So would you be surprised if I were to tell you that distress and a relationship adversely affects

our immune and our hormonal systems, even to the ability to heal ourselves?

And one fascinating experiment, psychologist Janice Kee-Colt Glazer of Ohio State University

had newlyweds fight and then took blood samples over the next several hours.

And she found that the more belligerent

and contemptuous the partners were the higher level of stress hormone and the more depressed the immune

system. And these effects persisted for up to 24 hours after this fight, after this conflict. And

an even more astounding study, Kekolt Glazer used a

vacuum pump to produce small blisters on the hands of women volunteers and then had them fight with

their husbands. And the nastier the fight, the longer it took for the women's skin to heal.

So coming up on today's episode of the virtual couch, I'm going to dig into my old favorite

emotionally focused therapy. It's a method developed by Sue Johnson, and it is one of the only

empirically based methods recognized by the American Psychological Association as is empirically

proven in the world of couples therapy. EFT emotionally focused focused therapy for couples, has an astounding 70 to 75% success rate,

and results have even been shown to last even in the face of significant stress.

So the message of EFT is pretty simple.

Forget about learning how to argue better or analyzing your early childhood

or making these grand romantic gestures

or even experimenting with things like new sexual positions. Instead, recognize and admit that we

are emotionally attached to and dependent. Now, dependent in a healthy kind of way on your partner,

much the same way that a child is dependent on a parent for the nurturing, soothing, and protection.

But what EFT focuses on is creating

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