Dr. Sue Johnson: The Science of Lasting Love

My guest today is the late Sue Johnson. Dr. Johnson pioneered emotionally focused therapy. EFT is a structured approach that helps couples and individuals build stronger emotional bonds by addressing attachment needs and patterns in relationships. I recently re-listened to this incredible conversation and realized just how timeless it is and how much of an impact it had and continues to have on me to this day, and most of you listening, have never heard it. It doesn’t matter if you’re male or female, single or in a relationship. This conversation will help you better understand yourself and others. Here are a few of the top ideas that stuck out with me as I re-listen to this conversation.
The first idea is around criticism. When you, or anyone in your life that you deeply care about is passive aggressive or criticizing or complaining or demanding, it’s really a cry for help. We do this when we feel alone, when we feel like other people don’t care about us, when we need attention and want other people to pay attention to us. This reminds me of something Esther Perel told me in episode 71, and she had this line that has stuck with me ever since, and she said “behind every criticism is a wish”. Most people respond to this criticism, this escalation, this passive aggressiveness By shutting down, if you grew up without having a secure relationship modeled for you, you just shut down because you think that’s how you protect yourself. You shut your partner out. You shut everything out because you think that you can’t get hurt.

I don’t know about you, but this is what I tend to do by default. I feel like I need to protect myself. Nobody can hurt me if I just shut down. When we shut down like this, when everyone in our life shuts down like this, what does it do? It sends danger cues to others. So if I shut down and I’m in a relationship, my partner, now all of a sudden it’s dangerous. If we have friends, it’s the same thing. In the end, what we all want, we want someone to engage with us, and if we feel like they’re not there, when we reach for them, if we feel like they’re missing, we tend to raise the stakes. We become passive aggressive, we become angry, we complain, we become anything we need to in order to get attention. And this of course, makes other shut down more and shut us out, which just puts this loop into overdrive.