275 - Demon Dance Battles
Dances with demons
No, we’re not talking about actual demons dancing, but there is a demonic aspect to fight choreography, or the patterns and habits we fall into when having conflict with a partner. We want to reframe inevitable conflict as something you can begin working on to change how you act when arguing and recognize some of the habits you have. When you do that, you can start to turn the patterns around and take steps towards solving conflict in a more productive way.
Sue Johnson, author of Hold Me Tight and founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), says there are three main “demon dialogues” that couples tend to fall into when fighting, regardless of what the fight is about. It’s almost like a ballroom dance: the music may change, but the choreography often stays the same.
Types of dances
Find the Bad Guy, aka The Bad Guy Boogie: Both partners are on the offensive in a futile attempt to pin blame or criticism on the other. Even if this may help one person “win” the fight, it still causes a lot of wounds, and who wants to be the one in the relationship with the “bad guy?”
The Protest Polka: One partner is focusing their energy in the form of demands, attacks, criticism, or raw pleas. The other partner is withdrawing, or hiding, or numbing to cope with their partner’s disapproval. Listen to episode 227 - Pursuit and Withdrawal for more information about this type of behavior.
Flight and Freeze Flashdance: Both partners turn away or withdraw, taking their respective attentions away from their partner. There is sometimes very little actual fighting in a relationship where this kind of pattern shows up often, but that doesn’t mean it’s healthy.
Counterspells
To take steps towards breaking your choreography, you first have to recognize it. But once you do, there are a couple methods you can utilize to start changing behavior.
Meta Communication - “If you can name it, you can tame it”
Recognize that the shared dance is the first major step.
Share this information with your partner, preferably not when you’re already in the middle of a fight, and have a conversation about which patterns seem the most familiar.
Mapping the choreography. Many therapists who specialize in EFT have worksheets that can assist with this:
You and your partner sit down separately and make a list of behaviors that you know you do individually that turn your energy towards your partner during conflict, as well as the behaviors that turn it away.
Both you and your partner will sit down and separately make a list of the behaviors that you do individually that turn your energy and attention towards your partner during conflict, as well as what behaviors turn your energy and attention away from your partner during conflict.
Identify the most common behaviors and see if you can match them with your partner’s to uncover what your most used choreography or pattern is.
With your partner, come up with a name for your choreography and an agreed-upon way to let each other know when it is happening, and decide what will happen when one or both of you calls it out.
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we're talking about fight choreography. Unfortunately, we're not talking about fake punches and six stunts that people do on set, we're actually talking about the destructive cycles and patterns that are easy to fall into with a partner when you're in conflict, like these patterns that show up when you fight. We'll be covering three of the most common patterns, how to recognize which fight choreography shows up most frequently in your relationship, and then go over some steps to turn things around and start solving conflict more productively.
Conflict. We love it. It's been a while since we've done an episode on conflict, I guess or do we talk about it all the time? It's hard to say. What if we--
Dedeker: Yes, I think it's a mix of both. I know when I was writing this, I was like, "I feel like we've done 25 kajillion episodes on conflict." In reality, our last one was quite a ways back. I don't know. With Multiamory episodes, they all occur at time in the same time in my brain. It's like some weird theory of the universe like all points in time are simultaneously occurring.
Jase: Listeners, you soon realize this. We actually record all of Multiamory inside a Tesseract. We're existing at all times at the same time.
Emily: Wouldn't that be nice? Wow.
Dedeker: Okay. I think looking at our backlog, our last episode that we did that was probably related to fighting or conflict was a repair shop Episode 234.
Jase: Okay. It's been a little bit.
Emily: Really? That's a long time. Goodness, 40 episodes later?
Dedeker: Yes. It was August 2019.
Emily: Oh, my goodness.
Jase: Especially if you, the listener, are in a situation where you're around the same people all the time, day in and day out, you might notice some of these fight choreography patterns coming up with those people. Whether that is a romantic partner, a roommate, a best friend, family member, something like that, it applies across all of those relationships. To start out, let's go over what are some things that we know about conflict in relationships in general?
Emily: It's going to happen, super inevitable and that's okay because even healthy relationships have conflict. In fact, 69% of conflict in relationships are based on unsolvable perpetual problems. That's from the Gottman Institute. We talked about that maybe in the repair SHOP episode, we said them.
Dedeker: Yes, we did. In the repair SHOP episode, yeah.
Emily: Yes, exactly. That's an amazingly high number, in my opinion. These problems are just not ever going to be solved, and you have to figure out a way for that to be okay within your relationship if you're going to stay in that relationship.
Dedeker: We also know that the communication patterns that we see growing up from the adults around us, from our caregivers, combined with our past emotional baggage, our past trauma as well as our individual attachment styles can influence how we respond to conflict in our modern day relationships. I said modern day like the relationship you're in today, not like a relationship of the future.
Emily: One you'll be in in 2050 or something. How do we see that in our current relationships, our family of origin and the way maybe that we saw our parents fighting? Do we see that in our current relationships because I certainly do.
Dedeker: open up this can of worms.
Jase: I'm actually just-- to not go too deep on it right away, I'm curious for the two of you, when you were young, do you have memories of your parents or parental figures fighting or fighting with people other than you regularly? Because for me, it was something that I definitely never saw when I was really young, and then saw a little bit when I was a little bit older and my parents were on their second marriages. For me, it was like, "Well, they're all fucked by now anyway." I was jaded about the whole thing at that point. For me, I definitely grew up with this association of fighting-- things are shitty. You've already had a divorce. Clearly, you don't know how to do relationships, I guess. This is my-
Emily: Goodness.
Jase: -12-year-old angry kid brain upset about my life being turned upside down.
Emily: Understandable.
