What do you mean anxiety and depression aren't vulnerable enough!?: Navigating anxiety and depression in couple therapy
Let's face it: We live in a pretty anxious and depressed social world in 2023, and most of us would not be hard-pressed to find ways in which we have been touched by the echoes of anxiety and depression, whether within ourselves or with close loved ones. While medical models view anxiety and depression as forms of individual pathology, we view anxiety and depression as relational issues that both originate from attachment-related distress and insecurity, and that can be healed by the powers that be of secure attachment. We know that it is important to help couples find the pockets of pain and vulnerability inside their anxiety and depression, to help them share this distilled pain with one another in a soft, slow, vulnerable way.
But what tends to happens when one or both members of a couple suffer from anxiety or depression? Because many of us feel vulnerable when we feel anxious or depressed, we get the sense that we are being vulnerable by sharing our anxiety or depression with our loved one. We are then surprised or disappointed to find that our partner has a hard time coming closer to us in our pain, or that they struggle to comfort us in the ways we are longing for. We feel confused about why our sharing of anxiety and depression do not land as vulnerable for our partner.
This confusion has to do with the difference between primary and secondary emotion. Primary emotions are seen as the core vulnerable emotions that underlie a person's immediate emotional experience, while secondary emotions are seen as protective reactions that arise in response to primary emotions:
Primary Emotions: These are considered the raw and authentic emotional experiences that lie at the core of a person's emotional landscape. These primary emotions are often characterized as vulnerable and largely revolve around sadness and fear. They are simple, easily understood, and have an almost immediately contagious effect, in which our mirror neurons activate and we feel a powerful emotional resonance with the person expressing their primary emotion. This empathic connection facilitates understanding and support from loved ones. Primary emotions contain the adhesive or "glue" that help couples have bonding moments together. This is why we are constantly in search of primary emotion in EFT.
Secondary Emotions: Secondary emotions, on the other hand, are viewed as protective reactions that emerge in response to primary emotions. They can act as a defense mechanism, helping individuals cope with and manage their vulnerable emotions. Secondary emotions can include anger, frustration, irritability, and even anxiety or depression. These emotions may serve as a shield, masking the underlying vulnerable emotions and providing a sense of control or self-protection. Secondary emotions may not elicit the same immediate emotional resonance as primary emotions. While loved ones may still sense the distress and pain associated with anxiety and depression, the more complex nature of these emotions can hinder the immediate emotional contagion that facilitates empathy and understanding.
Put another way, we can think about anxiety as a form of protection that shields us from feeling our deeper, more vulnerable primary fear (e.g., maybe I start to frantically clean the house and engage in to-do lists to cover up my more primary fear that I am not a good enough partner). We can think about depression in a similar way, as a soup of despair and hopelessness that protects us from more primary, deeper feelings of sadness. At the risk of oversimplifying, we can think of anxiety as the secondary, less vulnerable form of fear, and depression as the secondary, less vulnerable form of sadness. Anxiety and depression are less specific and clear, have less adhesive or glue for our partners to emotionally resonate with and latch onto, and maybe even have elements of abandonment, criticism, or demand for accommodation built into them which are inherently distancing (e.g., “When I am depressed, I just want you to leave me alone,” or, “Why can't we just stay home together if I feel anxious about going out?”).
Helping couples find one another through the murkiness of anxiety and depression involves finding the pockets of vulnerability (i.e., fear and sadness) that live inside anxiety and depression, and experientially feeling into and passing over this more specific primary emotion to their loved one. The loved one must then take the risk to experientially feel into this as well, riding their own waves of emotion as they take in and make space for their partner’s fear and sadness. While the sharing of anxiety and depression may not suffice in shrinking the pain and suffering of either condition, the sharing of fear and sadness certainly does, as it puts us much closer to the target zone of creating bonding moments between partners that have the capacity to heal.