work, which is what we're doing with the couple until they stabilize. And you're right on the I think EFT might take a slightly different approach to that. So instead of just telling them to not blame, which would be a top down first order intervention, we want to do it experientially, because blame is also a survival strategy, particularly for anxious attachment style folks, blame actually regulates their body. So what's performing? It's performing a survival function. So just telling someone to not do it is like telling the drowning person to take off their life jacket, right? So instead of that, we want to work with the blame. We want to work with the function of the blame. We want to honor that, reflect that, validate that, which is very hard to do because sitting across from someone, you realize this is toxic for their relationship, and blame is toxic, let's be clear, and yet it's it also has a survival function, so I'm trying to balance that. Yeah, and until we replace it with something else, it's not really fair to ask someone to stop blaming. So I want to track the function honor ballet, just like you were saying, until, until the body can regulate from connection, as opposed to from blame. And then I want to see what the pain is that drives that blame. And if I can get that pain responded to now that that connection starts to replace the need for blame. And yes, there's cultural there's cultural aspects to this, especially in the US. You know, it's like every other TV show is CSI or Judge Judy. We have a linear top down. So find the person to blame. I think sometimes blame is a survival instinct, because if I can identify what's wrong, then I can survive right. And so blame is a big part of this. In EFT, we're trying to get couples to blame the cycle. So it's a good day when a couple comes in and they say, Hey, Saturday night, we're at a restaurant. We start this going, and one of us said, Hang on a minute. I think the cycles got us so when my clients say that good things are about to happen because, because it is human nature to blame something so but the what breaks my heart is, if it's my fault, if I'm bad, we're in trouble. If you're bad, we're in equal trouble. So we're trying to give them a third thing to blame, to help them de escalate.

Shane Birkel 21:26
Yeah, and I think that, like you said before, like, a lot of times people aren't even aware that it's happening, you know? They're stuck in that mindset that there is someone to blame. I think just shedding light on it, you know? But you, and I, when we did the other podcast interview, and I can't remember what the episode number was, I'll put it, I'll mention it at the beginning and the end when I, when I create the intro, but we talked about, I think it was attuning to the attachment dilemma, or something like that. But I'm imagining, as you're talking now, like that's a big part of that, this creating safety where, like, I'm sort of in a very compassionate way, sort of like attuning to, you know, what happens in these situations when they're starting to talk about finances or something like that? And again, that's part of creating the safety for them, so that they can, once they see that I'm a safe person, that I get it, that I understand that was part of what you said. I think like, if they feel like we know that if we can describe the situation better than they can of what's going on inside of them, then they will trust, they will have hope that we can give them some guidance as to what to do with it at that point. And I think, you know, to me, that's sort of the it sounds like. Or you can tell me if that's like the beginning phases of helping them learn how to talk about it, like externalizing the problem, or, you know, talking about it in a different way.

Ryan Rana 22:56
No, I think that's right on, you know. And that's that, to me, was the first thing that that changed my my mind, my heart, towards EFT, is how incredibly honoring it is of clients, you know, and I practice multiple models. I sat behind the mirror, you know, in grad school, and I listened to and I even did it, I'll confess, you know, hearing people say some pretty negative things about clients. You know that you know whether we're pathologizing them or diagnosing them. But, you know, Sue did a great job of saying diagnosing what someone does in a cycle is like judging how a fish swims when they're out of water, right? And because humans are meant to live, we're mammals. We're meant to live in connected safety, and so when that breaks down, and my primary relationship becomes a source of danger. It's not the best version of me that comes out right. My body starts to prioritize survival over connection. There's that battle we're always working with, those parks, those energies within people, and so EFT. That's what drew me, was it's so honoring of people, because we go the extra mile to look at, what are the good reasons someone has to do these things? Yes, we know it doesn't work, and we're going to show that, but before that, we're going to take the extra energy, and it is that it's energy to be with people and to honor. Here's the good reasons that you have. That's that's Bobby's phrase, good reasons. And so if I can look at the attachment dilemma that someone has, it helps their body regulate connection with me, starts a contagious effect where they can connect with each other, right? So me looking at the fact that you don't have a good move, if I talk about money, it hurts my partner. We get more distance. If I don't talk about money, we're going to run out of money and die, right? You don't have a great move. This is a hard place to be, so staying right there longer than the therapist often wants to, even leaning into that sense of exasperation or even hopelessness once again, now I'm going to be touching the heart, and that's the. Part that never gets talked about. We get preoccupied. We get locked into this mediation attempts. We get locked in conflict resolution, as opposed to finding each other at that heart level and repairing the bond. And so that's what we're always doing in EFTS. We're trying to be with people up where they are and work with their protection instead of against it. So we want to work with their protection, allowing them to drop down into more of their humanity, where we can meet them there, and then eventually their partner meets them there.

