7 Tips for Better Emotional Connection With Your Partner

by Abby Birk, LMFT

In a post-lockdown world, I can't think of anything more important than mindfully and intentionally connecting with those we love,. Not just maintaining our close connections, but nurturing them with intention and care. Whether you are in a new relationship or in a long-term partnership, married or dating, these tips can inspire new ways to improve emotional closeness and connection with your partner. I encourage you to personalize the tips to your relationship, allowing your own creativity to influence how you might apply these research-backed suggestions!

Tip #1: Daily Compliments

According to Prepare/Enrich, a major premarital counseling program, one of the simplest ways to increase emotional connection and feelings of positivity in your relationship is to intentionally and generously compliment your partner daily. Compliments convey gratitude, affection, respect, and admiration, which are crucial for building a solid foundation for emotional connection and intimacy. Sometimes we get so caught up in the habit of our daily routines that we can't remember the last time we gave our partner a flirty compliment of how attracted we are to them or an honest affirmation of the hard work we see them putting in to their big project or our household chores. Experiment with offering your partner more daily compliments to better set the stage for emotional intimacy and closeness.

Tip #2: Daily De-Stressing Conversation

I see the daily Stress-Reducing Conversation from the Gottman Couples Method as an essential building block for emotional intimacy. Cultivating the ability to support each other day to day with various stressors outside of your relationship from work or home, personal or relational, can make the difference between feeling like a connected couple or a disconnected duo. While the De-stressing Convo is pretty straightforward, it is encouraged to personalize and adapt it to your own relationship's needs. Typically the rules go like this:

• One Speaker and one Listener

• Speaker talks as in depth and in detail as they want about any stress or stressors they have outside of the relationship (and can also include things they feel positive or grateful for or are looking forward to).

• Listener shows interest, eye contact, affection, and solidarity with Speaker

• When Speaker is done talking, Listener summarizes what they heard Speaker say and asks, "Do you feel heard/understood?"

• Speaker corrects Listener if needed, who then edits their summary until Speaker feels satisfied with summary and feels heard.

• Speaker and Listener may only then switch roles.

It is important to be on your partner's side, like their cheerleader or best friend...sharing in their feelings, triumphs, and sorrows, without making these your own issues or your problems to solve. Listener's goal is to ACTIVELY LISTEN; showing the Speaker that you are paying attention and taking in the meaning of what they are saying, paying particular attention to the emotions they are expressing. This can look like nodding your head, maintaining eye contact, shifting your body to face your partner, holding their hand, following along with "Mhm"s and "Wow, that sounds tough!" Focus on the emotion words your partner is using, this makes for easier and more meaningful validation and summary statements: "You sound frustrated about that coworker!" "You are hurt and saddened by how your mom chose to talk to you today over the phone."

So many couples struggle with taking on their partner's stresses or trying to come up with solutions prematurely. It's important to remember, we all have the desire to be seen and heard, to have our experiences and emotions accepted. This is the goal of the Daily De-stressing Convo -- not solution-finding or fixing how our partner feels!

Tip #3: Increase the frequency and variety of your non-sexual touch

Disconnected couples can fall into the trap of not touching their partner unless they are attempting to initiate sex. Therefore, it is important to be giving and not goal-seeking when offering physical touch as a way to connect with our partner, otherwise we run the risk of associating physical touch with pressure or expectation for more. Non-sexual touch includes physical forms of affection such as cuddling, massaging, tickling, rubbing, holding hands, sitting together with limbs touching, hugging, even kissing. The idea is to get creative with the variety and frequency of touch that you are utilizing to convey affection to your partner so that you are not only using touch to initiate sex or intercourse. Remember, people have different preferences for amounts and types of physical touch they enjoy. Please always honor your partner's boundaries and preferences for the amount and type of touch they would like to experience when engaging in nonsexual and sexual touch.

Tip #4: Play Together

Disconnected couples don't often make time or space for play and fun in their relationship. It's easy to forget that relationships take effort, investment, and nurturing to thrive -- just like a plant or any other living thing. And just like other living things, relationships die when they are neglected. Play is defined differently from couple to couple: board games, date nights, concerts, trying a new activity, learning a new skill, cooking class, wrestling, traveling, laughing together...are all ways we can connect with our partners with play. Play is not only something children need, adults need play, too, we just don't make as much time for it as we should. Here is your reminder to be intentional and make room for play in your relationship so you can connect further over experiences of joy and pleasure. Who doesn't want more of that in their lives?

