Free take-home handout
The Demon Dialogues
A printable Hold Me Tight handout on the three destructive patterns EFT identifies in distressed couples. Most couples have a signature dialogue. Once you can name the one that runs you, you can spot its opening moves and interrupt earlier.
Free to download and share with your therapist. Educational, not a substitute for therapy.
What's inside
- The three dialogues — Find the Bad Guy, The Protest Polka, and Freeze and Flee
- What each looks like on the surface and what is running underneath
- The core reframe: all three are attachment protest, not evidence of a broken relationship
- Five moves out — naming, underneath, ally-with-partner, pause, track the pattern
- A which-one-runs-you checkbox self-assessment plus five apply-it-this-week prompts on secondary/primary emotion and the smallest naming move
Who it's for
Couples who keep having the same fight, do not know what to call the pattern, and want a shared name for the thing that keeps running them.
Adapted from Sue Johnson's Hold Me Tight (Conversation 1).
Easier with someone in your corner.
A worksheet gets you started. If this is a pattern that keeps coming back, a free 15-minute consult with our intake coordinator is a low-pressure way to talk through it and get matched with the right clinician on our team.
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FAQ
What are the demon dialogues?
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The demon dialogues are Sue Johnson's name for the three destructive patterns most distressed couples fall into: Find the Bad Guy (mutual blame), The Protest Polka (the pursue-withdraw cycle), and Freeze and Flee (both partners withdraw). Different on the surface, identical underneath — each is a protest against losing connection.
Which demon dialogue is most common?
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The Protest Polka — the pursue-withdraw cycle — is the most common of the three and the one most couples name first when they start therapy. Find the Bad Guy usually escalates into it, and Freeze and Flee is often what happens when The Protest Polka has burned both partners out.
Can we exit the dialogues on our own?
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Some couples can interrupt them once they have a shared name for the pattern. Deeply entrenched dialogues, especially Freeze and Flee, usually need EFT-trained couples therapy — because at that stage both nervous systems have given up on being reached, and it takes a third party to hold the possibility of reconnection.