Shane Birkel 25:35
Yeah, and I feel like when I there's something about seeing the world in in the, I don't know what you would call it, in the unhealthy way, uh, that feels safe like you, like you're saying, like, like, it's a fish in water, almost like we're out of water. When you ask me to be vulnerable, that's when I feel like I'm out of the water, but like, I got you, um, when, when I'm just, like, seeing it, you know, like, Oh, my partner just is the, you know, is to blame. It's like they're the problem. They still want to talk about finances, whatever. There's some sort of safety about that, because I don't actually have to be vulnerable and take a look at myself. So part of you know, the way I would say it. I don't know if you you know this is, this isn't a representation of EFT language, but you know, I would say that when, when we move into the fear or the emotion, you know, we're moving into my true, authentic self or true, authentic reality. Yes, that that. I can avoid that for a long time. I can pretend like everything's fine. I can pretend like I don't have any issues. It's just everybody else, or whatever my mindset is about that, but like the in this process, what my perspective is that we're moving people into their authentic truth. You know, which is, it's hard to make progress if you're not actually starting with acknowledging the truth of what's happening for you or the other person. And I think that, you know, again, maybe this is part of our culture. I think there are many people who are very good at avoiding those emotions because it feels so scary, and they're not telling themselves it's scary, but, you know, they're not going into the fear. They're not they don't want to go into the sadness. They don't want to go into the hurt. To go into the hurt. I think that, you know, so one of the phrases that people use sometimes is that emotional avoidance, where people it's not even that they're consciously don't want to it's like they don't even know how to start and, you know, I wanted to get your perspective a little bit about, how do you know? How do you work with people who have some of that even more on the stronger side of emotional avoidance? Okay, yeah, that's

Ryan Rana 27:48
a lot of great things. You're giving me good notes there. I'm trying to keep up with that's pretty good, you know? I want to say this on a slight tangent that works back hopefully. And by the way, I don't represent all of EFT only represent me. So if I say something someone doesn't like, don't hold it against EFT. Just hold it against me. But and the last few months, we've talked about the two great deceivers here, and that is couples therapy and sex. Because something about when those presenting problems are in the office, it draws us out of our process role and into sort of a teaching role. Something about those two presenting problems does that to great professionals. For instance, if someone presented in my office with clinical depression for 14 years, I would not I would never go okay, they lack skills, right? Let's just give them coping skills. It's just, there's just more to it than that. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't, you know, get into, well, happy people smile 11 times more a day than depressed people. So I should teach them smiling lessons like I we would never do that. But something about couples and sex has this effect on us, because it's very deceptive, because I think what what's in common is, is these two are very intimate, and these two draw from a very deep well, and so when that well becomes poisoned, people appear to be unskilled. People appear to not know how. People appear to not know love languages or need mediation conflict resolution, and it's deceptive, and that's why, one of the reasons why recidivism is so high with couples therapy, right? And so, just like you said, if I'm really afraid about whatever when it comes to money, but I don't show that. Next thing you know, I'm using the tools as if I'm buying a car, right? I'm using negotiation tools, and then sometimes therapists, myself included, gets caught up in that same negotiation. Next thing you know, we're trying to out mediate love and fear. Well, good luck, because a bond is not like buying a car. This is not a negotiation. This is sacred. There's something deep here. You can't out mediate the heart, and so that's where we gotta be careful with those deceptive aspects here, because this relationship is so sacred and so important, it's also powerful, it's also inherently dangerous. And so if I won't let my heart be seen, if I can't show up with my heart open when my partner is in trouble, we're going to get caught here. And there's no amount of skills you can teach me, there's no amount of negotiation you can teach us to overcome fear and love. And so avoidance, avoidance is one of those moves that is a survival we see that as a protective survival action. I show Maya Angelou video. It's outstanding, by the way, if you want to google it sometimes called called why we wear the mask. I'm a big Maya Angelou fan. I think she's one of the best thinkers in the last century, but that's a sidebar, but she's got a great video showing her talent called why we wear the mask, and she talk, and it's got racial trauma and all kinds of it's a great, powerful story, and heartbreaking, but I love it. She uses the term survival apparatus, right? She should. The story is a black lady who's who rides the bus and sees all this injustice, and she just smiles, right? Because what options does she have? Right? And so she talks about that being a survival apparatus, and that's how I'm going to see emotional avoidance. So I've gotta be very, very cautious in my assessment and even how I think about my clients. Remember how Ryan thinks about his clients says more about Ryan than those clients. So we want to be paying attention to our own biases, our own work that we continue to do, but I want to see that emotional avoider as having paralyzed skills versus a lack of skills. And I'm open to revising that, you know, eventually, but it will be a tragedy if I assume they don't have emotion, or if I assume they're not that committed, or if I assume these global deficiencies with them, when actually they do have them, they're