Tip #5: Check in about it

Sometimes the best approach is the direct approach. To increase emotional connection, it might be best to simply ask what would help your partner feel more connected to you. Take turns answering these questions from Sex Talks by Vanessa Marin, LMFT:

• "What are 3-5 specific things that help you feel connected to me?"

• "What are your 3-5 favorite ways to receive love?"

• "What are your 3-5 favorite ways to show me your love?"

As a bonus tip, make this a weekly ritual checking in about what each of you need to feel connected or supported this coming week, keeping in mind that our answers  can change hour to hour and day to day (so it's a good idea to keep checking in about it).

Tip #6: Share Your Dreams and Goals

Connected and healthy couples cheer on their partners in accomplishing the goals they set out for themselves. Couples who share a vision and dream of the future are stronger in the face of smaller conflicts and challenges. Even if your dreams differ from your partner or are more specific to you or your career, just sharing your dreams and goals with one another and offering each other support is a profound way to show respect, admiration, and love for your partner. When we feel supported by our partner, we are more likely to be successful in accomplishing our goals! Research shows feeling close and connected to our partners at home actually improves our performance and achievement out there in the world!

Tip #7: Couples Therapy

As a marriage and family therapist, my favorite part of working with couples is being allowed the honor of witnessing couples growing stronger and closer together by addressing challenging patterns and blocks in their relationships. Couples therapy is not only a place for struggling couples, it is also a place for couples who are wanting to learn new and better ways to connect to improve emotional or physical intimacy as a proactive or preventative measure. If you are wanting to invest more time and effort into your relationship, couples therapy can be a lovely option for creating space in your busy schedules to sit down and mindfully nurture your relationship.

And now....

The mission should you choose to accept it....

Select one tip to try out in the next week OR have both you and your partner select an idea from this blog post to try this week without telling the other person what option you chose. Once you've experimented with one of the options above, debrief and discuss how this action led you to feel in terms of emotional connectedness with your partner and vice versa. Eventually, with even more experimentation and exploration, you both will begin to identify a full menu of actions and ideas for drawing closer and improving your sense of closeness with your romantic partner! Most importantly, please remember to have fun with it!

We have couples therapists here at Riverbank Therapy who would be happy to support you as well! Click here to learn more about couples therapy, and fill out our contact form here to schedule your free 20 minute consultation.

Your Guide to Starting Therapy

by Abby Lombardo, LMFT

It’s daunting.

I get it.

Yes, I, too, have had to search for a therapist (therapists seeing therapists who see therapists, it’s a thing) and have just stared blankly at my screen hoping the right someone would fall into my inbox.

In this way, searching for a therapist is like dating: you’re basically courting someone to see if they are trustworthy and make you feel comfortable enough to tell all of your vulnerabilities and still feel accepted by them.

 Actually, it’s a lot like dating.

 It’s also like searching for an apartment or a place to live, you might not know it’s a good fit until you try it out, step into the space, spend some time there…to know if it is a good fit or not for what you’re needing.

That’s the important part: try to focus on what YOUR needs are at THIS time in your life and the kind of person/professional you’re looking to help support your journey.

To aid in this purpose, I’ve devised a “Searching for a Therapist Cheat Sheet” that outlines common words, phrases, acronyms, and questions to help guide your search. It can help to feel informed and oriented to the search process, so that you can focus more on what the professional has to offer YOU.

Ideally, this information is best used in a consult with a provider. A consult is usually a free 15-30 minute meeting (over the phone or virtual) to assess whether you’d like to work together and schedule your first appointment. If the provider’s website or profile page doesn’t advertise that they do consults, don’t be afraid to ask!

Let’s get started with common therapy words used in the search for a therapist, that might not be so intuitive or self-explanatory.

7 Common Therapy Search Words:

1.      Specialty: this is something a professional has added training, experience, and interest in. Usually this includes some kind of certificate, training, and additional letters after their name. It is also probably the clients they have seen and want to see. Pay attention to these, they can be a helpful way to filter through who you might want to work with on a certain issue or topic.

2.      Modality: this is a bit different than specialty in that it refers to the way a therapist conducts treatment, or, how they do therapy. Modalities are therapeutic frameworks, lenses, theories that often guide the professional’s way of doing things in session. See more in the Acronyms section for the names of several common modalities to know about.

*The cool thing? Research shows that it’s not necessarily the modality that brings success in therapy, but the relationship you have with your therapist! So, modality does not make or break unless it leads to you not vibing with your therapist!

