Think about the last time you interacted with your spouse or partner. Did you think about how events in your partner’s day affected their current emotions? Were you able to acknowledge and understand their emotional state, and then use your own emotions to sooth them? Or did you stay inside of yourself, unable to use emotional expression to sooth your partner? In every interaction with our partner, and in every other social interaction, we have an opportunity to engage in one of the simplest and most powerful forms of relationship enhancement: Emotional Attunement.
Remember Plasma Balls? When you touch the orb, the purple or blue bolts of electricity pull away from the center and gather at the tip of your finger.
Emotional Attunement is like a Plasma Ball. Your partner’s emotional orb would be boring and unfulfilled if left sitting on a shelf, untouched. Instead, they need us to place our emotional fingers on the orb and connect with their emotions; to pull their emotions toward us, and ours toward them. When we can do that, we are practicing Emotional Attunement.
Emotional Attunement is an essential relationship skill in which we recognize, understand, and engage with our partner’s emotional state. And research on relationship health consistently finds that when we fail to remain emotionally attuned to our partners our relationships experience a loss of trust, resentment, and eventual breakdown.
WHAT CAUSES LACK OF EMOTIONAL ATTUNEMENT?
Attachment During Infancy
Emotional Attunement is an essential skill that we learn as infants. When our primary caregiver consistently recognizes, understands, and meets the needs expressed by our emotional state, we begin to develop a belief, that persists into adulthood, that emotional expression is a good thing; it helps those around us to better understand and meet our needs.
However, if something gets in the way of our primary giver’s ability to consistently respond to our emotions, due alcoholism, severe depression or anxiety, excessive work stress, or even marital distress, then we develop a persistent belief that our emotions have no value; that we should not express them because they are likely to fall on deaf ears.
To make this more challenging, it is often the case that when a primary caregiver is unable to respond appropriately to their infant’s emotional messaging, they are more likely to value their children for their ability to sooth the parent’s emotional state. When that happens, those infants develop a persisting worldview that their emotional needs are not important and that there is no value in emotional expression.
Instead, they believe that their job in life is to say and do whatever is needed to keep important people close to them. They learn that their worth is only to give to others. They learn to give away compliments, emotions, and physical energy in an emotionless, inauthentic, and draining effort to sustain the relationship. Or they give nothing, instead waiting for a mother figure to meet their emotional and physical needs (i.e., “I’m your wife, not your mother!”). Those with insecure attachment styles as a result of misattunement often first consider a partner’s behavior in terms of what it means for them, their needs, and the overall security in the relationship.
Life Stressors
Even those who experienced attuned caregiving during infancy can develop problems with attunement as adults. As above, things like alcoholism, being overworked, having severe anxiety, depression, or other forms of mental illness can affect one’s ability to develop or sustain emotionally healthy behaviors. When the stressor is removed or resolved, the individual will often again engage in emotional attunement behaviors.
Individuals who are unable to engage in Emotional Attunement will display one or more of the following behaviors:
- Will become codependent by putting the needs of others first to gain their approval or love
- Rarely express emotions and, if they do, they are disguised as anger
- They will attempt to self-medicate with alcohol, sex, drugs, food, or shopping
- They blame others or act like the victim
CAN ATTUNEMENT BE LEARNED?
First, let’s talk briefly about emotions. Emotions are experienced following changes in levels of neurochemicals in the body. While there are many things that influence the levels of these chemicals in the body, there is one area that is significant in the development of attunement. Our bodies are designed to release hormones (emotions) consistent with our thoughts. So, here’s how this works:
- Some event happens to us or around us
- We have a thought about or interpretation of that event
- Our brain responds to the thought (whether it is correct or not) by releasing the hormones that allow us to respond to the event. We experience those hormones as emotions
- We use those emotions to behaviorally react to the event
Importantly, our body does not care if the thought used to elicit the emotional response is correct or not. If we believe what we are thinking, our body will respond with the corresponding emotion. Therefore, it is essential that we accurately appraise our environment so that our emotional reaction and resulting behaviors are appropriate.
Can emotional attunement be learned? Yes! First, we need to change our thinking to reflect the fact that our emotions are a very healthy and valid way to express needs and wants in relationships. And we need to understand that emotional expression opens the lane to emotional connection. A gloved hand has no effect on the Plasma Ball! Our bare hand, our true emotions, are the only thing that activates that bolt of emotional connection from our partners. Remember, if our partner expresses emotion and we do not, then they begin to recognize that emotional expression is pointless in this relationship; they lose trust in our emotional responsiveness and begin the process of disengagement from the relationship. When we appropriately express emotion with our partners, it gives our partners the opportunity to develop deep connections with us.
Here are a few guideposts toward Emotional Attunement:
- Mirroring is a technique that helps us join with others’ emotions. It simply means that other people like it when we show them that we get what they are feeling. If your partner is angry, express a bit of supportive anger (“I can’t believe he said that to you! That must have been really frustrating!”). When you partner is expressing an emotion or is expressing words that suggest an emotion (remember, they may not yet trust that you will mirror or understand their emotion), then join them in that emotion. Find a genuine part of yourself that empathizes with that emotion and express it: “your boss not only told you that you couldn’t have your birthday off AND asked you to work late that day? You must be pissed!” Your partner then says to him- or herself, “wow, she really gets me! I guess it’s safe to express that emotion.” Nice! You’ve just engaged in emotional attunement and injected your relationship with a shot of trust and deep emotional connection.
- If it looks like your partner is in a rough mood, then ask them what they are feeling: “you look upset; what’s going on?” This shows your partner that you are connected to them (it pulls a bolt of the Plasma Ball toward you). Then when they tell you what they are really feeling it become a lightning storm of healthy emotional expression.
- When you are in a “mood,” try to dig deep; find the mood. Look past your typical anger. Find the hurt, the sadness, the frustration, or anxiety. Then find the event or thought that created that emotion. Then, express it! Say it! “I feel sad [angry, anxious, confused].” Trust that your partner will hear your emotion and connect with you. And if they do not, then try again next time. Remember, your partner has lost trust that emotions are safe to mess around with.
- This is an easy one! Remember things about your partner that no one else knows or would think to remember. Then bring it up again in the future. “You said you had a headache this morning. How are you feeling?” “You told me the other day that you have a big meeting today. Good luck.” Wow! Small. Powerful.
That’s Emotional Attunement. It’s one of the most powerful things you can offer a relationship.
