How Attachment Styles Affect Your Partner Relationship and Your Whole Family

How secure is your emotional connection with your partner?

In this episode of the Coaching Your Family Relationships Podcast, with guest Thomas Westenholz, we explore how attachment styles impact the way we relate to our partners—and how those patterns ripple into the rest of our family system.

You’ll learn:

• What attachment theory reveals about the ways we connect, argue, withdraw, or pursue in our closest relationships
• How to recognize your own attachment style—and why that awareness is the key to building emotional safety
• How a distant or conflict-filled partner relationship can lead to tension, emotional distance, or even estrangement from adult children
• The basics of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and how it helps couples repair and rebuild trust
• Why healing the parent-partner bond is foundational for improving communication and connection across the entire family

Whether you’re feeling emotionally shut down, constantly on edge, or just wondering why your relationship feels “off,” this episode will give you language, insight, and real strategies to begin shifting the dynamics—without blame or shame.

Learn more about Thomas Westenholz:

Website

Podcast

Tina Gosney is the Family Conflict Coach. She works with parents who have families in conflict to help them become the grounded, confident leaders their family needs.
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Tina is certified in family relationships and a trauma informed coach.
Visit tinagosney.com for more information on coaching services.

Transcript

Tina Gosney: 0:00

Tina, welcome back to coaching your family relationships Podcast. I'm Tina Gosney, a family conflict coach. Today we're diving into a really powerful topic, and it often gets overlooked when we talk about the overall family dynamics. And that topic is the relationship with your partner. So in this episode, I have a special guest, and we're going to explore attachment styles, and how the the attachment style that you have shows it's the way that you show up in your closest relationships. Why? If you understand your own attachment style, that can be a game changer for how you connect and you communicate, and then how you can also repair and why creating emotional safety with your partner is not just about feeling good in your marriage. It's also one of the strongest predictors of peace and stability and connection throughout the rest of the family. The relationship with the parents really creates an atmosphere in the home that has a powerful effect on the functioning of the rest of the family. And even if you think that you're hiding conflict that you might be having in your relationship, you know the rest of the family subconsciously, at least, if not consciously, they pick up on it, and they know and that's the ripple effect. The ripple effect is how the health of your partnership affects your parenting, your energy and the relationship with everyone in the rest of the home. We're also going to talk about how Emotionally Focused Therapy, and a shortcut for that is EFT, can guide you to deeper emotional connection and more secure attachment. And it's not through blame and finger pointing, but it's through understanding this episode is especially for you. If you've ever felt emotionally distant in your relationship, like you're not even on the same team anymore, or if you wonder why your efforts at connection just keep falling flat. So you're going to walk away with some real insight, some language and tools that you can start shifting that emotional climate in your home, and we're going to start with what's at the very heart of it, which is your partnership. Now, if this episode resonates with you, please share it with someone who needs it, and if you have a minute, leave a review and a rating on Apple podcasts, your support really does a lot in helping to keep this podcast on the air and new episodes coming out. And with that, let's get started. Hey, everyone. I am really looking forward to this conversation that I have with a special guest today. This is Thomas westenholz, and he's a couples therapist. Doesn't live in the US, and you'll see that in just a minute. And we've had some really great pre conversation that I am very excited about having to be able to continue that conversation as we get into this work today. So Thomas, would you introduce yourself to the listeners please?

Thomas Westenholz: 2:59

Of course, absolutely. And you're right, they can probably hear from my accent. I'm not from the US. I'm from a tiny little island called Denmark in Scandinavia. So yeah, and of course, I'll give a little introduction. So I guess from the whole therapeutic spectrum, I started out really engaging with something called somatic trauma therapy. And what that means, Soma is just a smart term for the body. So it's about understanding how the body process information. And you can say the link between external experience and internal and often, when we are small children, this is how we start processing before we have language. Children still learn and process somatically for their body, which is why they can tell you I'm hungry or I'm tired. These are all sensations that they're attuned to as soon as they are born. But it often is a language that we kind of lose as we grow up and become over intellectualized in this society, that we forget the language of the body and also how it store different experiences, so even if we understand them intellectually or the why, doesn't necessarily create change in the nervous system. And that's what really fascinated me with somatic trauma therapy, is that until we have a felt, embodied experience, we don't fully change. And this is something I both saw in myself, but also in the people that I started working with. And then obviously, on top of that, I also started training and in psychedelic assisted therapy in the Netherlands. And then again, I trained in EFT, Emotionally Focused couples therapy, which is very much based on attachment theory.

Tina Gosney: 4:40

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so why do you think you started out with the somatic trauma? Why were you drawn there in the first place?

