Dr. Tracy Dalgleish explains how people enter self-protection modes in relationships through a process she calls "emotional fusion": unconsciously taking in another person's experience and making it about oneself ("vacuuming it in into myself"). This leads to defensive behaviours tied to childhood strategies for staying connected to primary caregivers — patterns learned in early relationships re-emerge in adult romantic relationships.
And it's tricky because when we go into these self protection modes it is this in a sense emotional fusion because what we do in that moment, I'm putting my hands together because this is often I'll do it right here. It's emotional fusion, one hand on top of the other because right here it's this loss of ability to see that you are having some experience that probably has nothing to really do with me, but I'm vacuuming it in into myself and making it about me. As soon as I make it about me, it doesn't feel good. You better believe I'm going to protect myself. And that protection right there is often connected to this old mechanism of how people remained connected to their primary caregivers. Remember as children we saw parents do something that we might do now. We had parents do that thing to us which we might do now in our romantic relationships or we learned to do the thing to help keep ourselves protected and connected with them.