3.      Intake: the term for the 1st session. Intake sessions are usually billed at a higher rate than normal sessions as they are used traditionally for assessment, onboarding, orientation, and paperwork. Intake sessions vary from therapist to therapist. Some have you, the client, talk about why you’re coming to therapy and what the issues are you’re experiencing. Some will ask for your family information to get more context. Some will go through a timeline with you of different experiences you had while growing up. Mostly though, they’ll all discuss confidentiality and privacy with you, as well as the exceptions and you will probably be asked about why you’re coming to therapy, what your goals are, and how the therapist can support you.

4.      Scope of practice: this is a lot like specialty and modality in that it is WHAT a professional provider can OFFER you in terms of services. For example, a marriage and family therapist (LMFT) cannot prescribe medications, it is legally and ethically outside of their scope of practice. Make sure you are looking for a provider who can offer you the services you are actually looking for.

5.      Somatic-focused: this term refers to anything body-related. Somatic techniques and modalities often help you learn to work with and regulate the systems of the body: the “flight, fight, freeze” system and the calm/rest/soothe system (for example). A somatic-focused therapist might ask you: “Where do you feel that in your body; can you describe it?” If this feels daunting, they are there to help you every step of the way. They see the body as a source of wisdom and connection. They also see the body as the #1 place that we store all of our emotion, trauma, energy, and pain. There’s a lot you can work with somatically that you might not be able to through talking.

6.      Attachment-based: this refers to a general modality/theory of therapy that examines and explores the way you relate to people and things. Attachment begins when we are infants, depending on caregivers to provide us with what we need to sustain life and be nourished. How we attach/ed to our caregivers can have a lot of sway over how we relate to significant others and even friends. This modality is incredibly informational and slightly Freudian, and most therapists have training in this, though some zoom in and use only an attachment-based lens as their main modality or get extra training in it.

7.      Mindfulness-based: this refers to a therapist who uses present-focused, attention-centering techniques in the therapy session or for the client’s homework to engage the client more mindfully with the here and now, whether that be with your breath or with the uncomfortable, restless feeling you are having. Mindfulness has many, many amazing benefits and can really help with anxiety, mood, and attention issues.

9 Common Therapy Acronyms (in alphabetical order!):

1.      ACT: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy – teaches mindfulness-based coping tools for unwanted/negative thoughts and emotions, while focusing on identifying client’s values and moving towards goals based in the client’s values.

2.      CBT: Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy - probably the most common therapy acronym used these days; explores the connections of the 3 parts of the CBT Triangle: thoughts, emotions, behaviors and how they all interact with each other to build negative cycles and habits. Offers ways to interrupt negative/unwanted thought, emotion, or behavior sequences through practical changes and reframing. Most mental health professionals are trained in this type of therapy.

3.      CPT: Cognitive Processing Therapy – a common therapy for treating PTSD

4.      DBT: Dialectical Behavioral Therapy – a skills-based therapy that offers tools for many things including: self efficacy/assertion, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, receiving feedback, making a decision, etc. Great for someone who benefits from structured therapies.

5.      EFT: Emotionally-Focused Therapy – often for couples, this process-oriented therapy strives to find the vulnerable, intimate spots that we often try to protect out of fear or hurt and uses it to reconnect partners who are struggling.

6.      EMDR: Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing – this therapy is very cool. It is a somatic-based, trauma therapy that uses your body’s way of processing information to help you work through issues, sometimes without talking about them with the therapist. They teach a lot of coping strategies so that you feel ready for what comes up, too. Essentially, they use what you naturally do in REM sleep in session and utilize bilateral stimulation (sensation happening on 2 different sides of your body at different intervals). This is a therapy that I recommend for people who want to have tools and process their trauma without having to re-hash a timeline or go detail by detail with a therapist – or for someone who talk therapy just hasn’t helped much.

7.      IFS: Internal Family Systems – a family systems therapy that is also used with individuals in therapy to look at the different “parts” we all have within us that make us who we are and influence our behavior. For example, most clients have a “part of them” that wants change and a “part of them” that resists or is scared of change. IFS therapists work with these different parts in different ways to work towards client’s goals and self-integration.

8.      RO-DBT: Radically-Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy - this is a specialized therapy, that is derived from traditional DBT but geared more towards those that are over-controlled, think: perfectionist, Type-A people. This has been used successfully with those with eating disorders as well. RO-DBT is also a skills-based, structured therapy that teaches skills about emotional expression, social signaling, self-inquiry, personal effectiveness, boundaries, how to receive feedback, how to challenge rigidity in order to be more flexible, etc.