Thomas Westenholz: 4:49

It's a really good question, and it actually started with my own son being born, and he was diagnosed with what's called a life limited condition, meaning he wasn't expected to become. Grow up and become an adult. He's 13 years old today, but he was only given a week to live, and we spent the first year in intensive care being told pretty much every week that he was going to die. And despite all the different tools that I had and support that I had, my body was really struggling to cope with the dysregulation and anxiety of losing my son. So I ended up twice in hospital for suspected heart attack, and they couldn't find anything wrong physiologically. When they did all their scan my blood pressure, they said, Oh, you look great, like a healthy athlete. And yet I would wake up feeling numbness in my arm. I started feeling constraints around my heart. I started feeling tension and pain in my bowel, and that just kept going. And none of the tools I really had were working right. We had talk therapy again didn't really help me. So I started figuring out, and, you know, thinking, what is it here that I'm missing? Yeah, and somehow, when I then came across somatic trauma therapy, there was something that really resonated that this was stress that went way past the logic. It was something that was simply destroying and obviously manifesting in my body because I was showing symptoms of being physical sick to a psychological distress. So I kind of started exploring this. I went to somatic trauma therapists myself, who work through the body, and that was the first time I started having some sense of relief from this anxiety that obviously I was living with on a daily basis. And after doing that, and slowly starting to come to a place of calm again, where I started functioning really well, I think I really saw the benefit in some of these modalities that haven't been valued in traditional therapy or psychology, where we mainly just looked at let's talk about it. Let's try and logically understand it that actually I had to feel my embodied grief, and I needed to have an embodied experience of what this is to let go of the body. You know, this fear that we have of life and death and dying, and only in doing so did I started feeling a sense of calm again, when I had an experience, what does it even mean, letting go of this body? And when I had a felt sensation of that, then suddenly I started coming to terms with things a lot more and feeling much more calm.

Tina Gosney: 7:22

What that was really beautiful, but what a difficult experience to be told that your son was not going to live more to than a week. Did you say a week?

Thomas Westenholz: 7:33

Yeah. And we were pretty much told that on a weekly basis, he's the first child in the world to survive being born without a small intestine, meaning he can't digest food. So there was a lot of challenges to push through that, I think even pushed my perception of therapy to the max, right? Because all the traditional talk therapy simply were not helping me. And it's also what motivated me to then study psychedelic assisted therapy, because that's a place where, again, we sometimes can get the experience of, what does it even mean, this idea of dying and what happens? And I read this study that was actually done here in the UK of terminal ill cancer patients that they have given a psychedelic, and what they found was that a majority of the people who got that psychedelic had this experience of letting go of the body and fear, disappearing with that, and actually a sense of calm. And when they came back, their spouses reported that actually they felt they got their partner back again, because suddenly they were able to live with much less anxiety. And that kind of also really obviously intrigued my interest in that, because I was faced on a daily basis with this devastating reality that I could lose the physical embodiment of my son, right? And I would say that, together with the somatic work, really helped me find a sense of ease and joy in the life that we have now without clinging on to that physical existence that's so interesting.

Tina Gosney: 9:04

So you're Are you saying that you having that experience that you went through, and then having that experience of what is it like to let go of this body helps you to process what it might be like for your infant son at the time, is that what you're saying?

Thomas Westenholz: 9:24

Yeah, I think more what it gave for me was it gave me a sense of peace, of what it means to let go of a physical manifestation. In this instance, my son, right, that has come to this world, and I helped create him, to some extent, even though, obviously his mother deserved more the credit, but it helped me found a sense of peace with this. Because if you look at anxiety and fear in general, the main purpose of that is to maintain this organism that we call the body. That's why we have fear. It's the only biological purpose of fear, right, of trying to create. Safety for this physical organism. So when we no longer have a body, there's no place fear is not needed anymore. So fear comes from trying to cling on and preserve that. And I realized that my anxiety, my fear that was becoming quite pervasive on my everyday life, even to the point where I couldn't function well, also came from clinging on not to my own body in this instance, but to the fear of losing my son's physical body right being here. And I realized that for somehow, for being able to live with this and not that, to dominate my whole life and not be able to be present with him when he is here, I had to come to terms with this concept that we call death, that obviously means different things to different people, and the only way I could do that was through these modalities. So you can say it really started with trying to help myself, and from there, when I saw the profound impact, I started, obviously training and using some of these tools for other people, and seeing the impact that that could have on them too.

Tina Gosney: 11:06

You're you're bringing up such a something that I've heard from so many people that enter this type of work and that they do so because of an experience that they've had personally and felt driven and like it was a purpose and a mission for them to then figure out their own healing and then offer it to other people.

Thomas Westenholz: 11:28

Yeah, and I think most people who come into this field are somehow driven by a personal motivation, because otherwise you wouldn't do this. There's lots of easier way to make money. And I was an entrepreneur before I trained into this, and I made a lot more money, and I didn't have to sit and listen to people's distress every day. So this is not something people choose because they want to get rich. It's something they tend to choose because they have some kind of personal motivation, and they had some kind of experience of something that impacted and changed them, that motivate them to say, maybe I can then also help other people,

Tina Gosney: 12:05

right? I think those are the best practitioners to work with, because it's more than a job and and a paycheck for them, it's a purpose and a motivation to get up in the morning and to do what they do.

Thomas Westenholz: 12:16

Yeah, I think you're spot on. That's what really drives us to create change, isn't it?