Jase: What about for you? What was your impression of adults fighting?
Emily: That's funny because I never grew up with two parents. It was only one parent or my mother and my grandmother. They didn't fight but my grandmother saw my mother as such-- It's almost like a parental figure, which is very backwards and weird. My grandmother viewed my mother as her father. She was very submissive towards my mother because my mother has a very intense personality.
I know for myself like, it's way harder for me in relationships with other women. It's hard for me to not want to be like, I'm sorry. I'm going to be submissive. I'm going to be this way because I have such strong female figures in my life. It's easy for me to tell off man like whatever. I'll fucking tell you whatever, that you're shitty and not doing well as a person, but with women, no way. I'm always like, "I'm sorry. I'm the worst."
Dedeker: I just like the, I have a note for you, you're not doing well as a person.
Emily: I never say that to people, but I’ll tell it how it is.
Dedeker: There's some people I could say that to.
Emily: Sure. That's amazing.
Dedeker: I guess for me when I was very young, I grew up with the same thing of not having two parents in the house. At least for the first two years of my life, it was my mom and then I'd see my grandparents. My grandparents' arguments, I guess were-- I don't know. My grandparents very much-- It's like if they really truly had to have an argument, they would take it away from everybody else and hide behind closed doors.
I got to see those small solvable problems like, we should have this for dinner or I think we should have this for dinner or do you think we should-- Those kind of solvable problems of like, we work through it and come to a solution, but I never really got to see, at least, my grandparents the bigger perpetual problems until my mom got remarried also. Then I saw that all the time. It was great.
Jase: I don't know if you ended up with the same association that I did of like, if you're fighting, that means it's bad, that this is a problem. Is that what it was like for you?
Dedeker: Yes. It was definitely not only just if you're fighting, this is a problem, but also if you're fighting, you are going for it. Conflict is either zero or 100 based . I think was what I got was either it's not a problem or it's a drag-out fight.
Jase: Got it. I remember then, later once I was maybe high school, college and beyond, hearing from other people that saying that, "Oh, well, fighting or conflict is healthy in relationships." My parents always did that growing up, but it was never this vindictive bad thing. It was just like, that's how they communicated. That's how I grew up and that's how my partner and I do it. To me, still honestly, it's a little bit hard to wrap my brain around, but understanding that that can look very different-- I think part of the reason for that is about how we saw fighting be done because there's vicious tear people down fighting like you were mentioning Dedeker.
Then there's the more frustrated passive aggressive until someone yells fighting, which is maybe what I saw more of growing up. Then there's fighting that could be the heated, could be raised voices, but that isn't destructive. It's just interesting to realize that there is this range, but that each of us might never experience the one that we're not part of because we just can't go there.
Dedeker: Right or sometimes you may have only seen, again, those heated really intense destructive parts and never seen how your parents repaired or how your caregivers repaired. That's another thing. Sometimes they just don't. Sometimes you can just not see what the repair process looks like at all or it could be your parents did repair but that was behind closed doors when you weren't around or you didn't notice because they weren't raised voices or things like that.
Jase: Yes, definitely.
Dedeker: Anyway, so before we dive too for deep into our own childhood traumas, I want to talk about this concept of fight choreography. Researchers and couples' counselors and therapists have been trying to get to the bottom of relationship conflict for decades, like probably at least since the beginning of the 20th century, I would say, like 1920s when we first started getting people actually starting to research what causes marital conflict, and how do we resolve it.
There's a lot of different theories floating out there. There's of course, a lot of different theories that motivate different approaches to couples therapy and couples counseling and things like that. Today, we're going to be looking at just one of them. It's a concept that was introduced by Dr. Sue Johnson. She's the creator of emotionally focused therapy or EFT. She's also the author of the book Hold Me Tight, which I think a lot of people are familiar with.
I like to call this concept fight choreography. Sue Johnson calls it demon dialogues and I'm like, "Whoa, slam on demons. I don't know where. Where that come from, Sue?" You'll hear us referring to those two things interchangeably either fight choreography, fight patterns or demon dialogues like Sue calls them. We also talked more about--
Jase: Could we take the best of both worlds and instead call them demon battles?
Emily: I like that.
Dedeker: Demons battles.
Emily: My partner's playing what is it? Doom, right now and so, that just reminds me of him. Lots of demon battles with actual demon from hell.
Jase: All right.
Dedeker: Geez. Some of this content may be a little bit familiar today. We talked more about Sue Johnson's work in Episode 227 specifically about pursuit and withdrawal patterns and that's going to come into play again today as we talk about these how you say demon battles.
Emily: Sue Johnson talks about three main demon dialogues that different couples falls into when fighting.
Jase: Demon battles.
Emily: Yes. Demon battles, demon dialogues, fight choreography, whatever you want to call it. They fall into these three main categories regardless of the content of the fight, which is very interesting. We don't want to say that the content of the fight never matters, but what she is saying is that the majority of the time, the important part of the conflict is the subtext and the emotions that are underlying that dialogue. Dedeker, I know you said there was a thing that happened recently.
Dedeker: Well, just a case in point. On the show we've talked about "nothing fights" before where it's like about the tiniest thing. I got into a fight with Alex a few weeks ago about whether or not the window shade should be up at a particular time in the bedroom and it was emotional. There was no way in hell that it was about the window shade. It was so so so not about the window shade, and I think these things happen a lot.
It can be a fight about chores. Maybe there is an element about it that is, hey, pragmatic, we do need to figure out how to get this chore done. Often underneath it are these deeper things of like, hey, are you taking me for granted? Are you listening to me? Do you care about what's important to me as far as how our home is comfortable? Stuff like that. Now, Sue Johnson, when she talks about the demon dialogues, she likens it to couples following the steps of a ballroom dance, where the music and in this case, the music being the content of the fight, the emotions that come up during the fight, that may change, but the choreography, the steps to the ballroom dance are ultimately the same.