Shane Birkel 32:08
just stuck. I love that. I agree with that 100% Yeah, yeah. So,

Ryan Rana 32:13
so again, if you diagnose someone by by their behavior in a cycle, you're really missing that person completely okay. And again, I'm a mental health professional. I'm open to any number of things, from neuro divergence to schizophrenia. I mean, it could be any of those things, but often times it's actually a vicious negative cycle with the person they love most. So getting practical here in that event, I've got to change me, and that was my biggest lesson of working with emotional avoidance. One, I need to expect it. Don't again, don't expect your clients to have access to the heart, whether they're in that pursuer role or that withdraw role, right, which is the vast majority of our clients we're working with, and by the way, both of those are emotionally avoidant. Pursue a role just tends to use more words. I like that. I like that. Yeah, that's good, yeah. But that withdraw role, the person who says, I don't know and sits there, the person who doesn't say very many words, the person that that is not very active, it can frustrate the you know, what? At a therapist. And so now there's the battle for your heart. What do you think about this person? Are you going to distance yourself and diagnose? Are you going to stay with them as long as you can and see if I can find them and I have to change me first of all, I have to expect that. Because, again, if they were emotionally in tune, they would have never called you. So don't expect people to be able to do this. So when I see that emotional avoidance, what do I say to myself about them? Can I fight to say, hey, what if this is a survival apparatus? What if this is the move the stuck place that they're in, versus seeing them negatively? And then I got to change me. So literally, I've got to change my pacing. I can't continue to speak to someone in an emotional and emotionally avoidant place in the same speed that I would someone who's who's more present. I literally change. You can't see this if you're listening to the podcast, but I literally change how I sit in the room. I give a little more space. I tend to turn my chair at an angle. I try to relax my inner self, because you can't pursue withdraw. So if I need you to open up, I'm actually activating the very thing that that shuts you down, right? So don't ever do to the person what the cycle does to them. So I gotta change me, yeah? Because

Shane Birkel 34:32
you'll just become another pursuer for them in their life. I like that's a really good thing to keep in mind for us.

Ryan Rana 34:38
Yeah, if I push, push, push, to get that emotion or to get them to open up. Now they're surrounded and often in the corner by two pursuers and what jars are already behind the behind the eight ball coming into therapy number one, right? Yeah, opening up and talking is a danger cue for them, yep. And they're often in a relationship with someone who's their pretend psychologist. Right? And so they're actually sitting in front of a real therapist. So now look at where they are. So no wonder they come in playing defense. Yeah. What am I supposed to say? Or are they trying to get me to say? How do I keep myself from making this worse? That's that emotional avoidance most of the time, is the body playing defense. So how do I find a way to create a new safety, a new rhythm, where I where they can sort of let us see part of their heart.

