Don't Bleed in front of sharks

****Taken directly from https://www.eftitaliacommunity.com/en/dont-bleed-in-front-of-the-sharks/?fbclid=IwY2xjawOuczlleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFVU1R0ZjZCcllBSWRiZ1Qyc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHlAFLhE_QOKnIwHZFyyvvW4Kag0LWYo7CxXCELSupz1cAIEoY8_dpmgJ0BnS_aem_NIUiQB0KCT1OW1GV3JCU2A

Showing ourselves as hurt, vulnerable, reacting by snapping or shutting down: reactivity that speaks of connection and hope –

“You don’t bleed in front of sharks” is a Brazilian saying that reveals one of our most ancient fears: the fear of showing ourselves as wounded and being devoured as a result.

Imagine you are in the water.

You’re swimming to reach your boat of love, as the poet Mayakovsky called it¹, but it seems too far away, unreachable.

Around you is the ocean – the infinite, dark, terrifying ocean – and before your wide-eyed gaze, the fin of a shark emerges from the waves and draws concentric circles around you.

Your wound can’t bleed because everyone knows that blood attracts sharks. You are the prey and if you bleed, you have no chance.

As you stare at the shark, the shark stares at you and doesn’t see you for what you are: a wounded human being, terrified of bleeding. In its eyes, you are the shark. In its heart, you are the great predator. What you perceive as 250 teeth in five rows ready to tear you to pieces, feels your prey and, like you, swims trying to get closer to the boat.

In a couple who argues, there are always two people who are hurt — just as, each time and always, there are two sharks.

In the emotional world of relationships, the same thing happens. There is a silent terror running through us — often unnamed, unrecognized, but deeply influential: the fear of bleeding in front of the person who matters most to us. The fear of showing our wound and seeing it ignored, minimized, ridiculed, or used against us.

So we react. We snap, fight back, shut down, or pretend nothing’s wrong. All in an attempt not to feel that delicate spot. All in an attempt not to let it be seen.

And that’s how the dance begins. A negative relational dance, where each one protects themselves in the only way they know how. But the more we protect ourselves, the more dangerous we appear to the other. And without realizing it, we turn each other into sharks.

The first step: recognizing the dance

The first step of EFT therapy is exactly this: to see the dance, name it, and make it a shared object. We are no longer just immersed in it — we begin to look at it together. We see how one partner’s attack protects them from the fear of rejection, and how the other’s withdrawal protects them from feeling inadequate, useless, or powerless.

This is where we begin to build a shared map, one that allows us to humanize the other’s behavior, not to justify it, but to make it understandable.

It’s the first crack in the armor. But it’s not yet the place of transformation. It’s not enough to know that we’re dancing a pattern that hurts us. We need to understand why we dance this way.

The second step: making friends with the shark

The second step of the first stage – still within the de-escalation phase – is a delicate and essential step. It is the moment when the therapist accompanies us in making friends with the shark.

Here, we are not yet accessing the deepest vulnerability. We are not yet talking about raw needs, exposed pain, or tears that pass through the heart. No.

Here we stop one step before. And we do something revolutionary: we begin to recognize the emotional function of our protections.

Why that attack? Why that flight? Why the hard look, the trembling voice, the closed door? At this point, we don’t ask people to change. We ask them only to understand.

We begin to understand the emotional wisdom of what we’ve always done to survive .We begin to see that the shark – threatening, reactive, frightening – is nothing more than a learned response. A way not to drown in an emotional sea that feels too dangerous. A way not to bleed, not to be devoured.

Here lies the paradox: in the relationship, each partner sees the shark in the other…without knowing they are also the shark themselves. Without knowing that both are scared in the same way.

We are not broken: we were raised this way

This fear is not pathological. It is not an individual defect. It is the result of a culture, a history, a world that taught us to feel shame for our needs, to fear emotional dependence, to confuse intimacy with the loss of self.

None of us were raised in a world that clearly said: “It is safe to need someone. ”On the contrary, we were often taught the opposite. That we must be strong on our own, that we shouldn’t cry, that if we show we are in pain, we risk judgment, rejection, humiliation.

That’s why, in this second step, we don’t ask people to open up right away. We ask them to pause. To listen to the shark. To honor the strategies that once protected them, before trying to change them.

When the sea calms: the beginning of step three

And something happens. Not by force. Not through technique. But because, when the system calms down, when the other is no longer perceived as a predator, our body – and not just our mind – starts to feel that it is safe to lower our guard.

And then, spontaneously, we swim toward more vulnerable waters. The blood surfaces, but no longer as a threat. It surfaces as a call for connection, as testimony of our need to be seen, received, loved.

This is how step three opens. Not because we decide it. But because, in the safety built in step two, our inner world finally allows us to show what truly matters.

Let’s take a step back. Why does this happen? It happens to everyone because we were raised in a world that did not teach us to recognize the value of healthy dependence.(as we discussed here: “Healthy dependence, codependence, enmeshment”)

A healthy and secure dependence is mutually beneficial emotional support. It is the kind of bond that emerges when there is a balance between giving and receiving emotional support within a relationship, and it is characterized by authentic reciprocity — that is, genuine to the core — and a deep respect for individual autonomy. In healthy dependence, partners lean on each other without sacrificing their identity or autonomy. It’s like saying that they are each other’s safe haven and shoulder to lean on, without giving up their own lives.

In contrast, our society is filled with narratives that tell our minds and hearts that what we long for the most is actually something we shouldn’t need. We talked about this in the post: “Before loving someone, do you need to love yourself and learn to be alone first?”, where we explored three traps of our time:

• The first says that love is a “fairy tale”: adults don’t need it, because an adult shouldn’t need anyone but themselves.

• The second trap insists that independence is a positive value and, conversely, that dependence is obviously not.

• The third is the Rabbit Hole, as Sue Johnson calls it — the belief that we must first learn to love ourselves alone before we can love someone else.

We call them “traps” because they represent cognitive distortions that lead us to behave in certain ways, following specific patterns we are almost never aware of.

Reactivity is an automatic defensive response, a form of self-protection that is activated when a threat to the attachment bond is perceived. At that moment, the emotional system interprets the partner’s signals as signs of relational danger – rejection, abandonment, criticism, devaluation – and mobilizes to defend itself or to restore connection, in its own way.

This defensive activation often makes it difficult to understand the partner’s perspective: the mind shuts down, the reading of the other becomes rigid and distorted, and the internal dialogue becomes alarm-driven. The person no longer sees the partner as a secure base or an accessible figure, but rather as a source of pain or danger. This is where polarization begins: each person becomes rigid in their own position, trying either to be heard or to protect themselves, but in doing so, they break the emotional bridge of connection.