If you know, West Coast Swing, even if the song changes, the ultimate base of the choreography does not change. It's the same set of moves just to a different music. That's the metaphor that she uses to explain these ballroom demon battles.
Jase: It's interesting to use the analogy of something like ballroom dancing, where there's also specific types of moves that if you know them, it's like one person cues it, and then the other person knows how to respond. That very much reminds me of the fight thing where it's like, one of us does the thing that always gets that response. Then that gets the other thing and it just falls into this rut, falls into this autopilot of just like, yes. Here we go. Here we go. Ramping up, ramping up, ramping up.
Emily: We know how to do this.
Dedeker: Yeah, so, Mauricio, if you can find a convenient part in our episode to cut in like a little section of Ballroom Blitz, that's not going to get any copyright infringement, I feel like that's going to be the theme.
Emily: Ballroom Blitz. I love it.
Jase: Ballroom Blitz.
Emily: I know. I'm trying to remember who did that music.
Jase: I never remember.
Emily: I always think of the Tia Carrere version from Wayne's World. That what sticks in my head.
Jase: That's always what I think of too.
Dedeker: Someone else did the original version of it.
Jase: Sweet. The band was called Sweet.
Dedeker: Sweet.
Jase: That's why none of us remembered it.
Emily: No. We've never gotten that. I don't know how many years.
Dedeker: Okay. Kids. All right, kids, it's time. We're going to go through each of these demon battles, demon dialogues, fight choreography. We're going to go through each of them one at a time. We're going to do that with the help of some professional actors that I've brought in for the day. May I introduce you to Emily, is it?
Emily: Yes. That's my name. My professional name's Amelia but sure.
Dedeker: Sorry. Yes. Emilia, and Jase. Jase, I believe it is Jase Lindgren.
Jase: That's correct. Happy to be here.
Dedeker: Okay. Good. I'm just really excited to have the two of you. These two actually are professional actors. They got a resume and everything.
Emily: You are a professional actor.
Dedeker: I know. We're all professional actors.
Emily: There you go.
Dedeker: What we're going to do, I'm going to have you to read the scene, do a dramatic reenactment. Just do what you want with it. Explore the space. Then we're going to end the scene and then we're going to talk a little bit about what was going on with this particular couple. Okay?
Jase: Got it. Can you set the scene for us?
Dedeker: Yes. You're couple.
Emily: Interior
Dedeker: Yes. Interior.
Emily: 9:00 PM.
Dedeker: Seven o'clock at night.
Jase: Seven o'clock? Okay.
Dedeker: Hey, who's the director here?
Emily: Sorry, sorry. I will shut up.
Dedeker: You're just the talent.
Emily: You're right. Freaking spoiled talent, yes.
Dedeker: All right. Interior. I'm going to say this couple is at home, having a date night at home. One of them has worked really hard. Let's say person A, has worked really hard on making dinner.
Jase: You can just call us by our names. It'd probably be easier.
Dedeker: Okay. Emily has worked really hard at making dinner for date night tonight. You've just sat down, started eating dinner, and then the scene begins and action.
Emily: Okay. You need to put your phone away when we're at dinner. Tonight it's supposed to be date night and that is really rude.
Jase: Dude, you're the one who can't even watch a movie without constantly texting your friends. I'm just taking care of work stuff.
Emily: I had to leave my own work early so that I could cook dinner for date night because you weren't willing to do it.
Jase: We can never have a date night without you bringing up some problem. It's like I can't do anything right.
Dedeker: And cut. All right. Well done. Well done, everybody. I loved Jase. You were so in your phone. You almost didn't do your lines.
Jase: I was trying to capture that sense of like you got to finish the text before-- try and make it real.
Dedeker: He was that committed to the role. What did you all notice was going on in that conversation? What might be the steps of the dance that these two are following? I know it was a very short snippet of a conversation. It probably in reality would go on for much longer, but what was going on there?
Emily: I pointed out immediately, a problem. I wasn't trying to ask a question or trying to say like, hey, I would really appreciate it if-- or something along those lines. Instead, I just completely threw at him like you're doing something wrong.
Jase: Right. Like you're being rude.
Emily: You're being rude.
Jase: Then the response is to not to completely change topics, and instead be like, but you do this other thing. You're actually the bad one. Really, I'm just normal. You're the one who's bad.
Emily: Totally. Then I said, again, well, look at what I had to do. Look at this awesome thing that I did for you, and I'm getting no respect and no love for it. What the hell?
Jase: Then my character at the end basically did the same thing of like, well, great. We can never have a good date night because you always have to make it into a problem and we can't even enjoy this. It's just both-
Emily: Then I asked-
Jase: -pushing that blame.
Emily: -why are these two people in a relationship?
Dedeker: You asked that but that happens all the time.
Jase: I've been in something like this.
Dedeker: I've been in this conversation. I do feel like this approach, this particular demon battle, this is what I saw the most of growing up.
Jase: Really?
Dedeker: Yes. It was a lot of attack, attack, attack, attack and especially it'd like, I'm going to defend myself by bringing up something wrong that you did even if that was completely irrelevant or from six weeks ago or whatever. Then the other person responds by, well, I'm going to bring up something wrong that you did that was completely irrelevant to this conversation at six weeks ago. Then we just kind of go back and forth.
Emily: Almost switch tracking.
Dedeker: Yes. That's true.
Jase: It's a form of switch tracking. This is 100%, at least one of my parents, if not several of them, but this was their tact, it was always--
Emily: Several of you are like 75 different parents--
Dedeker: There's so many parents.
Emily: Seriously.
