You talk to yourself. Everyone does. You have an inner voice that talks constantly. Among other things, it tells you how to navigate your connection with the people who are important in your life. Your brain instantly assigns meaning to everything your significant relationships do or say and then it tells you what to do to make or keep your connection to them safe and secure. These are called “Attachment Messages.” If the attachment messages that you tell yourself about yourself, your spouse, and your relationship are wrong, they will drag you into an endless cycle of conflict that can wreck your marriage. But if you can catch and change those messages, you can save your marriage with self-talk. Let’s understand the dynamics behind this:
to Save your marriage with self-talk,
tap into the power of Connection
When God created Adam, Adam was alone, and God said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” Human beings are designed for relationship so that having a secure attachment with another person is as vital for us as air, food, or water. So, when disconnection happens in our relationships, like God said, it is not good. Research shows that loneliness and relationship distress are as serious a health risk as smoking or high blood pressure.
That’s why your brain is always on alert for threats, damage, or breaks in your connection and then tells you how to react to restore that connection to a place that makes you feel safe and secure. It’s a survival mechanism that you developed from childhood. When you were little, your developing brain was making sense of everything that happened in and around you, telling you whether something was safe or not, and how to behave to bring people close to you and keep them there so you could stay safe. The way your brain makes sense of the world and the messages and instructions it gave you as a child has not changed as you moved into adulthood.
This truth that your deepest need as a human is connection is why you can save or destroy your marriage with self-talk. When your relationship bond is threatened, the brain reacts and sends negative self-talk, negative attachment messages about you, your spouse, and your relationship: “I’m not good enough,” "He/she is unpleasable,” and "This relationship is hopeless.” The first step for saving your marriage with self-talk is to learn to intercept and re-interpret those messages in a positive way.
to save your marriage with self-talk,
realize that your messages are different
You might assume that the messages your brain tells you and the instructions it gives you are true and that they are the same for everyone. Neither is the case. The messages are almost always false, and the identical thing that you experienced could happen to another person, and the meaning their brains would attach to it and how they would tell themselves to react could be totally different.
Johnny might have grown up with parents who didn’t give him much attention or affection, and his brain told him that it was because he is too needy and so he should suppress his needs and emotions and be self-reliant. This is still what he tells himself when his feelings get hurt: “If I don’t trust and rely on others, I won’t be rejected and hurt.” Sally also grew up with parents who didn’t give her attention or affection, but her brain told her that it was because she didn’t matter and so she should turn up the volume on her needs and emotions to make her parents pay her attention. This is still what she tells herself when she feels dismissed or rejected, “Even if being demanding and loud gets negative attention, it’s still attention.”
The attachment self-talk messages and responses are different from person to person. But the common denominator is that in childhood everyone of us learned what threatens our need for connection and what we can do to feel as secure as possible in that connection. So, the second step to save your marriage with self-talk is realizing that what you are telling yourself is not the same as your spouse’s internal messages.
to save your marriage with self-talk,
connect the dots between
Attachment needs, Beliefs, and Behaviors
In order to feel secure and safe in our connections with the people who are important to us, our brains are constantly checking, not only to see if the connection is secure in general, but whether very specific needs or longings are being fulfilled. If they are not, then the negative self-talk and resulting negative behavior gets triggered. We need, long, and crave connection that makes us know for certain that:
I matter.
I am loved.
I am accepted.
I am good enough.
I am seen and heard.
I am not a burden/problem.
I won’t be rejected or abandoned.
But we all also have attachment fears. Some common attachment fears are:
I don’t matter
I am not loved
I am not accepted
I am not enough
I am not seen or heard
I am a burden/problem
I will be rejected or abandoned
If your attachment longings are met by your spouse, you will feel secure, safe, and close to him or her. This sense of security will make you more resilient and able to handle the challenges of life. But if your attachment fears come true, or even if your brain tells you that they are true, you will feel insecure, unsafe, and detached. This will make you less resilient and less able to handle life’s hardships.
Do you see the chain of causation? The attachment need triggers the attachment beliefs, which trigger the attachment behavior. You and your spouse are not behaving the way you are just because you’re upset. Your deepest longings for love, acceptance, worth, and security have been threatened or damaged, which causes the brain to tell you that something is wrong with you and with her/him, and that you had better do something drastic to save this relationship because everything is riding on it. So, in a weird kind of way, both partners are fighting for the relationship. It doesn’t look or sound like that, but they are.
to save your marriage with Self-Talk,
identify your Negative Cycle
The messages you tell yourself when your attachment longings are threatened and your attachment fears are aroused sets off what we call “the negative cycle.” Your partner does or says something that your brain sees as a threat to your attachment, so it sends a message that you don’t matter, you’re not loved, you’re a problem, etc., and it tells you to either pursue or withdraw. Your negative cycle will be somewhat unique to you, but those two roles are pretty universal. There is a pursuer and a withdrawer. One of you is the pursuer, and one is the withdrawer.
So, your attachment distress is telling you, “Danger, the relationship bond is in danger; do something.” The one thing your attachment distress will not do is tell you to turn to your partner and be vulnerable and ask for them to meet your attachment need. Instead, you will either go on the attack trying to draw them close (which has the opposite effect, of course), or you will go on the defensive trying to protect the relationship from further damage (which only makes your partner get more intense). The more you pursue, the more your partner withdraws, the more your partner withdraws, the more you pursue. And you get caught up in a vortex of conflict, the negative cycle.
How can you change your self-talk and actually use it to get out of this negative cycle? By working with a therapist like me who is trained in Emotionally Focused Therapy. An EFT therapist is able to help you and your partner identify your unmet attachment needs that are driving your negative cycle and see them as good longings that have been threatened or hurt, and the messages as a desperate survival strategy of the brain to trigger behavior meant to save the relationship. The sessions are designed to expose your negative cycle and the needs, beliefs, and behaviors that trigger it, then walk you through experiences that will repair and correct your negative self-talk and negative responses to one another so that your attachment fears lessen and your attachment needs get met. When you learn to do that, your marriage will be saved and on a firm foundation.
If you are struggling in your relationship with your partner or your family and would like to break out of your negative conflict cycle, I urge you to read more about Emotionally Focused Therapy. Then, if you would just contact us, we would love to schedule a free thirty-minute consultation with you and get you started on the road to reconnection.
Dr. Bernis Riley is a Doctor of Psychology and a Licensed Professional Counselor trained and certified in Emotionally Focused Therapy. She is also the co-founder and Clinical Director of SoulCare Counseling.