Tina Gosney: 12:21

Yeah, well, let's, let's focus on the couple work that you do with with couples and the Emotionally Focused Therapy. Would you give us a an attachment theory? So that's not something that we talk too much on this podcast. So maybe go into what that means, how, what attachment theory is just pretty just pretty basic definition, and then absolutely and then how the Emotionally Focused Therapy helps with that. So

Thomas Westenholz: 12:48

attachment theory is really an understanding that came first from studying children and how infants interacted with their mother or their caregiver. And attachment theory is just a description of learned models of relating to other people, and also the adaptive strategies that we have to employ if somehow there were rupture in those safe, safe connections as a child. So to give a short example, there's four main attachment styles as such as they refer to them as one of them is called anxious attachment, and essentially, what that means is tend to be somebody who had to be hyper vigilant to the needs of others to be able to feel safe. And it could be that they had some sort of abandonment, and they learned now I have to be hyper vigilant to the other parents needs, because if they abandoned me, I'm in real trouble. So you can say they had to grow up too soon. They had to suddenly become an adult way, way too soon. And it's also what we often in more popular language call the people pleasers, right? They tend to always believe it's their fault. They tend to ruminate a lot when things aren't working in relationship. They can feel a lot of internal anxiety. They often fear abandonment, right? And that often comes from not having had this safe, consistent attunement to them, right? And often it was inconsistent. Maybe their parents was an alcoholic, one moment was really loving, one moment suddenly wasn't there, and that created this anxiety, not knowing, Can I count on you? Will you be here for me, right? Then there's another one we refer to as avoidant attachment, which essentially, if you remember, there was a period where we said, just let them cry to sleep, right? And it's basically this idea that they should just learn to deal with the stress without our help. But what we now understand in psychology is actually children don't start developing regulatory function in the brain until they're eight years old, and that only finished in their mid to late 20s, meaning a young child have no way of regulating their distress and emotion. So what happens when you just leave them to deal with that distress alone? Is. Is the distress will go up and up, and at some point it actually becomes dangerous for the body, the organism. And so the only option, if no help comes, becomes to numb out. You literally have to shut it off. It's a survival strategy, and it's more seen in men than women, but it's not gender based, but it tends to be this, I can't count on others. I'm hyper independent. I don't like to get too close, and often, if it does, I kind of move away, right? And there tend to be specific patterns of adaptive strategies that we see in these people, right, of how they then relate to others. So I'll stop there to not overload people with with information. But those were two of the four main attachment styles.

Tina Gosney: 15:42

Yeah, so you said the anxious is, you can see them as people pleasers and wanting to grab and hold on to relationships avoidant. We see them as pushing other people away, like not letting me get too close. I was wondering, and you said, very independent. Do we maybe see avoidant personalities also, or avoidant attachments as people that might be highly successful, because they are very independently and driven that way,

Thomas Westenholz: 16:15

absolutely, and they tend to be very, very focused, and often they put their energy in other things than necessary, relational elements, right? And that means, of course, they tend to spend more focus, more time, more energy on things such as their career, etc, right? So I think you're spot on. I think very much in more high powered positions, you will find people who gravitate more towards having those sense of attachment and also just the way they calm their nervous systems is quite different. So when the more anxious, attached, as they call it, tend to seek co regulation. So they tend to calm themselves through other people. Yeah, so they very much need other people to calm down, and they struggle to do that themselves. The avoidant is polar opposite, because they have learned not to trust other people as a place of regulation, because they never had that right. So they tend to only trust themselves, which is why they tend to want distance. It's not always because, you know, they don't care, but when they can stress, they tend to want, I want to be on my own. I want to go for a walk while the anxious one want no let's sit and talk about it, and they find a distance even more anxious provoking, which is also why the most typical couple constellation that comes into couple therapy is one person having an anxious attachment and the other one an avoidant. And they tend to gravitate towards each other. So often find each other in relationship, but they also tend to then get caught in this distress cycle where one of them chase, chase for connection, and the other one feels more and more overwhelmed and that there can't be enough and good enough, so they pull away more and more. And so the distress cycle kind of, you know, spins round and round and round.

Tina Gosney: 17:58

Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up. That pursuant, distance or pattern is probably one of the most common ones that we see in couples. It's just so so normal for that to happen. And I do want to just bring up one thing before we move on, in that the attachment styles are formed as very young children as we probably even before we're aware of what's happening, we're forming these attachment styles, and I believe and they are also dependent on how the relationship to the parent to the child, how that parent is relating and attuning to the child. And I believe that most parents are doing the best that they can, and even if we have a child that develops an anxious or an avoidant attachment style, often that is something that we need to give ourselves some grace on, that that we were doing the best that we can, and we can always come back now and attune into needs that we maybe we weren't able to as a younger version of ourselves and a younger version of our child as well? Yeah,

Thomas Westenholz: 19:05

I think it's really important what you mentioned here, and actually something I just mentioned on on my own podcast where I said, good people hurt others. Yeah, and that's something in a black and white world that we try to often put things into boxes that's hard to comprehend, but I'll give an example. So I have a client that, you know, have very strong, anxious attachment and kind of neglected her own needs for most of her life, which obviously her called her into trouble in all her relationship dynamics. And, you know, she just said to me that whenever I went to these sport events or things that were really important, I always looked and my dad wasn't there. And even though, as an adult, I get that he wasn't a bad guy at all. Actually, he was great. He was out working. He was trying to look out for us. But my child nervous system didn't get that. My child nervous system didn't internalize that. That internalized that he doesn't care. I'm not important enough, and so I start becoming anxious. Always feel I have to reach for these men's attention and that I can lose it. So this is a perfect example of what you said, that we have to be kind with ourselves, because it doesn't mean you were a bad parent. It didn't even mean you did anything wrong. Often, we just have to acknowledge that sometimes good people also hurt other people,

Tina Gosney: 20:24

right, right? That's and I like that line. I might use that sometime in the future, if you're okay with me borrowing that absolutely once, once someone does, we do develop these attachment styles as avoidant or anxious. Is it possible to to then move to you didn't talk about secure attachment. So is it possible then to move to a secure attachment later in life?