Jase: Well, mom and stepdad and dad and stepmom.
Emily: Mom and stepdad and stepdad and dad.
Dedeker: Yes, you have three dads, Jase.
Jase: I know but stepdad 2.0 didn't enter the picture until so recently. All my baggage was done by then. It's already been packed by then.
Emily: It's all wrapped up in a nice little bow. I didn't feel good doing this. It was very sad. It's hard to just constantly blame your partner because it seems so cyclical and nobody's going to get anything done ever. Nothing is going to be resolved because you're just going back and forth.
Jase: Right. And they're both, right from the start, putting each other in a position where there's no way to defuse this. There's no way to move on. It's like just throwing back and forth, "You're bad." And the only way that person could not just throw that back at you then is to be like, "Yes, I'm terrible". And then that's weird.
Emily: I've done that before.
Jase: Though that leads us to the name of this dance / Demon Battle, which is, "Find the bad guy." I have a note here for Sue Johnson.
Dedeker: A note for Sue?
Jase: For Sue.
Emily: Excuse me, Sue. I have written a note for the writer.
Jase: It's a little note. I appreciate that the names she's given to each of these, and you'll see as we go, they do try to make it clear what the fight is doing, but they're just not good names for dances. If we're going to say this is a dance, find that bad guy, find the bad guy. That's a terrible name for a dance.
Dedeker: Bad Guy Boogie?
Jase: That's better.
Emily: That's good. That's great.
Jase: This is what is now known as the Bad Guy Boogie previously known as Find the Bad Guy.
Dedeker: Multiamory, just improving on other people's content, since 2014.
Emily: We're not even doing much other than just changing the name but it's an improvement, isn't it?
laughter]
Jase: Bad Guy Boogie, here's what defines it. Both partners are on the attack. They're throwing blame and criticism at each other. And it's this attempt to pin one or the other person as the real bad guy under the false assumption that once you can just get them to admit that they're the bad guy, then it's all soft. Unfortunately, as we saw, and as Emily brought up, it felt yucky even doing it pretend-wise, is that this choreography can cause a lot of wounds and hurt feelings and really dig you into a situation you can't get out of because the irony is that even if you succeed, then great, now, you're in a relationship with the bad guy. There's no good outcome here.
Dedeker: Something that Sue Johnson points out also is that this particular dynamic, the Bad Guy Boogie, at least, according to her, she says, "This is hard to maintain over time." It's hard to maintain this, same both of us attacking each other, for a long period of time. Her theorizing being that it takes a lot of energy and it is very harmful and wounding and really difficult to deal with.
Often this is an escalation that sometimes will occur at the end of a fantastically toxic relationship that's about to explode. Or more often, sometimes the fight may start here and then may adjust into the next demon battle dialogue, dance choreography, boogie, whatever you want to call it, which is more likely to be sustainable in a bad way, over a long period of time. Let's move on to the second scene, shall we?
Jase: Just real quick. In the spirit of renaming things to make them better, now I'm realizing that we've created a problem by calling them Demon Battles, but then naming them like their dances.
Emily: Here we go. So you are going to name--?
Jase: Here me out.
Emily: Okay.
Jase: Or just instead of Demon Battles, they're going to be Demon Dance Battles like West Side Story style.
Emily: Like in Scott Pilgrim?
Jase: Yes.
Emily: There's dance in Scott Pilgrim? Am I making that up?
Jase: They just play music? It's just music battles, I think.
Dedeker: Yes, I think it's just music battles. Jase, I think the title's episode is now a Demon Dance Battle.
Jase: Demon Dance Battle. Perfect.
Dedeker: I'm erasing what I called it Fight Choreography and I'm calling it Demon Dance Battles. Done.
Jase: Everyone's going to see that in their podcast feed and go, huh?
Emily: They're going to be like, "The hell."
Sorry. All right, what's the next dance battle?
Dedeker: Let's move on to that. Let me set the scene. The scene is yes, the two of you are at home.
Emily: Where else would we be? Come on.
Dedeker: I know. It's the extent of my imagination these days. The two of you are at home. Emily, you're chilling out with your switch. Just kicking back.
Emily: Playing Animal Crossing .
Dedeker: Jase, you've been hanging out at your computer, working on some stuff and then you enter the room to talk to Emily. Yes? And action.
Jase: Can we talk about this credit card bill that just came in? We have to figure out if there are any of these expenses that we can cut out for next month.
Emily: The last month wasn't really a regular month for us. It's going to be better next month. I really don't think that you need to worry this much about it.
Jase: Why are you avoiding this? You can't just bury your head in the sand and expect it'll all get taken care of. You need to be responsible too.
Emily: I really don't want to talk about this right now.
Jase: Don't walk away from me. This is important. We need to talk about it.
Dedeker: And scene. Cut.
Jase: Wow. It's okay.
Dedeker: Good folio work, Jase.
Jase: Thank you. I really wanted to bring the listeners into the scene with this particular--
Emily: I know. You were going out of camera.
Dedeker: Into the credit card's demon that you are waving around.
Emily: I know. I was like, "What's happening. What is he doing, where is he going?"
I didn't actually get up and walk away but I did in my heart. All right. What were we doing there? I was being supper, just avoidance, just avoiding you all over the place.
Jase: Right. Then I think that I was trying to bring something up and your response was to just discount it like it's not even a real concern.
Emily: Don't worry about it.
Jase: Don't worry about it. Then my response was to jump to accusations then of like, "You can't just ignore--." Jumping pretty far, I think.
Emily: You're irresponsible.
Jase: Right, exactly. Essentially, saying you're irresponsible. Then that drove you all the way out the door.
Emily: I'm like, "I'm leaving. Me and my suits are going."
