Скачать или смотреть Coping with Corona Series – Introduction – Couples Coping 1

In our introductory video aim to invite couples to have patience and compassion for themselves if they find themselves in an argumentative situation, feeling envy for active neighbours if they are feeling themselves inactive or unmotivated during corona virus. We talk about coping strategies and how individuals try to sooth themselves by minimising or amplifying their feelings. We explore how anxious or troubled individuals, in their longing for attention might end up escalating a row with their different ways of protecting themselves or seeking out care. Links are made to the original carers and parents and how this might have led to today’s patterns in the couple. We hope these videos will help, although we recognise they won’t be magic and that you might be in such a state of crisis whereby you need to seek out a helpline – a link is given at the end of each video.

Understanding attachment patterns can be a vital part of a couple’s tool kit to help during corona. This video is a very short introduction to how attachment works in couples and to the series of twelve episodes to help couples who are in conflict. Avoidant and preoccupied strategies are outlined. The repeating conflict pattern that partners get into is explained. The polarisation between pursuer and withdrawer described.

We hope the series will help couples in crisis and especially those pulled into a trouble polarising pattern of on the one hand minimising and the other hand amplifying. In these argumentative cycles one partner can be increasingly unmotivated and flat whilst the other may resort to drama to get the attention they long for from a withdrawing spouse. We draw on the writing of British psychoanalyst John Bowlby whose compassion and research gave birth to Attachment Theory which informs many therapists today.

We use our understanding of attachment patterns to highlight coping mechanisms and how the couple when vulnerable can polarise between preoccupied/pursuer and avoidant/withdrawer roles, between an overwhelmed, anxious, angry, critical and complaining amplifier and a dismissive minimiser. We reflect on how fear impacts on a couple’s ability for closeness and connection, care-giving and care-seeking patterns. We explore issues of hope and false hope, closeness and distancing, denial and feelings of shame evoked during any couple crisis but in particular during the corona virus. We reflect on how the avoidant partner can be driven by denial and be drawn to behave in ways which are devaluing, dismissive and controlling and how this can trigger and provoke the ambivalent preoccupied spouse.

We reflect on the attachment relationship between husband and wife and civil partners and how this bond is impacted by lockdown for corona virus. We illustrate how hidden vulnerable feelings can drive rows and conflict, often with a critical pattern in one partner and a stonewalling pattern in the other. We hope that the video helps couples who are struggling with Covid-19 and the challenges it brings.