Shane Birkel 35:25
And how much are you explaining this versus just doing the work and having them experience it more, you know, more experiential work, you know, as you're talking through it. Because I imagine it would be helpful to sort of like, you know, like, for example, give the partner a little feedback. Like, hey, when you're when you really want something, it's good to ask, you know, to say it in this way. But obviously the experiential work is going to be the most important part

Ryan Rana 35:56
of it. No question. And first, I want to say there's a flexible answer to that, and it varies from therapist to therapist. What it should vary, though more is from client to client, because I know therapists myself included will be like, well, this is the way I do it, yeah. Well, it's not really about me. It's about what does their body need? And so I want to be a minimalist when it comes to psychiat, especially early with an avoidant person, because if I'm if I'm over educating them, what am I implying? Right? They're already being told at home they're the problem. They're already being told at home they lack skills. They often think that they lack skills. So a bunch of education early on can really, really, it effectively, is another form of criticism and pursuits, right? So, you know it, but it depends. You know, I've had people who come in and I'm four miles from a major research university of about almost 40,000 so sometimes I'll have a professor or something who's got a degree in engineering, right? And so they live in their head. So, you know, not that often, but in extreme situations, it's good to for them to say, Hey, can you help me understand where we're going, right? And then it can be helpful to talk about research. I prefer to do that than to say, here's how you need to say that use this skill because then right back into that pursuer energy. But sometimes, you know, like, like, Sue's old book, The love sense, it's a flowery title, but it is a hard science book, like, if you need a scientific explanation, and again, I don't use the word emotion in therapy, which is kind of funny. That's just a that's just a Ryan thing. I'm certainly not saying you shouldn't, but it is ironic, because emotion is the most cognitive word in the world, right? So if you say, Hey, Shane, show me your emotion, you actually have to leave the emotion to go figure out the definition of an emotion. It is Adam, right? So I love to use the word heart, as you can tell, I've used it like 10 times today. So you know, but, but love sense is a great scientific explanation for why we need your heart in this intimate relationship, and while we've got to get beyond and below the tools that we would use to buy a car for for this sacred bond, right? And so I've painted love sense a few times, and they're like, come back. They're like, Okay, I get it now and then, I want to get as experiential as possible.

Shane Birkel 38:19
Yeah, if you're sitting with that couple, how, what do you mean by getting experiential? Like, how are you beginning to approach that situation? Yeah,

Ryan Rana 38:30
and I'll say this, and you can say that's a little too much cookie cutter, Ryan, you need to be, I'd say it is, it is, but you gotta start somewhere. Yeah? So when I, when I see an avoidant person, or, I mean, let me say it more accurately, when I pick up on avoidant energy, yeah, for someone who's in that chair, because I've worked with people who are married, as an example, married and divorced four times, and they were the avoidant twice, and they were the pursuer twice, right? So this is dynamic. Oftentimes, there is histories of trauma, and, you know, people can be trained to be withdrawers. We have cultural norms, but it is also dynamic. But let me say, when I first pick up on that withdraw energy, when someone is barking at me, right, a lot of words and their partner, I'm sure this is a coincidence. Has very little to say and says, I don't know, you know. So my presupposition is this, they are desperately afraid of failure, desperately afraid of being seen as a failure, right? And and life and this relationship has taught them their only pathway to love is to perform and get it right. So if I ask them a question, what I'm actually getting is their survival apparatus. They're trying to solve the problem. They're trying to not be seen as a failure. So if I know that, if I know that, then it informs, number one, where I sit in the room, what angle I'm at. Yeah. Tears can be bad about getting what I call in the front seat. You can't see me on the podcast, but I'm leaning forward towards them. I'm being very assertive, and in many ways, that's a beautiful thing to do in therapy, but not when an avoidant withdrawer is playing defense. So I've gotta change me. I've gotta change my pacing. I gotta say things like, Hey, I'm just hanging out. I'm sorry I got a one down stance or a not knowing stance invites them into the room. I don't want to go after their emotion too early. I want to get their cognitive perspectives. I want and here's your key, is if I understand the survival apparatus that is with jars, then I want to find not cliche or patronizing. I don't want to be patronizing, but I want to be able to respond and and affirm when they get it right. So if they give me anything that's in seek, I want to say amazing, that what you just said right there is beautiful. That is excellent. Okay, so what that's doing is calling their heart forward. Because if I can, if I can find when they're getting it right, I'm helping them move out of that fear of failure and develop competency and to feel empowered. And so when you do that, withdraws will shock you how much they feel and how much they have to say. But we have to find a way to engage them in those early moments. But if you can understand that the structures of the avoidant attachment style, I'm working with fear of failure. I'm working with someone who's only gets loved when they perform. They're playing defense right now, what I'm seeing is a lack of safety, not a lack of engagement. It helps me adjust.

