Soothing the Threatened Brain: Leveraging Contact Comfort with Emotionally Focused Therapy

Abstract

Social relationships are tightly linked to health and well-being. Recent work suggests that social relationships can even serve vital emotion regulation functions by minimizing threat-related neural activity. But relationship distress remains a significant public health problem in North America and elsewhere. A promising approach to helping couples both resolve relationship distress and nurture effective interpersonal functioning is Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples (EFT), a manualized, empirically supported therapy that is strongly focused on repairing adult attachment bonds. We sought to examine a neural index of social emotion regulation as a potential mediator of the effects of EFT. Specifically, we examined the effectiveness of EFT for modifying the social regulation of neural threat responding using an fMRI-based handholding procedure. Results suggest that EFT altered the brain's representation of threat cues in the presence of a romantic partner. EFT-related changes during stranger handholding were also observed, but stranger effects were dependent upon self-reported relationship quality. EFT also appeared to increase threat-related brain activity in regions associated with self-regulation during the no-handholding condition. These findings provide a critical window into the regulatory mechanisms of close relationships in general and EFT in particular.

A Social Psychological Perspective on the Links Between Close Relationships and Health

“…Interventions aiming at improving attachment security by removing the barriers in front of partners’ responsive behaviors toward each other have already been shown to be effective in alleviating marital distress over time (Johnson, et al, 2013) and such interventions targeting marital strains and strengths may lead to beneficial psychological and physiological changes conducive to a healthier and longer life.…”

Contributions of attachment theory and research: A framework for future research, translation, and policy

“…For example, Johnson et al (2013) compared the ability of spousal hand-holding to buffer neural responses to threat before and after couples underwent Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT). They found that EFT increased the ability of hand-holding to attenuate threat responses; similar examination of both parent and child neural activity in response to attachment-related interventions would be informative.…”

Thriving through relationships

“…Finally, predictions regarding SOS support enabling an individual to thrive are also supported by research showing that responsive social support in times of adversity is linked to long-term relationship outcomes in couples including increased satisfaction, intimacy, and trust [8,27], and by research showing that interventions designed to increase availability and responsiveness between couple members increases relationship quality and alters the brain’s representation of threat cues in the presence of a romantic partner [28]. …”