Thomas Westenholz: 20:51

Absolutely, it is. And this is what's so exciting. And research have told us this. And I've seen this in my practice, happening many, many times, and I even seen it from my own partner, who moved towards a secure attachment, right from a more anxious and what we found is what is required, which is essentially what we are trying to reconstruct in the therapy room, is we are trying to create the moments that were missed at a young age. And if you have that in your friends or relationships, then you can slowly change your and basically what we're talking about is getting these attuned responses that were missed. So it's basically when you had a need where you kind of, your nervous system was asking, are you there for me? And at that moment, of course, the answer for the nervous system was No. Hence why these adaptive strategies were put in place to try and cope, right? But now, as an adult, if we repeatedly, now get an experience of, yes, there is a human. My partner is accessible. My partner is responding that will slowly build a new sensation in the nervous system that, over time, become a new we call them predictive models. Your brain basically create predictive models of the world, so we can always figure out, what can I anticipate is going to happen? Right? That's what the brain is trying to do. It's constantly trying to anticipate. So what we're doing by creating repeated new experience of attunement is we're creating a new predictive model where the brain and the body start anticipate that people will respond to you, because essentially, when we use this term secure attachment, that's what it is. Secure attachment is a nervous system that learned I anticipate that people care and respect my boundaries. I anticipate that if I'm in distress, somebody will care enough and come and help me. And because they have that predictive model, they show off feeling safe and secure, right? Because they trust that if I say something, my partner will care enough to respond, while the anxious anticipate, oh, I don't know if they will be there or not there. The avoidant has already said, no, no chance they're going to be there, so I'm not going to be vulnerable. So you can basically change these predictive models through repeated experience with people that are significant in your life.

Tina Gosney: 23:05

How do you do that? And let's just say, in a maybe a pursuer distance or relationship a couple who one of them is anxious and the other one is avoidant, and you're trying to help them then develop secure attachment to each other and override the previous patterns and then move into new patterns. How? What does that look like for you?

Thomas Westenholz: 23:29

That's a really, really good question, and I guess that takes us into part of the framework of EFT, because part of the first step we do is de escalation, and what we do is we help both people see their part and moves in this dance. We refer to us at a dance, because when you meet someone, you are listening to the same song, and it feels good, and you're dancing together. And then eventually, as things start to settle, it's almost like we put on headphones, and now we're listening to do different songs, different beats, different rhythm, and we are starting to step on each other's toes, and at some point, one of them, often the avoidant, might find it so distressing that they simply stop dancing altogether, and now one person is just dragging the other around the dance floor, right? So the first part we need to do to help people dance again, which is essentially what I do as a couple therapists, right? Is help them understand the different moves and steps they're taking to create this cycle of distress, and through that, they start learning it's actually not my partner, that's the enemy. It's actually this cycle. It's almost like we get sucked into this vacuum, and now we understand the steps we're taking that starts that vacuum that sucks us in where we are stuck in fight or flight and see each other as the enemy. And once they do that, then we can start interrupting that pattern right that continuously happen and anticipation that it will happen. And then the next part that we kind of do is try and reconstruct what would have happened in a safe. Of caregiver child dynamic, which is essentially the sense of responsiveness. So I try to obviously listen to what they're describing and understand underneath what they're saying. The content they might come in and argue over sex or money or who does most housework. This is a content, but the issue is never in the content that the couples bring to me, it's always in the underlying attachment needs and cues that are being missed. So the wife that might criticize a husband and say, when you come home from work, you just go straight to the office and I'm here alone, and you don't care about me, they're saying important information in this, right? And they might be arguing about him going to the room, but really what it's about? She's giving us a cue right there. She's saying my interpretation of you going to the room is that you don't care about me. And then we go there and understand what is that emotional distress like? What happens in your body when you suddenly get this he doesn't care about me, and now I help that more vulnerable emotion being communicated, and what that does is that suddenly allow us to elicit an empathetic response before all the husband was hearing was the criticism, and that puts him into fight or flight, right? And he then pulls away. She feels even more alone, and the distress gets worse now by getting her to communicate these more vulnerable parts that actually it makes me feel really alone. This is how I always felt as a child when I was sitting waiting for my dad, and it really hurts me in my stomach, my stomach get tense, and I almost want to cry suddenly. That's possible to hear, right, and that help us elicit empathy, meaning now we can get an attune response, then I will obviously help the partner, if they don't know how this looks like right kind of model it and help them reconstruct. How can you respond in a way that's attuned, where you don't start to lecture, don't start to justify, don't start to defend, and don't have to move away because there's no danger anymore. And what happens is, the second that you see, they get an attuned response, the nervous system just calms down, and all the content is no longer important, because most time people come in arguing about who's right, yeah, or you did the dish assessment. No, I did it this many times, and they get stuck in arguing about who is right or wrong. Yeah, and that's a lose, lose battle, because we continue to miss the underlying distress that is actually fueling that cycle.

