Alone I Am Weak—But If Deeply Connected to Others, I Can Thrive

At Peterson Family Therapy, we know that a big part of emotional health is social connectedness.

Sue Johnson, the founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), wrote:

“Being the ‘best you can be’ is really only possible when you are deeply connected to another. Splendid isolation is for planets, not people.”

Sue nailed it with this quote!

As couples therapists and individual therapists in the Salt Lake City area, both Candace and I see these kinds of issues every day: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, ADHD, OCD, PTSD, and CPTSD (complex PTSD), and much more. All of these problems are made worse when people are isolated from others.

Emotional problems often push people into shame, and when people feel shame, they withdraw from others. These individuals often don’t have enough people in their lives they can count on.

I worked with a client a year ago who struggled with depression for many years. Like so many people facing emotional challenges, isolation had become both a symptom and a contributing factor to their suffering.

To thrive emotionally, we all need people in our lives who have our back—people we know we can count on when life gets hard.

So as therapists, Candace and I help our clients learn to be more vulnerable in all aspects of life. And reaching out to connect with others is certainly a highly vulnerable thing to do.

When we have that deep connection with another human being, we can be courageous. We can be the best that we can be.

To be the best we can be, we need deep connection with safe attachment figures.