Shane Birkel 41:42
Yeah, that's super helpful. That's really good. Just to take a step back on this conversation. Anything else that you think would be helpful for people to sort of understand about these dynamics.

Ryan Rana 41:53
If you ask most therapists, do you validate your clients, every therapist in the world will say, I do. But one of the key features in EFT two things. One, when you come to an EFT training, especially our externship, we're not just going to PowerPoint you to death. We're going to bring a live couple in and demonstrate in front of you, so everything's experiential, right? And then the other part of our culture is we, we're watching our own videos. I just watched one of mine. Yesterday, I watched 27 minutes of it, and I love several things I did, and I hated several things that I did. So, you know, we're all on this mess together. None of us are experts at this, but we're going to watch our own videos. And one of the things that you see when we watch our own videos is we validate way less often than we think. Mm, hmm, right. We get in a hurry, we get strategic. And we forget to be with people. We forget to point out and validate what they do. And without a lot of validation, you'll probably never open a withdraw, an avoidance. So again, you can't go fast, you can't push and we have to find strategic, calculated ways to validate and validation, it regulates their body, right? Because that's that sense of I am doing a good job right now. I'm performing well. I don't have to be on defense. So So repeated humanistic and tactical validations when you watch on video. Number one, we're not doing that as much as we think. So we challenge people. Take the number of times you validate and multiply it times four for one week, and watch what happens, especially with those withdrawers, because they they really trigger us as therapists to come chase them. And next thing you know, we're we're in, stuck in the same cycle there. And so it's the use of validation will be my answer to that question, even even things that are not great. Like, you know, as soon as my partner gets upset, I go to the garage, it's so easy to be like, well, that's fine, but you need to stay because if you don't open up, we can't grow, and then we're done, right? And so finding a way to say, of course, it makes sense, you go away, you're trying to keep things from getting worse. You know, if you say something, you're going to we're going to miss each other for three or four days. So you're trying to protect the relationship. You're trying to slow this down, right? So I'm layering this with validation after validation after validation, and you'll be surprised what starts to happen next, because now I've invited you and your protection system into the office. And as that invitation lands, they often bring their heart with it. And next thing you know, it's a whole new case.

Shane Birkel 44:30
Man, that's a great thing that people can begin to apply right after listening to this, right? Just trying to times for those validations in their work, you know, yeah, and I find it's interesting when I'm getting triggered, you know, once in a while, as the therapist in the room to me whoever I'm getting triggered by, I try to remind myself this is a moment where I need to move into compassion and. To try to find something to validate about what's going on for them and what's happening for them, because otherwise, otherwise I might start an argument with them or something, because exactly my nervous system starts picking up on some kind of energy there.