Tina Gosney: 27:31

That's yeah, that's wonderful. I like how you described the taking the problem out of the person, my partner's not the problem. The The problem is outside of us, and we're missing each other, and it's like you're sitting you're going from opposite sides to the same side, and taking the problem out of you and putting it in the front of you so that you can both look at it together

Thomas Westenholz: 28:01

exactly, because the problem is never them, and this is where we get lost. We're trying to often find when people come in, who is to blame for our distress. And that makes sense, because we are in so much distress, something has to be the cause, and I don't want it to be me. That means it has to be you, right? And that's often the pattern they're stuck in when they come and you're so spot on, which is why it's the first part of what we do is realize that actually you are an alliance. You are a team, and you actually want the same thing. You want good for each other. You want to be on the same team. You want to teamwork, right? You are trying to accomplish the same thing. But where we get lost is when fear meets fear, when two predictive models meet that learn that the world isn't safe. I can't count on somebody to care enough to respond to me when they meet each other, then fear creates this chaos, and it literally is right, and the only way to calm fear down is to not play that game anymore, right? Because fear want us to have one that wins and one that loses meaning. I have to be right, and you have to submit to my world. But in doing so, we all lose, even if my partner said, I'm sorry, you were right, we both lost, because there's no connection in being right and one being wrong. There's connection in both of us feeling understood. And I think this is where we have got so lost in what relating actually even means, because relating essentially is me sharing my internal map of the world with you, my partner, right, and my partner sharing their internal experience of the world with me and us trying to understand each other. We don't even have to agree. Agreement is actually not required for relating and connection, only the willingness to try and understand a different. Map and experience of the world,

Tina Gosney: 30:02

right? Do you build a sense of safety before you find that your clients are able to let their inner world be known to

Thomas Westenholz: 30:13

the Yes? Yes, absolutely. And I would say the more trauma people had, the longer time that takes to create that safety, but without safety, we will get nowhere, right? And I think safety is a building block in relationship. We often think excitement is a building block. Yeah, we have to feel very excited when really safety is a building block. And the same in the therapeutic relationship. So a huge part of it, which is why, what normally happens in the beginning is that they share with me and I give them what a safe, attuned adult who were in the right, perfect circumstance and had the time, the energy, the resources would have given them, I basically reflect optimal condition. So they come to me I understand their inner world and help them understand it, right? And I reflect that back to them so they get that feeling of finally being understood, where their body can just go, ah, because we often forget that at the core of relating is actually not that our partner has to be able to fix our problems, because often we won't be able to fix each other's distress. My partner can't make my son's medical decision go away. She can't right even though she wanted to see can't, and many instances, we can't, but we often haven't learned that the enormous, incredible potential that we have as a partner to another human being is purely in the fact of them not having to carry the distress and pain alone, it become a huge relief, purely in knowing I am not alone with this. And that's why often, especially as men, we are told we have to fix things right? So we hear something straight away. We go to logic trying to solve it, and in that we often miss the most important resource that we have for our partner, which is simply being able to hear them and acknowledge them and saying, I'm here with you. You don't have to do this alone,

Tina Gosney: 32:16

and if you have avoidant or or anxious attachment, you may have never had that experience of someone doing that for you, and so you're demonstrating and role playing that in the therapeutic room to show the couple, this is what it looks like, because they may have never had that experience themselves to Even they don't even know what they don't know.

Thomas Westenholz: 32:42

Absolutely You're right. What you're saying is there was no framework, right? There was no model of how this, and this is often where, you know, I I've often pushed back against the self help world that has good intention and does a lot of good too. But this idea, all you have to do is love yourself. Because I think it's not that it's it's great to love yourself, but somebody who never had a model can't actually do that so often, it just makes people feel even worse and more guilty. Why can't I do that? Because what we often don't say is learned is a social, relational model that we're given, and some of us were lucky enough to have that. So yes, when somebody says to me, just love yourself, I can like, oh, I have a framework for how that felt. Like, when my parents I can do that, but somebody who never experienced that, they can't do that, and often it just makes them feel more inadequate. So first we have to give them a felt experience. And once they had that, then yes, it can start making sense the idea of self love, but not before,

Tina Gosney: 33:43

right? I like how you said felt experience, because we want to logic our way through everything and try, okay, give me the steps of what it means to love myself, and then I'll check off all the boxes and do all the things. But that's not really what we're talking about. We're talking about feeling this, and we're so disconnected from our bodies and so caught up in our cognitive thinking that we don't even know what that feels like. It's such a foreign feeling inside, inside of our bodies,

Thomas Westenholz: 34:14

exactly. And I think you're right, and this is why change doesn't happen for logical understanding, I could literally come in and lecture people on all this we're talking about now, it would not change anything. What changes are the key change moment where suddenly I've been able to engineer that one person is vulnerable and the other person is able to respond, and you can see their body feeling and getting that sensation of ah and that suddenly create a memory that's remembered on a bodily level as well. This is how safety feels like and sense like. This is how it is to be acknowledged, to be understood, to be accepted, which are all. Key things that we really craved, right, that obviously was somehow missed along the line, intentionally or not intentionally, and the body recognize instantly when it have that experience. And the more we get that, the more that trust built, and the more new model of anticipation becomes, oh, maybe I can anticipate that this can actually happen, and then it becomes easier every time to be vulnerable. The first time feels like a huge step of a ledge, and this is why it's very difficult to do often without that therapist there, because I'm basically their safety net. I'm the net that if suddenly their partner can't respond and let them fall, I'm gonna catch them. I'm the safety net that if their partner suddenly, for whatever reason, actually end up attacking them, when they reveal this, I'm gonna intervene and stop. Yeah, so they know that I'm their parachute. I'm their bulletproof vest, and that's what makes it possible, knowing that there's somebody there that will intervene in case it get missed between us, right, right?