Dedeker: Right. Again, this is just a tiny snippet. It's probably likely in reality, that this conversation could last a lot longer for, ultimately, resulting in Emily being like, "I'm out. I can't talk about this right now." Things like that. It matches up to pursuit/withdrawal pattern, which we covered much more in-depth in Episode 227. Some therapists and researchers also call it Demand Withdraw. Now, Sue Johnson, and Jase, I feel like you're going be upset at this with the naming conventions, but Sue Johnson calls this the Protest Polka.
Emily: It's brilliant.
Dedeker: Really?
Jase: Actually. I don't mind it. I'm all right with that.
Dedeker: This is the one- that's the one that I--
Emily: It works. It's a Polka.
Jase: It's a Polka. It's right there, it's a music, it's a dance. It's fine.
Dedeker: Sure. Maybe if I knew more about how a polka works, maybe it would give me a better idea in my head of--
Emily: I have no idea what a polka looks like, but it works.
Dedeker: I guess what I like about calling it Find the bad guy, is that it gives me more of a sense in my brain, I'm like, "I know exactly what's going on and what the motivations are." The Protest Polka. I'm like, "I don't know how Polka works." Is there a lot of pursuing and then withdrawing? I don't know.
Emily: That's a good plan.
Jase: If you're trying to incorporate that into the dance part, as long as our other guy-- the one who was the Bad Guy Boogie. It's just a boogie. It just needs to have alliteration. That's all that matters. Well, and the bad guys are the ones who say, "Come on, let's Boogie." The Protest Polka, I don't mind it, but what would you think about-- because it's a little bit weird because it's the Protest Polka but it seems to me like it's defined more by the withdrawing. It could be the Withdrawal Waltz.
Dedeker: Maybe. I think that puts a little bit of emphasis on the wrong place because what's going on in this pursuit withdraw pattern is one partner is putting their energy toward their partner in the form of demands, attacks, criticisms or just straight up pleading or prodding, things like that. The other partner is moving their energy and focus and attention away from their partner by defending, withdrawing, hiding or numbing. It's a cyclical thing. The more the pursuer demands and attacks the more that withdrawer wants to defend and pull away and vice versa, the more that withdrawer pulls away, the more the pursuer pursues and demands and attacks, and it's just constant.
Something I wanted to point out in this particular dialog is that when we think of withdrawing, we think of things that Emily did in the scene of looking away, walking away, walking into the other room, shutting down the conversation, things that. What also counts as a withdrawal behavior as in behavior that takes your energy and focus and attention away from your partner are things like getting super logical and rational. The fact that Emily pointed out, "Oh well, last month, it wasn't a regular month for us, and it's going to be better next month."
Super logical, but doesn't really address Jase's concerns of, "Hey, I'm worried about money and I'm worried about what happens." Combined with also the behavior of minimizing, like in the scene where Emily said, "Yes, I really don't think you need to worry about this this much", that's also withdrawal behavior. Because it takes your attention away from your partner's distress and worry and then often--
Jase: You don't need to be so upset about it.
Dedeker: Exactly.
Emily: It's going to be fine.
Dedeker: Exactly. I think this is so hard because I know the way that I've been in the past, the way I see a lot of clients react in the past sometimes is that we confuse comfort with logicing someone out of their problem or their worry. I think this is why it becomes so important to talk about, triforce stuff, T2, T3, stuff like that, is that sometimes you can think, well, if I just sit here and tell my partner all the reasons why they don't need to worry, maybe that will help them.
Maybe they really are like, I need someone to bounce off and just think about and just tell me about it's going to be okay, but chances are it's probably not. That's probably not what they were going for, is to be told that logically, they shouldn't have a problem or shouldn't have to worry.
Jase: Yes. It's interesting because in both cases, those would be triforce three, which is looking for a solution to a problem. It's like I want to solve one problem and you think I'm trying to solve a different problem which is the fact that I'm worrying as opposed to I'm trying to solve the problem of, "Hey, we're spending too much money on this credit card."
That's an interesting-- a different way that you can screw up and not meta communicate effectively.
Dedeker: Yes, definitely. It's also the kind of thing where Emily shutting down like "I don't want to talk about this right now." On the one hand, that can't be done in a healthy way like, we're taking a halt or with communicating, hey, this is a bad time. Can we talk about this at another time? . Right, but it can also be done in this very unhealthy way of just like, I'm shutting down, I don't care, I'm walking away.
I find that when people have issues with halts, have a problem with incorporating it or feel really hesitant to incorporate it, I think it's because it becomes like a pursue-withdraw issue. It's being felt like the halt to the pursuer, the halt feels like you're withdrawing and with the withdrawer, maybe the way they're using the halt is this escape button, my panic button to get away from the pressure. That's what I suspect is often going on. What I feel like I see often with couples that I work with where a halt is not working very well for them.
Emily: That makes a lot of sense.
Jase: Something we've talked about with halt before is the importance of having a clear plan of when you're going to come back to it so that it doesn't feel like it's just this way to not have the conversation and then ignore it. This one for me, actually, the Protest Polka, that's what it was. The Protest Polka, to me is this is the one that I think I most resonate with actually in terms of I've definitely been in relationships before.
It's kind of been a while but where my reaction would be to get very tired. That was the way that my body would be trying to withdraw was just like I would suddenly be so tired. These would usually happen in the evening too so that would be part of it. It's like that was my body just shutting down and being like, "I can't do this. I can't handle this. I don't know what to do with this."
Something that I think would have been a good tool that I didn't have back then was setting a specific time to talk about it or having something like radar, having a regular time and place to do it that's not having to dance around and wait till someone ambushes you and then it's like, "I can't deal with this right now."
Dedeker: Yes, definitely. Are we ready for the final scene, the final demon dance battle?