Ryan Rana 45:14
Well, that's That's because you're a pro man. I so appreciate you saying that. That's a good reminder for me to get better too, because when my client's protection system activates my protection system, that's actually what's supposed to happen. So that signal that your body sends you, as the therapist is right, it's saying this is dangerous. This is unsafe. So I love what you're saying. You have to train yourself to lean back towards that, to find compassion, to find validation. Otherwise, you're going to do your action tendency, which for most of us, is to leave them and go do top down first order stuff, right? And it just, it's not that it's bad information, it's the wrong part of the brain, right? So EFT is all about limbic revision. We want to train people to have different instincts, to have different habits in the pain, as opposed to just trying to teach skills on top of the pain. And for me, you know it, don't forget this. Just like riding a bike, it's still about that here and now experience. I have to feel that pedal push me forward, right and my therapist can be with me. I want to have one hand on the handlebar for a while until they're not going to hurt each other and themselves. But if EFT is all about the here and now, right now, experience in the room and the use of self, so my hardest cases ever that go from if something's dead and becomes alive, it gets my attention, and so from my cases that were dead in the water and became alive and were healthy again, it still was those key moments with the use of self, right? It's the validation, it's the organization to get into that space. But in those moments of here and now emotion, I've gotta come forward with my vulnerability to be with their vulnerability, which then becomes contagious. And now, and now, we're responding heart to heart, and good things happen.

Shane Birkel 47:09
Yeah, well, this is so helpful. I I'm I've learned so much. I just really appreciate you, Ryan, thank you so much. And can you mention again? I'm sure people will be interested. You know, the podcast and the membership and whatever else you want to mention. Sure,

Ryan Rana 47:23
always promoting isef.com externship in the core skill series, I could, I could not do what I do without them. That's that foundational training. They also do all kinds of other stuff, specialty trainings, all over the world. By the way, about half of our trainers are our English is not their first language. They're all over the world, New Zealand, Israel, Belfast, everywhere. And

Shane Birkel 47:47
that's the site, right? If I go on isef.com I can see all of the upcoming externships and the dates and the locations and sign ups and stuff like that. So that'd be a good place for if they if they're interested in a training like that,

Ryan Rana 48:01
exactly. And we're all synced up. We're all synced up. So, you know, I'm after this, I'm going to into a meeting, and, you know, kiriaki, who's our trainer in Athens, you know? So you can go to Athens and take externship and do core skills one with me, and do core skills two with her. And it's the same, you know, we're, we're working from the same songbook. So I would start there, and then the, you know, the free resource, the leading edge and Emotionally Focused Therapy we start, you know, dialing in a lot of Q and A a lot of topical conversations and just, you know, trying to do second order work in a first order culture is like learning a new language. You have to speak it and speak it and speak it and be around people who are speaking it. And EFT is a model. It has to be caught. It's experiential. So that's a good thing. And then success in vulnerability.com. Is the online training platform. It gets very, very nuanced. You can go there. You can literally pick out what you want, instead of like, you know, I was an old professor, so picking on my old work here, I won't pick on anybody else, but I think I may not be the only one. You know, I was really teaching philosophy and some interventions and saying, go figure it out, right? And so that's fine for some people, because they can just use their talent. But really tough couples, we often need a little more than that. Success and vulnerability.com. Allows you to say, hey, you know, module nine is the withdraw playbook, which is what I just talked about right here. So literally, you're going to see me in real sessions and in demonstrations, working with avoidant people, and you'll see my eight moves and see if you like them, and they will even give you an exercise to try at home. So it's that kind of training, very, very practical, so we would love to have you try that out. Yes, wonderfully. Com, and

Shane Birkel 49:51
I'll leave the coupon code in the show notes so people can get a discount for signing up. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Well, thank you, Ryan. I really. Appreciate it, and hopefully we can catch up again at some point.

Ryan Rana 50:02
Thank you, Shane, I appreciate your work, and it's honor to be with you. All right. Thank

Shane Birkel 50:07
you so much, Ryan, thanks for taking the time to come on the show. I always learn so much about EFT when I talk to you. And thank you to all you listeners out there, definitely go check out the couples therapist couch.com website, you can find all of the previous episodes as well as other educational materials, and if you enjoyed this episode, you can even find the previous conversation with Ryan and I, which was episode number 116 so thank you all so much. You can always feel free to reach out. I love hearing from people. If you have any topics or guests that you'd love to see on the show, you know, definitely reach out and let me know. I'm Shane Birkel. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, and this is The Couples Therapist Couch. Thanks, everybody!