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Areas › Your marriage › Staying regulated in conflict
The name is the exit. Calling the pattern out loud loosens its grip on you both.
The believers are brothers, so make peace between them (Qur'an 49:10). Naming the rift is the first move of peace.
الحجرات
إِنَّمَا ٱلۡمُؤۡمِنُونَ إِخۡوَةࣱ فَأَصۡلِحُواْ بَيۡنَ أَخَوَيۡكُمۡۚ وَٱتَّقُواْ ٱللَّهَ لَعَلَّكُمۡ تُرۡحَمُونَ
The believers are brothers, so make peace between your two brothers and be mindful of God, so that you may be given mercy
Qur’an 49:10read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Johnson holds that these patterns run automatically until someone names them. Saying there is our cycle again, can we start over, is itself the way out, because a named pattern stops running the two of you unnoticed.
Susan M. Johnson (2008). Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. Little, Brown
Conversation 1, Recognising the Demon Dialogues. Johnson names three patterns, Find the Bad Guy, the Protest Polka, and Freeze and Flee, and holds that the cycle, not the partner, is the enemy: naming it out loud is the first move of de-escalation.
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Naming the cycle in the moment interrupts its automatic pull.
Where this sits: EFT, Hold Me Tight Conversation 1: naming the Demon Dialogue as the exit from it.