Tina Gosney: 36:05

It's such an important role that you play in the therapy room and with your clients. I talk a lot in this podcast about differentiation, about having a differentiated self and having that as the framework to be able to then connect with others. How would you say that? This the EFT and differentiation. How do those do they work together? Are they complementary to each other? What would you what would you say to that?

Thomas Westenholz: 36:36

You know, what? There's so many different modalities out there, and I think it really depends on the individual person and what they respond to, yeah. So I think people come and need different entry points as well of how they engage with something. So often, if somebody has spent most of their life in their cognition, their thought, to suddenly throw them into something somatic can be way too overwhelming, and they just disengage, right? So I think it's often trying to because there's so many models, and a lot of the models are fundamentally describing the same thing, right? We just came up with lots of different names for the same thing, and then we named them different models, but essentially they come down to the same core elements. So I think it's more about finding language that resonate with the people or the person that you are with at that moment, because that's how we gain an entry point into being able to build a level of connection and safety, right? Because I think at the core of any healing, and I mean any healing, is always relational. We don't function in isolation, yeah. And you can also look at all developmental or long term trauma. Was a breach of trust. Yeah, it was a breach pure shock. Trauma is actually pretty easy to treat somebody who fall off a horse and feel a bit scared. That's quite easy to treat. It's relational trauma that lingers, and for many people almost last a lot lifetime, right? And as it was created relationally, we also have to heal it relationally. And whatever language is used, I actually don't think is that important, right? I think it's just using language to resonate with the person your will because that build the sense of trust and familiarity, and that's really all that matters, right? Yeah,

Tina Gosney: 38:27

I love that and and you are, right? There are so many different modalities and so many different frameworks and models that you could that you could talk to people about everybody has their kind of, their specialty, or their pet, the one that they love the most, but they all are working towards the same thing, and that is to help us self, be more healthy inside, and be able to relate to others in a more secure, healthy way as

Thomas Westenholz: 38:54

well. That's right, exactly. And I think we often forget that at the core relating to the external world in a functional way, comes from an internal sense of safety. That I am feeling safe, my body is feeling safe. If we don't, it becomes impossible. And part of it also is even recognizing when I am no longer able to do so, right? So able to be intervene and actually notice when have the adults left the room. Because often what happens is when a couple start going at each other, it's because the two adults have left the room, yes, and they're actually two children now jumping at each other, trying to tear each other apart, right? And, of course, that's not going to end up pretty. So part of it is also just recognizing, oh, the adults have left the room. So right now, we are not able to get to a place of love and understanding, because I can't hear you when I'm in this place, right and then knowing what are the strategies that I need to restore some sense of calm, where I might be able to respond in a. Empathetic way, right? So it's also just able to develop that awareness to interrupt and not just go with whatever adrenaline or cortisol is telling us to do, which might be to tear down our partner, right? But then afterwards, we will have to deal with the consequences of that.

Tina Gosney: 40:16

Yeah, another reason why it would be really beneficial to be in touch with what is happening inside your body, so that you can recognize those signs of I am in fight or flight, and I've got this cortisol running through my body, and now I'm feeling like I'm turned into a an eight year old, or maybe a four year old. And so that we can we can intervene and pause before responding, but until we become familiar with that bodily sensation and what's happening and what the typical pattern is, it's almost like it's not a choice. It just automatically takes us into

Thomas Westenholz: 40:55

that you're spot on, and that's because logic is actually the last of the free processing systems we have. The first one is always the body. Everything gets processed through bodily sensations, first, then emotional memory in the midbrain, and then lastly, it come to higher cognition, our logical reasoning and understanding. So by the time we often have this logical reason understanding, it's too late, as you said, right? The other systems has already override logic and have taken over and have done whatever they felt they needed to do to survive in that circumstance, which often. So you're spot on, that actually a key, and this is where the somatic part wasn't part of the EFT framework, hence why I trained in that separately. Because what I found, like you said, to interrupt it before we have gone into the full blown tornado that's tearing the house apart, we need to be able to spot earlier warning signals, which is what the body would give us. So often, some really good things that people, even the listeners, can do is really simple things, to just start creating an awareness of sensation. It could even be closing your eyes, taking a deep breath and just notice what sensations are underneath the soles of your feet, right? Is it tinkling? Is it cold? Is it hot? And it's just starting to slow down and bring a bodily awareness. And then often I would do a body scan with people, where they kind of notice, Oh, what about my thighs? What about my spine? Is it tense? At it relaxed, right? And it's starting to check in with the body in a way we're not used to. And while this will not change things instantaneously, over time, you will build a new muscle like anything, so you can do it much faster, much more tuned to subtleties. I will know when I'm about to get stressed way before I snap at my partner, by far, the majority of the time, but that's through training this for many years, I didn't used to be able to do this, and now I know tension in my jaw means I'm starting to develop anger, right, tension in my stomach start, meaning I'm beginning developing a sense of anxiety, and by knowing these signs very early, I can intervene before they overload my whole nervous system and take charge, right?