Jase: All right.
Dedeker: Okay. Let's see. It's humming us at the scene here. Guess what? You're at home.
Jase:
Dedeker: Of course. Let's see. Emily is hanging out, she's not on her switch though, she's in the middle of getting the dishes done.
Emily: Also a thing that I would be doing this like every day. We don't have a dishwasher, oh boy, it's tough out there from the dishwasher lady.
Dedeker: Jase walks into the room and starts the conversation.
Jase: I want to go check out that new pop-up store down the block.
Emily: It's not really my scene. I've got stuff that I need to get done around the house but I guess we could go take a look if you really want to.
Jase: No, I should go finish cleaning up the yard.
Dedeker: Then we see them go their separate ways then we fade to credits, the end scene.
Jase: What's going on here? What's this choreography?
Dedeker: Yes, it's a very short scene. What did you notice?
Emily: Both of us wanted to do different things. I think I was like super passive-aggressively being like, you didn't freaking help me again. I am doing a lot of things for the house that you're not helping with but you want to go to do something fun. I guess I could do it if you want but I need to get stuff done.
Dedeker: I noticed Jase deflating a lot but not really-- I don't know, making the invitation and then when it was rejected, just deflating and just giving up. Hence to like, I'm not even going to go, I'll go finish cleaning up the yard or whatever.
Jase: Right.
Dedeker: This is a short conversation because after this, they probably don't spend the rest of the day really talking to each other, interacting with each other that much.
Emily: Wow.
Jase: Right, because I got to go out to the yard and she's going to, I guess, clean more things. I don't know. It's interesting because it also-- I can relate to this feeling of whether or not you're even being that productive or have that much to do, that you can get into this mindstate of like "I've just got so much to do, I can't see the end of it." I just feel like I'm buried under a pile of stuff to do. I often feel this way. It is hard to pull yourself out of that to do something fun or to enjoy something when you're in the middle of that way of thinking or being frustrated about life.
Dedeker: Yes, yes. This particular demon battle is what Sue Johnson calls Flight and Freeze. I'm going to upgrade that by calling it the Flight and Freeze Flashdance.
Jase: Wow. Okay, cool.
Emily: We're going to throw water all over ourselves at the end.
Dedeker: Get frozen.
Emily: On a chair.
Dedeker: Yes.
Jase: Okay. Then frozen, okay. Got it.
Dedeker: This is characterized by both partners turning away withdrawing-- the energy with both of them is ultimately going away from their partner. There can be a lot of tension and avoidance of actually talking about topics.
Emily: Yes, but I find it really interesting that there also can be a lot of politeness surrounding this and very little what we would may deem as fighting or what normal fighting looks like to us.
Dedeker: Right. You could look at this and go, well, look at how severely they managed their disagreement and no fighting. Great.
Emily: Yes, but that doesn't actually mean that things are healthy because in reality, both partners may have emotionally withdrawn from one another long ago. They're just like, I'm not going to go there, conflict's unproductive, it's easier to not even engage with that in the first place. There may be a lot of distancing, a lot of numbing, a lot of losing hope again, maybe at the end of a relationship here.
Jase: Yes, I could kind of see this one as the extension after the Protest Polka, where it's like the pursue and withdraw, and eventually the pursuer just gives up. It's not worth it. Then it's like, okay, never mind. I'll just do something else.
Dedeker: Yes. I know Sue Johnson points out that this is-- she sees this a lot in long term marriages where the fighting stopped years ago but that doesn't mean that it's been a healthy, fulfilling, life-giving relationship. It's just been like we're roommates who are figuring it out together.
The other thing you'll notice from the scene is the fact that it's like there could have been a fight here or a disagreement or an argument or some kind of engagement when Jase invites Emily to go check out the new pop-up store and she refuses. It could have been like "Oh my God, you never want to do things with me. I'm really sad. This really hurts me." It could have been something. Same with Emily of being like, "I've got stuff to get done around the house" and maybe even implying--
Emily: I could use some help.
Dedeker: I could use some help and like "Why are you leaving me right now", instead of her even being willing to have that fight even it's just like both people are just resigned. Even though there's no fight that happened, it doesn't mean that that means they resolved it in a really nice way.
Jase: Yes.
Emily: Totally.
Jase: All right. We want to go on and we're going to break down what's really going on here as well as talk about counterspells, as we like to call it.
Emily: Alohamora!
Jase: Alohamora, Expelliarmus to stop demon dance battles. Before we get to that, we want to take a quick moment to talk about some ways that you can help support this show if this is something that's helpful to you, and if this is something you're getting value out of, and want to help spread to more people.
Dedeker: What's going on underneath all of these various dance battles? Has anyone noticed any common themes, though, of what happens?
Jase: That none of the fights are really about the thing that they're talking about. It's really about one person wanting to engage with the other and the other not or maybe both just wanting to feel better by blaming the other person. There's different ways to go about it, but they all have a pushing away kind of feel to them.
Emily: I was going to say that to that too. It's all like nobody's going towards each other. Everyone's just going away from each other and very upset. People end up feeling very alone.
Dedeker: The end result of all of these dances is that people feel hurt and alone. A really important part of the theory that drives emotionally focused therapy is this idea that we attach to our partners in very much the same way that we attach to our parents and caregivers when we're young. We've talked about attachment theory before on the show, if you're not familiar with attachment theory, go Google it you'll find a billion, kajillion resources for talking about that. What's interesting is Sue Johnson doesn't just make the argument of like, oh, yes, your attachment style that you made in childhood influences your relationship.
She makes the argument of like, no, you attach to your partner and look to them for comfort and reassurance and security almost in the same exact way that you did to your parents when you were very young. The difference being that as an adult, you're not looking for them to necessarily feed you or clothe you or things like that, but you are looking for that same sense of safety and comfort.