9.      SFBT: Solution-focused Brief Therapy – a strengths-based, post-modern approach that believes the client is the expert in the therapy room and the therapist is the guide to the client’s own wisdom about what has worked for them and what they want instead of the issues/problems they are experiencing now. Together, they build moments of “exceptions” to the problem and identify what success and solutions looks like for the client, sometimes without diving too deeply into the problem. “Brief” refers to length of treatment common for this type of therapy (~ less than 10 sessions, but not all SFBT providers limit their sessions to be this brief).

10.  TF-CBT: Trauma-focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy - this framework is therapy that guides the clinician and the client through trauma processing. Usually the therapy involves desensitizing oneself to one’s trauma story by sharing it with the clinician and reframing and reprocessing where necessary to work through an “old trauma story” and hopefully find a new story that helps the client integrate the events into their life while decreasing triggers and PTSD symptoms.

Questions to Ask Them (at first contact/consult):

1.      Do you take insurance/how much will this cost?

2.      What would a session with you look like?

3.      What experience do you have working with these issues/topics?

4.      How frequently will we meet/What determines the frequency of sessions?

5.      What are your specialties?

6.      What modalities do you use?

7.      What client do you work with best?

Questions to Ask Yourself (after first contact/consult):

1.      Did I feel comfortable talking to this person?

2.      Do I feel hopeful about working together?

3.      Did I feel heard and understood?

4.      Does it feel like a good fit for what I’m needing/wanting right now?

5.      Am I looking forward to my next session?

I hope you can use this cheat sheet to feel empowered in your search to find the a provider who is a good fit for what you are needing.

Trust yourself.

And if it turns out to not be such a good fit, you have the right to terminate treatment at any time! Remember, research shows it is the quality of the therapeutic relationship that determines overall therapeutic success.

Good luck out there! I’m cheering for you!

If you’re interested in scheduling a free consultation with one of Riverbank’s therapists, fill out the contact form here.

Thoughts On Why Masks and Phone Calls Are Anxiety-Provoking

Anyone else super anxious when making a phone call? 

Up until I started my own business, I used to have to hand the phone off to someone else to order pizza, make an appointment, etc, because I was too anxious to be on the phone with a stranger. I have heard this over and over again from other people, too. Phone calls are so stressful.

Now that I have some background in how our nervous system functions, I have a theory (emphasis on *theory*, I could be wrong) as to WHY this is the case for so many of us.

It's the same theory for why talking to people with masks on might be creating social stress (other than the obvious stress of living in a pandemic time...P.S. WEAR A MASK).

You've heard about the window of tolerance, also called the social engagement system. (and if you haven't, scroll around my page a bit and you'll find old posts about it). This is governed primarily by the ventral vagal complex (VVC), a big ol' nerve system that runs from the base of your skull all over your face and ears and throat, into your heart and lungs and guts (it's a big one, friends).

The VVC keeps your heart rate regulated. It helps you tune your ears to hear the frequency of human voices over other sounds. It helps you create and appropriately read facial expressions, by noticing the crinkles at the edges of eyes, the shape of someone's mouth, how much teeth are showing, if their nose is moving, crinkled, etc.

When we're able to read facial expressions, we can feel safer knowing whether a person is friendly or aggressive, sad or angry or pleased...in other words--feeling safe is connected to knowing how the other person feels and what their relationship is to us...which is all deeply connected to our ability to see their face. 

Well guess what?! The phone obscures all of the facial expression information. Masks obscure fully two thirds of this information.

We're missing the usual information we would use to help determine safety and how to act in relationship. Anxiety and stress in these situations is NORMAL.**

For those with a history of trauma, this stress might be even more acute and distressing.

Does this resonate with you? Let me know your thoughts!

**WEAR A MASK ANYWAY I'm just validating one potential reason why we might feel more dysregulated lately.

6 Steps to Meeting Your Needs

How the hell am I supposed to know what I need?

I hear this often from the therapy couch. 

If you grew up in a family system where your primary caregivers weren't attentive to your needs, this question can feel impossible. If you were or are constantly tending to those around you, rather than yourself, this question can feel silly. If you feel shame about being someone who needs things from others, this question can feel preposterous.

When you over-focus on others, or are not accustomed to being focused on, it's difficult to know what you need from yourself, let alone from others.

The good news is that you can learn to tend to yourself. You can learn what you need, over time, and begin meeting those needs yourself, and letting your support-people show up to meet your needs, too.

1) Practice asking yourself "what am I feeling right now?"

Your emotions are often a primary signaler of met or unmet needs. Example: If you're feeling lonely, it is because a need for connection is going unmet.

2) Follow-up that question with "what might I need right now?"