Tina Gosney: 43:11

Yeah, and I'm going to take an educated guess and say that you need to practice this when you're not already triggered, that when you're just in a calm state, and to practice, what do the soles of my feet feel like? What's happening in my body? Do a body scan when nothing else is happening to make your body go into wondering if it's safe or not.

Thomas Westenholz: 43:34

You're so spot on. It's like, we wouldn't recommend somebody sitting down and meditating in the middle of a tornado, right in the middle of tornado, will say, get to shelter or get away. Right? Get in the car and drive away. This is not the time to do a body scan, right? So I think you're spot on, because once we've gone to that stage, you won't be able to notice anymore, because quite some significant things happen when we go into fight or flight. A survival response is that one empathy shuts down. So empathy can't be online at the same time as the fear response is online, which is why there's no chance of us responding in an empathetic way. Because if a bear's about to eat my children, it wasn't beneficial that I started feeling empathy for the bear and think, Oh, poor bear. I just needed to stab that bear I get my kids away, right? So empathy simply isn't online and the same. It's not beneficial for me if I'm about to engage in a fight to save my kids that I start attuning to what seems actually the opposite is important. It's good that I numb down to pain and don't feel pain, right? So we tend to numb when we go into that response. Instead of feeling more so you're spot on. The time is never when we are gone into a triggered response. The time is when we already are resourced right, feeling calm. Have a quiet place where we can then say, Hey, let me just go check and it could even be two minutes before going to bed. Right? I used to do it in the morning for two minutes. In the evening, two minutes, but that's consistently four minutes every single day, and that accumulate to our body awareness over time, right?

Tina Gosney: 45:12

Yeah, I like how you said two minutes, because the last thing we need is to, okay, let me take an hour out of every day and try to work this in, because that's not going to happen. But we all have two minutes, you know. How often do we lay in bed for two minutes a week before we get up? Which would be a perfect time to do this.

Thomas Westenholz: 45:34

That's it. And I also just want to say to the people who can't sit still, which I know is quite a big majority of people now too that it's totally okay to not do this sitting still. So we know that for a lot of people, meditation or sitting still closed eyes doesn't work. And often you have so much energy in your body that something need to be discharged. So often, what we find is doing the same exercising, but using movement at the same time can be really, really helpful. When I started this, I couldn't do it sitting still, so I would actually start dancing and put on music, and then I would dance in my living room with closed eyes and start paying attention to what is actually happening, how is it feeling in my body? And I would just do that to one song which is three minutes or however long, right? And that's a simple practice that can help people. If they're struggling sitting still when doing this, that's totally fine. There's nothing wrong with you. You just have excess energy that needs movement.

Tina Gosney: 46:32

Yeah, you probably just answered a big question that people had was like, I can't, I can't do that and sit still. So I'm glad you brought in that we do need to have movement and it's and we can do the same thing with movement if we're just tuning into our body as we are moving and listening to what our body is telling us,

Thomas Westenholz: 46:49

yes, and actually, movement is almost as lost tool, because we spent so much time sitting still. And you said before we shouldn't do this when we're triggered. You're spot on. But what we should do when we are triggered is actually movement, because the fight the flight response. It's kind of in the words, right, fight meaning moving. Flight also mean moving away. So sitting still when we are triggered means that adrenaline and cortisol gets trapped in the body. It's meant to facilitate movement, right? So what I would always do, if either me and my partner are triggered, she also likes to dance, I will say, Should we just have a little short dance? And we recognize, right? Because we do check ins, and if one of us say, Oh, I'm feeling quite stressed, we'll say, hey, let's have a little quick dance, because we know that when the body moves, it get a chance to discharge the cortisol and adrenaline that helps the brain and body kind of reset again. And only from that place can we start relating,

Tina Gosney: 47:49

and you could have some fun too. Absolutely, let's

Thomas Westenholz: 47:52

not forget that. Let's not forget that.

Tina Gosney: 47:56

Let's just go for a minute. I know our time is getting short, but I do want to focus on what if so, if a couple is in this dynamic with the fight or flight and not attuning to each other, how does that affect the rest of the family, and then also the opposite, if they are in tune with each other and are able to work through and be a safe place for each other. How does that affect the family? Can you give me both sides?

