Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love (The Dr. Sue Johnson Collection, 1)

This book truly helped me realize my faults in my relationship and learn how to better communicate and practice emotional intelligence. Such a great read!!

Dr. Sue Johnson is the master. The most important and significant psychologist since perhaps Carl Jung, and perhaps the greatest relationship psychologist of all time. The success rate in her clinic, where she works with the worst of the worst when it comes to couples (an ex-Marine with PTSD who was beaten by his dad and a woman who was sexually molested her whole childhood by an uncle), only shows what she can do for average couples who have problems that aren't as severe. However, the problem is that you cannot read this book in 3 days like some John Gray (he is not a doctor) pop psychology book. This is book involving a deep amount of research and clinical studies, but it is still written for the layperson. In essence, there are no easy answers. The other issue is Dr. Sue's work flies in the face of 30+ years of psychology therapy which taught couples that they must be 100% happy, have all their ducks lined up in a row, and basically be perfect until they can have a great relationship. Bull. According to Dr. Sue, a deep romantic relationship with a partner is base in part of healing childhood wounds and other traumas. A romantic relationship most closely resembles the bond that exists between a mother and baby. It is not the SAME relationship (of course!). But in terms of the emotional intensity and closeness it is. She has been on a crusade to eradicate co-dependency from psychological language. People NEED each other. They are interdependent, social creatures. Her books provide countless examples of people and other animals who thrive and are better thru having these "hold me tight" relationships. The comfort they bring leads to people thriving in life. It leads to more risk taking. It leads to better health. She has done countless MRI brain studies to show that when you are "fighting" with your partner, your brain looks EXACTLY like a lion is chasing you. The new part of brain has not evolved fast enough to deal with such fighting without the conversational techniques that she writes about and teaches. The bond between you and your partner is that INTENSE and that critical. The way you communicate with each other has to be so delicate. When a person is experiencing fear, pain, and all sorts of negative things, and an MRI is taken of their brain, Dr. Sue has shown that when the hurting person feels the touch of their partner's hand, it completely changes their brain and how it looks. It provides that level of comfort. And you want to tell me that people need to be 100% happy in order to have a healthy relationship? Yes individual therapy is useful in that it can allow you to understand where your thoughts, feelings and emotions are coming from, and how your partner can help you heal with it detracting from their own growth. But as U2 once said in a song, "Sometimes You Just Can't Make It On Your Own." Anyone in an online dating profile who says they are 100% happy and is just looking for a partner to add to their happiness......well.....Dr. Sue would say stay single. Because relationships ARE HARD. They are not easy, and they are supposed to be that way. But the rewards far outgain the negatives. But she also says there are just too many people are coming in her clinic, and too many people coming into other psychologist's offices, to suggest that any relationship can just add to the 100% happiness that you already have. People are going into therapy because they crave that innate bond that is no important to survival and health of our species. This is too hard to explain. I suggest reading both of her books Hold Me Tight and Love Sense. And yes, she claims love can be explained by science.

I haven’t finished this book, but it was recommended to me and i have found it so helpful for my marriage! It goes over tricks and helps for both sides, but mostly focusing on changing your personal views and how to help from what you can do not trying to change the other person. Its amazing!!

disclaimer - This review is based on only partial exposure to this book and a related Hold Me Tight marriage seminar I was invited to attend. I suppose anything that is studied ends up with its own vocabulary, but it's always hard for me to learn another language. It's not just marriage therapy; at work I have a hard time remembering the difference between quality control and quality assurance, while those that audit quality systems know this difference and speak an entire quality language fluently. So, it must be with marriage counseling as well. In this book, EFT, emotionally focused therapy, is a common thread that runs throughout, which is joined with the A.R.E. questions, accessibility, responsiveness, and engagement. There are also fun terms like demon dialogues, protest polka, freeze and flee, raw spots, and plenty more that I haven't mentioned. I like things simple, and appreciate the two great commandments, to love God and love your neighbor (Matthew 22:37-40). It seems that if I love God, I will love His children, and be nice to them. If I love my neighbors, I will be nice to them. This works for being nice to your spouse, too. How many words do I need to understand that? I do think the book provides excellent instructions for those that don't know where to begin, and may help some couples to discover things that have been set aside. The counter to this is that some couples may have sorted through things long ago, or perhaps even ignored things that they determined were not of enough value to pursue (choose your battles), but if you follow all of the instructions in this book, and use every question included, it seems there could be a risk of opening old wounds in the name of deeper intimacy. I realize this can be interpreted two ways, but I wonder if bringing up the past is always wise. For the seminar I attended, when it came time for the couples breakout sessions, my spouse and I glanced at the book based questions we were supposed to be using, but then spent the time in our own conversation, which felt more natural and beneficial for our relationship. The discussions on sex are very tasteful, and allow you to get what you need from them. This is not an explicit manual, but along with soothing words like tender, connection, and fulfill, are words such as adventure, erotic, and experiment. The need for trust and bonding are stated as you expect, but also that these are the foundation for the erotic adventures you may desire, which can only be truly fulfilling with a loving partner. In this part of the book there are also terms for the different types of sex, or perhaps states the couple may be in: sealed off, solace, synchrony. You may find it comforting that the book shares that in surveys couples report that at least 15 to 20 percent of sexual encounters are basically failures, at least for one partner. You may not find it comforting that Dr. Sue Johnson often suggests to couples that they abstain from making love for a few weeks. The book opens describing that the need for love wasn't always common sense, and took years of study and even ridicule to determine this. That may be true for the specific clinical studies cited, but as mentioned earlier, the need for love and applying it to daily life is not new. I like how this book focuses on communication and understanding, and the need humans have for love, but I wonder if some people that are doing well in their relationships could question if they are doing it right if they have a hard time with all the new abbreviations, names, and terminology. If you need help communicating with your loved one, this might be a great book for you. If you are very happy in your relationship and enjoy going beneath the surface to better understand why you might be happy, and hope you find more treasures of happiness along the way, this might be a great book for you. If you are happy day to day, and like things simple, and don't want to analyze why you are happy with strategic questions and new terms that sound foreign to you when you say them, you might find this book complicates what may be common sense to you (even if the age of this common sense is debated).

The book is really excellent. But listening to it on the CD, was not such a great experience. Very poorly edited, feels like it is read by a computer. I am looking forwards to read it.

Excellent book for women and/or men. For anyone in a relationship; whether it’s been a long term or short term relationship and you’re looking to reconnect. You’ll get out of it however much you put into it (the book and your relationship)

No esperaba que estuviesen todas las hojas marcadas con resaltador rosa y escrituras. Demasiado usado para haber dicho que estaba en buenas condiciones.

I ordered but I didn’t check de whole book and when I got there appeared this :( . I hope you don’t get the same

A really good book for anyone in a relationship or working with relationships who's interested in how relationships can work better, it's equally good for self-help or for a helper. This book takes a very different approach from (e.g.) 'Fighting for your Marriage' (Howard Markman) or John Gottman's books. It's based on attachment theory which Johnson explains simply and clearly in just a few pages. Her approach is to define the self-perpetuating 'Demon Dialogues' partners get locked into, and to help the partners firstly to recognise that it's the 'demon dialogue' that's the enemy in the relationship rather than their partner, and secondly how to work together to stop the Demon Dialogue and to build constructive dialogues instead. An easy read, human and humane, very highly recommended.