Emily: That means that generally, people who are more anxious attached might be more likely to have pursuit behaviors, which makes sense. Then avoidant attached people might be more likely to have withdrawal behaviors. That's not true 100% of the time, but that tends to be the pattern that happens over and over again.
Jase: Yes. Overall, what we want, we as people, not just the three of us, but overall what we want is to feel safe, to feel comforted, secure, when we're with our partners, and withdrawing minimizing, attacking, blaming and the whole host of other behaviors we're talking about that show up in these demon dance battles can cause a break in that attachment. Which leaves us not feeling safe, comforted and secure.
Then leaves us resorting to those same bad behaviors in this attempt to secure the relationship again or in the avoidant case in this attempt to like, "Well, I didn't need you anyway because you're bad." Some way of we want to regain our feeling of safety and comfort, but unfortunately, it's just like bad behaviors on top of bad behaviors.
Dedeker: With the avoiding or withdrawing, that actually is a relationship preserving tactic because often the idea is, I need to take myself away so that my partner stops criticizing me, stops seeing how bad I am, stops going after me and therefore, I can keep the relationship intact. If I just take myself out of the equation, then the relationship will still be there.
Jase: I was thinking about the Bad Guy Boogie of the going on the attack right away. I don't know, it's like, if you're going to criticize me, I've got to criticize you too because then otherwise, maybe I'm not worthy of you or something. I'm not quite sure what the thinking is, but I know I've been there before.
Emily: We want to move on to some counterspells. Let's talk about ways that we can avoid doing this or if we find ourselves back in a similar loop, how we can maybe work to get out of it. The first one is something that we talk about a lot on the show in various ways, metacommunication. If you can name it, you can tame it.
Jase: Is that ours? Did we accomplish that?
Emily: Did you come up with that, Dedeker?
Dedeker: I did not come up with it. I googled it. Multiple people have tried to take credit for it but from what I've seen, it's shown up in many, many different spheres and slightly different phrasing. It's not ours, but I'm going to make the bold decision that it doesn't belong to anybody.
Emily: It belongs to everybody then.
Dedeker: Yes.
Emily: Recognizing this shared dance style that you and your partner have is the first major step to taming this thing that you do. You can share this info with your partner. Maybe not during a time where you two are in a heated conversation or in the middle of one of these fights, but talk about the patterns that you're seeing and maybe which one of these seems the most familiar what you find yourself falling into over and over again.
Jase: I suppose if you did find yourself really going down one of these tracks into one of these demon dance battles, and you were like, oh my gosh, we're doing the Bad Guy Boogie demon dance battle, that would stop the conversation at least while they go, what the fuck is he talking about?
Emily: Yes, that's true. Hopefully, it would be humorous enough and fun enough that the partner that doesn't know what the heck they're talking about would be like, okay, what? Let's elaborate here.
Jase: It's better to talk about this not in the heat of things.
Emily: Yes, for sure.
Dedeker: I think this could be a great episode to listen to together with a partner. You don't have a conversation afterwards about like, "Wow, which one of those felt the most familiar?" I think what's important to bear in mind is when you're a meta-communicating about this is something that's fundamental to this is that you and your partner start to look at this demon dance battle as like oh this is a thing that happens that's outside of ourselves, that's the problem, let's find ways to not do that as opposed to in the middle of the fight and you're like, you're starting up the demon dance battle. You're doing this pursuing thing. Stop that this is all your fault.
To go along with one of our favorite phrases on Multiamory, don't weaponize this shit. You can also have a counterspell of taking this a little bit more granular, if you want. If you're listening to this, and one of these particular scenes stood out to you like, whoa, that totally sounds like what I go through with my partner, that's great. Start looking into that. Start doing research on this. You can also go even more in-depth. There are a lot of EFT therapists out there who have variations on worksheets and exercises to help you find the specifics about your own custom demon dance battle.
We're going to give you just a condensed version of several exercises. Of course, feel free, go out research. There's a lot of worksheets and stuff out there. Don't Google demon dance battle google demon dialogues. That's what is actually supposed to be called.
Emily: Until we probably TMTM that or something.
Dedeker: Exactly. Until we find a way to just really rehash it and improve it enough that it's a different enough product that we can then TMTMTM.
Jase: TMTMTM demon dance battles. Yes.
Dedeker: Step number one. Generally, I call this counterspell mapping the choreography or mapping the demon dance battle. Step number one is that both you and your partner are going to sit down, you're both separately going to make a list of the behaviors that you do individually. You're going to make a list of your own behavior, not a list of your partner's behavior, but a list of your own behavior that turn your energy intention towards your partner during conflict as well as a list of what behaviors turn your energy and attention away from your partner during conflict.
This can be super simple to do, you can fill in the blank to this sentence, which is when things are not going right between us, I move my energy and attention towards you by, blank. That can be things like pointing out your mistakes, leveling blame on you, insisting on making my point, becoming angry and blowing up, prodding at you or pleading, following you when you leave the room, et cetera. That can be multiple behaviors. Maybe you can only come up with one, whatever.
Then you're also going to make this list of the behaviors that move energy away. When things are not going right between us, I move my energy and attention away from you by blank. That can be things like zoning out, walking away, freezing, becoming hyper-logical, minimizing your concerns, et cetera. Both of you are going to sit down, take a little time, fill in the blanks of that exercise, come up with a list of behaviors and then you're going to move on to step number two.
Jase: Step number two is to then take these lists, and identify the most common behaviors and see if you can match them up with each other's to uncover what your most-used choreography is. It would look something like this. When things are not going right between us, the more I, blank, the more you, blank. Then the more I, blank, and the dance begins.