Thomas Westenholz: 48:24

Yeah, that is a really good question. Actually, I haven't been asked that before, but I really like that question, and I think we have to realize that it's not what we say, it's what we do. That model for our children, while it's great to say all these nice things, kids look for our actions and behavior far more than just the words we say. So that means, in these instances, we get a way that we can help model to the children how relating could look like, right? So that's one part, also. The second part is children are highly, highly attuned to our nervous systems, because they have to be as a survival strategy. If mommy and daddy is not accessible, that to a child means danger, so they are, which is why they're so sensitive to us pulling away or not being there, right? They are hyper attuned, and they have to be at that age, right? So basically that also means that any changes in our nervous system, they will also pick up. They know when we are not present. They know when we are in distress, even if we don't talk about it, right? And if people often carry around this distress but don't talk about it because they don't want to rock the boat, the kids also learn these big feelings aren't safe. Yeah, right, so I shouldn't bring these big feelings, because there are things that we should cover up and that we shouldn't talk about, and that becomes a model as well that they take with them, right on top of, of course, feeling the distress themselves. You can say on the other side, when we are able to model this, we give them a model of how to navigate conflict, because conflict is inevitable, and even the best relationship. Have disagreements, have tension, have frustration, have conflict. I would say it's strange if you don't have any of that, yeah. So that is absolutely normal. It's how we engage with that. And actually, in these moments, we have a really unique opportunity to one show children how to deal with big emotions. Yeah, and this will be a lesson that will serve them for the rest of their life. How do we engage when our emotions get overwhelming? And number two, we actually get an opportunity to teach them, how do we repair after fracture? Because we know that fracture is not what causes a harm. It's a lack of repair that causes the harm, right? So they obviously see these models, but also on how we engage with our children ourselves. It's okay. You don't have to be a perfect parent. We all mess up. We all snap and get angry. I do it too. I put my hand up, right? I have done it too. Lost my patience with the kids. But that doesn't cause harm, yeah, what caused harm is if I never came back and just ignored it. But when I came back and said, Hey, I think maybe there, I got a bit too angry. I lost my cool. Can you tell me how that was for you? And they say, Oh, that felt really scary. And I say, I get that because I'm much bigger than you. That must have been really, really scary. I don't want to behave that way. What's a way we can do this better in the future, and I involve them in the process, right? And I acknowledge that I'm not perfect, and what that also does. And I know you obviously talked to Brene Brown about, you know, shame, guilt, and all these concepts that she talks about, right? And I think this is exactly what it teaches the child in this moment, that I don't have to feel shame that I messed up. I can come repair Yeah, and that makes it okay to mess up, instead of me having to hide away from the fact that I messed up, which is what shame does. Shame makes us want to hide right here, I'm saying. I'm taking accountability. I'm not perfect. I'm gonna mess up as your dad, but let's figure this out together.

Tina Gosney: 52:04

That's a great permission to be imperfect, to be an imperfect person and an imperfect parent and an imperfect partner, and permission also to then repair when we're back into our when the adult comes back into the room. Child has exited, and the adult comes back into the

Thomas Westenholz: 52:24

room Exactly. It's okay that we are imperfect. The part that's not okay is if we can never come back to that and recognize that and say, Hey, I think maybe I hurt you there, and that's not what I want.

Tina Gosney: 52:36

Yeah. And also, as you mentioned before, what a great example of how to do that to your child, so that they learn how to do that for their future, in their future, present and future relationships as well, which will serve them throughout their life.

Thomas Westenholz: 52:51

Yeah, and it creates a model for them that fracture is safe because of that, repair doesn't happen. They learn a fracture isn't safe, and that means they now become really fearful of having conflicts in the future, while, if we give them a model that actually nothing happens if we have fracture, we always come back in connection again, because then suddenly they have a model. Now, hey, it's safe if I have an argument, right? Nothing bad happens. It's just an argument. But I trust that we'll come back and we'll look at each other and we say, Hey, maybe I went a bit too far. I don't want to hurt you. How can we do this better next time? Yeah,

Tina Gosney: 53:28

beautiful. Hey, I know you have some resources that you can share with the listeners. Would you mind just outlining what those are?

Thomas Westenholz: 53:35

Yeah, of course, so people can obviously listen to the free podcast, which is couples in focus, where we really dive a lot into these attachment dynamics and how they impact. We talk about betrayal and how to try and recover from that, etc. So that's covered quite in depth. If people want more information, then they can obviously go to my website, couple therapy dot Earth, which is where I offer couple therapy, etc. And in the future, I will create an online course to kind of help people do that. But even I want to say, with an online course, there's a relational element that is missing when we only do online right? And I even say that despite I'm creating one, because I want to make people aware of that only consuming knowledge is not going to do the job. Yeah, it's helpful, but that alone tend to not work unless we have that facilitation, that safety, where we are actually able to start doing it together, right? Yes,

Tina Gosney: 54:30

thank you for bringing that to light. And we'll put links in the show notes to those resources that you just mentioned. If you could leave the listeners with one more thing takeaway, or something that maybe we haven't covered yet, or just something you want them to remember. What would that be? Ah,

Thomas Westenholz: 54:52

I think it's that we are born into safety, and the nervous system already knows how. Know what that is like, and then we lose it in moments of fracture that are not repaired. But that also means that we can always return to a place of safety again, and that you're not dysfunctional because you have some of these strategies. Actually, it makes you functional because you found a way to survive, and congratulations on doing that, because you made it this far.

Tina Gosney: 55:25

That's That's awesome. Thank you, Thomas, this has been such a wonderful conversation. Thank you for having that with me today. I really appreciate that and everything that you've shared

Thomas Westenholz: 55:38

my pleasure and thank you for the great questions you.