Once you've identified the feeling, you can ask what you need. This might be for soothing, for release, for distraction, for reflection, who knows! Especially early in the process, you might come up with a big blank here. That's okay and to be expected. Ask the question anyway. Part of meeting your needs is just learning how to ask about them.

3) Experiment.

Walk, talk, draw, journal, watch TV, eat a snack, drink some water. Make a big-ass list and try a bunch of things over time. It's okay if this feels random at first.

4) Check in on the impact.

Does the feeling seem more manageable? Do you feel more grounded? Don't expect whatever negative feeling you started with to just go away. That's not the barometer for meeting your needs. Check in whether you have more capacity, if the intensity of the emotion changed, if you feel more able to breathe, etc. This will tell you whether the thing you tried to meet the need actually filled that need, or not.

5) Take mental (or physical) note of what felt helpful and what didn't.

This helps you hone in over time on what you need.

6) Repeat. Over and over again.

The more you try, the more you know. Over time, you might realize that when you're feeling anxious, what you really need is to go outside, play out the worst case scenario ONCE, and then distract with a good book. You might find that when you're depressed, you need to journal and do something productive.

This is an iterative process. Be patient with yourself, and keep asking the questions.

Attachment, Resilience and Trauma

Therapists asking about your childhood is a cliché. But…it’s cliché for a reason.

Your childhood has a massive impact on who you are as an adult. In my work as a trauma therapist, I know that your childhood experiences have a huge impact on stress resilience. People who had childhoods that fostered secure attachments (or adult relationship that facilitate an “earned secure” attachment style) are better able to recover from stress, and less likely to develop PTSD after a traumatic event.

Let’s back up. What do I mean by “attachment”? It basically means the way that you receive soothing and connection with your primary caregiver(s) as a child. The quality of these early attachment relationships to a large extent influence everything about you.

“Attachment is part of a 3-part motivational system of fear–attachment-exploration. Fear triggers attachment behaviors. The safe haven of secure attachment soothes the fear of the amygdala, and opens exploration….Exploration eventually bumps us into something that triggers fear again which shuts down exploration and triggers attachment behaviors again which soothe the fear again and open exploration cycle of safety-exploration again.” -Linda Graham

Because we have a need for regulation, and as a baby haven’t yet developed the structures to do this ourselves, we rely on our primary caregivers to help us regulate. This is what our attachment system does for us. Attuned attachment typically leads to a wider window of tolerance, while misattuned attachment typically leads to a narrower one.

If our early attachment relationships are safe and attuned, we develop the ability to trust, accurately assess fear and regulate emotions. We can move more easily between fear, attachment and exploration. When something stressful happens to a person with secure attachment, their fear/anxiety peaks, and then over time returns to baseline in the window of tolerance. This happens more quickly and easily for those with secure attachments.

However, if our early attachment relationships are injurious or traumatic, then we might get stuck in any part of the fear-attachment-exploration cycle. This depends on how our caregiver(s) responded to us when we sought soothing after fear, or when we craved exploration. We may become more likely to seek attachment in response to fear (anxious attachment style), or seek exploration in response to either fear or attachment (avoidant attachment style), or oscillate between both (disorganized attachment).

This has a huge impact on how we respond to stress.

With an insecure attachment style (anxious, avoidant or disorganized), the peak of anxiety/fear may be higher, last longer, and take more to return to baseline. In addition, that baseline may be higher than those with secure attachment as well—meaning anxiety without stressful events idles closer to the edge of the window of tolerance.

Because our early attachment relationships influence our ordinary stress resilience, they also influence resilience to traumatic stress.

Those with insecure attachment styles are more likely to develop PTSD after a trauma than those with a secure attachment.

[This DOES NOT MEAN that everything is predetermined. Our attachment systems are quite amenable to growth and change, as is our stress tolerance. This is simply more information about how our early childhood experiences shape our adult selves.]

About 20% of people who experience trauma go on to develop PTSD. There is not a ton of research on how to prevent the development of PTSD after trauma, but this information is an interesting piece of that puzzle. If we can help kids have more secure attachments, then it follows that less kids and adults will experience PTSD after a trauma.

(I know, it would be great if trauma just didn't happen...but we don’t have control over that. However…I'd also argue that less interpersonally caused trauma would happen if more of us had secure attachment...but that’s a post for another time.)

Attachment security being a resilience factor supports the theory that relational experiences are necessary for healing trauma: developing more secure attachments in and through therapy will help widen your window of tolerance, support your nervous system in becoming more adaptive and flexible, and provide new healing experiences.

Want to explore this with one of our therapists? Click here to schedule your free 20 minute consultation today!