The Hold Me Tight Workshop was developed by Dr. Sue Johnson, founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy. The workshop is based on her book, Hold Me Tight, found in your local library or bookstore. Dr. Johnson also has an online Hold Me Tight for a very reasonable price that couples can navigate on their own.
I love facilitating Hold Me Tight workshops because I see the lasting positive impressions they make on couples. Hold Me Tight follows the steps and stages of the Emotionally Focused Therapy model. So, if you are looking for empirically backed data for relationship improvement, the Hold Me Tight workshop is a great place to start.
In the first few sessions of the workshop, we explore the basic dynamics that couples often find themselves in when in distress.
It all starts with Love. The power of love and emotion between people is, in actuality, a science of predictable patterns, asserts Dr. Johnson. This pattern is not made up, or even entirely obscured from our consciousness. The pattern is known to us and it takes the form of a dance that enables us to stay in connection to our beloved. In psychology language, we call this dance adult-attachment bonding.
Dr. Johnson studied couples and their interactions for years until she and her colleagues, including Dr. Les Greenberg, noticed similar and predictable processes that couples would engage in with their attachment dance. From the information they gathered through observation and qualitative research, they constructed Emotion Focused Therapy. What is interesting to me is that it was the people and the flow of relationship that guided the science- not the science that determined the flow of relationship.
The Hold Me Tight workshop educates participants on the psychology, the science, the neuro-resonance, and the adult-attachment influences of relationship dances. At the very least, couples gain validation and affirmation that what they are experiencing is not isolated or crazy.
Hold Me Tight offers them the felt opportunity to truly understand that all their “moves” of defense, self-protection, coping, and protesting do not mean they are bad broken people destined to live in anguish in relationship. But, in actuality, they are responding because of a red alarm alerting them that their safety in partnership is threatened. The response to this threat of losing their partner is motivated by their very true intention of doing their very best to stay in connection. Affirming that they are doing their best to mend the relationship even if what their partner sees is their avoidance.
The Hold Me Tight format then walks us through the negative dialogues we fall into when we are scared and in reactivity. Participants begin to own their protective moves and increases awareness of how their reactive negative tendencies actually land on their partner and perpetuate the “Cycle” of fighting, hostility, and despair. By owning each person's reactive moves, the partners can turn the conversation of their distress away from finger-pointing at the other as the bad guy and, in turn, acknowledge how their own reactivity fuels the fire.
This is what Dr. Sue Johnson would call, ‘the beginning of a lasting healthy bond’. The next step in Emotionally Focused Therapy, and what the Hold Me Tight workshops offers participants, is to explore those “Raw Spots” of reactivity that are flaring up the defensive moves.
"It is precisely the degree of their importance in our lives that activates these raw spots."
Here, Dr. Johnson teaches us that the science of love includes the activation of our own fears, doubts, insecurities, injuries, and life wounds. These wounds get activated by our partner, our beloved, because it is they that are of the most important people in the world to us and what they say to us matters. It is precisely the degree of their importance in our lives that activates these raw spots.
The Hold Me Tight Workshop is not designed to be individual or couple's therapy. So here, in the workshop format, participants are encouraged to reach out to their own therapists for support with their raw spots.
The next two stages of the workshop are designed to educate participants on their unique attachment dance. Participants identify their reactive tendencies, share how their raw spots are activated and communicate these steps with their partner in a connective flow that deepens their own and their partner's understanding of how they are reactively communicating.
"The magic- participants get to hear and feel that they truly do matter to their loved one and that they truly are important to their partner and to the relationship."
The beauty of the Hold Me Tight workshop lies in the elegance of then shifting the negative, reactive dialogue to one of heart to heart expressions of longings.
In the last part of Hold Me Tight, participants turn toward each other with strength and conviction in their expressions of how much their partner means to them and how much they long to be of meaning to their partner. The magic- participants get to hear and feel that they truly do matter to their loved one and that they truly are important to their partner and to the relationship.
I’ll admit, as a facilitator of Dr. Johnsons incredible program, it always feels like so much time is needed to be in the Hold Me Tight workshop. Twelve to sixteen hours is no small ask of a person's time, especially in our busy day to day lives that demand so much of us.
But by that last hour on the last day, I am filled with admiration and love for the beautiful smiles I see on participant faces, the peace that I see in their bodies, and the happiness they express with their relationship evolving into deeper understanding, compassion, and bonding. This is not just a one and done workshop. It is an experience that will last a lifetime.
We are not exhausted by the end of the Hold Me Tight workshop. We are rejuvenated.
You can find out more about my local Hold Me Tight Couples Workshops by visiting www.anewtherapy.org and National/Global Hold Me Tight Workshops at www.iceeft.com. Visit Dr. Johnson’s online Hold Me Tight at Home - Hold Me Tight Online for a self-paced and affordable Hold Me Tight education course.
Angela Jensen-Ramirez, LCSW practices in person in Austin, Texas and online/virtual in California. She is an ICEEFT Certified Emotionally Focused Couples and Individual Therapist (EFCT & EFiT) and is in training to become an ICEEFT Certified Emotionally Focused Couples Supervisor. Angela has been facilitating Hold Me Tight Workshops for over four years as a lead facilitator or assistant and has been working with couples for over a decade in private practice.
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