Emily: Doo doo doo doo doo doo!
Jase: I know this is absurd and if you're having a hard time in a relationship, this might be challenging to do, but it did make me think you could actually choreograph a little real-life dance that goes along with this to lighten the mood where you both put in your right hands toward each other and turn that way.
Emily: You shake it all about.
Jase: Facing toward each other. It's like, the more I whatever they put their hand and then they say see more I .
Dedeker: You have a secret handshake out of this?
Jase: Yes, hold on. Hear me out. I put out my right hand and I say, the more I point out your mistakes, and then you would put your right hand against mine. Then you would say, more I.
Emily: Get defensive.
Jase: Yes, right. Then I would say, the more I and we go up and touch hands toward each other. It's like both of our hands are touching each other now and we're facing each other with our hands in front of us. Then I say and the more I become angry and blow up, and then we both push back and do strike a pose and say, and the demon dance battle begins. Without video, that's hard to convey, but I hope you get the idea.
Emily: We saw it, Jase.
Dedeker: We saw it. We got to enjoy that. What's your thinking behind also attaching literal choreography to this?
Emily: Humor?
Jase: Humor, yes. I find humor for something like that's where it's scary to be vulnerable, it can give you a little bit of a-- and just physically moving often can help from feeling so trapped and stuck in something, in a behavior.
Dedeker: That's true.
Jase: The dance battle begins at the end and the demon dance battle begins. How could you not choreograph that?
Dedeker: Provided that then you don't actually continue the demon dance battle.
Jase: Yes, right.
Emily: That would be unfortunate and not the point of this conversation. We have a step three here, and that is, to together with your partner, come up with a way to name your choreography as well as an agreed upon way to warn each other when it's happening. Maybe it can be what you did, what Jase just up there. Make a little dance and do the hanky-panky and twist and twist it all about. Especially if you--
Jase: I think you've mixed up a few things. The hanky-panky is not--
Emily: No way, you put your left foot in you put your left out.
Jase: No, the hanky-panky is something different. That’s the, “My baby does the hanky-panky” anyway, please continue.
Emily: Yes. Okay, fine. Create a silly name. It can be the hanky-panky or the hokey-pokey or whatever you want. That's the name of your dance and then you can choreograph it as well, but also agree upon what will happen when one of you or when both of you calls out the dance. Are you going to halt it up? Are you going to hug each other to 3D breaths? Go to other sides of the room for a second? Whatever. Maybe agree upon doing something just so you can get out of the habit of doing this pattern over and over again.
Jase: Yes, in our communication hacks, DLC bonus pack, whatever we called that episode a while back, we talked about it.
Emily: first communication was DLC and I don't know, booster pack.
Jase: This was the booster pack. Yes, the communication booster pack. Anyway, one of the things we talked about in that was micro scripts. The importance of micro script is it's something often a little bit silly, maybe it rhymes or something that you've agreed upon beforehand, so that in the moment, you can fall back onto this set phrase or this set thing. So that then it's not just like, what are you trying to do? Or you're like, your intentions aren't getting misinterpreted. It's like, oh, yes, right. We agreed on that together that that's our thing.
Then here, it could even be a physical thing. Like, Emily mentioned, a hug. It could be that, well, we're fighting then you just gave me a hug. All right. That's our cue to remember we want to be in this together.
Emily: We love each other.
Jase: Yes, exactly.
Dedeker: Yes. Something important to bear in mind is that I think that at this point, it can be really easy to also fall into-- okay, we've recognized our demon dance battle, and we know how to call it out, but then we can still level blame at each other of well, you started at this time. We're like, well, I wouldn't have gone to the other room if you hadn't started up by doing this and something but Sue Johnson points out that I think is really clever and important is that this is a circle. If you look at a circle, there's no single point on a circle where you can point to and be like, oh, yes, that's where the circle started.
Just bear that in mind too. If you do get into a habit with your partner of being able to call it out or being able to be like, hey, we're doing this thing again, to hopefully avoid the temptation to be like, and it's your fault because then you're just back in the dance again.
Jase: The dance battle begin.
Dedeker: Yes, Jase.
Jase: All right. Let's review the three main demon dance battle choreographies that we talked about. The first one is to Find the Bad Guy Boogie. This is the one where you're both just leveling attacks or accusations at each other trying to convince the other one that they're the bad guy. The next one is the Protest Polka. Congratulations to Johnson, you got one of your names to stick. Protest Polka, which is the pursuit and withdraw pattern where one is coming after the other for engagement about something and the other is just trying to minimize it or discounted or leave or just not have the conversation.
Then the third one is the freeze and flee flash dance. That's a tricky one to say the freeze and flee flash dance. This one is the mutual withdrawing. This is the we tried to engage, no, this okay, no, and then we walk away, often in an attempt to avoid getting into a fight but we're not engaging either.
Dedeker: I have a note that I completely forgot to put in at the beginning of all this. That's the fact that you probably have experienced all three of these patterns, maybe even in one relationship or they could change depending on the topic, depending on the circumstances or depending on the partner. You may have a particular pattern or demon dance battle that you do with one partner that's totally different with another partner. Chances are there's one pattern that you find yourself defaulting to more often than others, but just bear that in mind as well is that it may not always be the same exact one.
We do recommend learning more about this, doing some more research on this. You can check out Sue Johnson's book, Hold Me Tight. I highly recommend it. There's more in-depth info about all of this as well as some exercises that you can do and specific conversations that you can have with your partner about this. For our bonus episode today for our Patreon subscribers, we're going to be talking about a helpful acronym to help you remember the best ways to tune in to your partner during moments of conflict. A helpful acronym that once you've recognized, we're in our demon dance battle, that can help give you a clue of, here's what we can do next.