Emotionally Focused Therapy:
Strengthening Bonds and Restoring Mental Health
What is Emotionally Focused Therapy?
Emotionally Focused Therapy, otherwise known as "EFT," is an empirically-supported, short-term (8-20 sessions depending on the level of distress), structured therapy for improving relationships and resolving relationship-associated emotional distress. It has been extensively researched and shown as highly effective with adult romantic couples, but is applicable to individual and family work as well, and interfaces seamlessly with other attachment-based evidence-based therapy practices. Research studies find that 70-75% of couples who have completed a course of EFT treatment move from distress to recovery in 10-12 sessions, and 90% show significant improvement. It is a present-focused, non-blaming, validating approach to psychotherapy and relationship counseling. It is the most empirically-validated couples therapy of the past 25 years, and shows promise in individual, family, and group therapy formats. EFT has been successfully demonstrated with persons recovering from trauma, depression, infidelity, family conflicts, sexual problems, cancer, addiction, and aphasia. EFT is successful in treating same-sex couples as well as differing-sex couples, and has been shown to be successfully used in culturally diverse couples.
Emotionally Focused Therapy has also been expanded beyond Couples Therapy (EFCT) to include work with Families (EFFT) and Adult Individuals (EFIT). These modalities treat family distress and individual distress often associated with psychiatric diagnoses including Depressive Disorders, Anxiety Disorders, and PTSD and Complex Trauma.
Emotionally Focused Therapy has also been expanded beyond Couples Therapy (EFCT) to include work with Families (EFFT) and Adult Individuals (EFIT). These modalities treat family distress and individual distress often associated with psychiatric diagnoses including Depressive Disorders, Anxiety Disorders, and PTSD and Complex Trauma.
What Does It Look Like?
If you were to watch a session of EFT, the therapist is an active, relentlessly empathetic, validating, and sometimes directive actor in the session. Emotionally Focused Therapists are trained to be "process consultants," meaning while we always take seriously the content of what our clients bring forward, we are always privileging what happens in the present moment within and between people. EFT therapists don't aim to act clever, or try to "figure people out," or "break through to people." We aim to understand people from the core of their experience, their emotions, and help make sense of how their distressing, negative cycles of interaction are activated and sustained, while helping our clients to "slow it down," find their own way to safety, and create relationships that meet their deepest longings and needs. Whether we are in providing EFT in couples, family, individual, or group format, supporting safe, appropriate, and secure attachment bonds is the goal of this approach.
What Can I Expect In Emotionally Focused Therapy?
There are 3 stages to EFT. To start, you can expect to be treated as an equal partner in the room with both your partner and me. EFT starts with an assessment of the state of your relationship from you and your partner's collective and individual perspectives. A thorough personal history for both of you is quickly collected within the first few sessions, and once you and I agree to begin, I will help you and your partner to identify your negative cycle that threatens to dissolve your relationship. This includes helping each of you blamelessly and presently explore what feelings underlie your thoughts and actions, and how this impacts the feelings that underlie the thoughts and actions of your partner, which fuel an ongoing infinity loop between both of you. I will help you to slow down when you or your partner get activated and caught in these cycles, and help you "catch" the cycles when they happen. I will then help you and your partner gently look at your own and your partner's primary feelings and longings that usually hide beneath the angry criticism or anxious withdrawal that partners in negative cycles commonly exhibit. Over the course of some sessions, you and your partner will hopefully come to know your cycle, and not each other, as the enemy.
As you and your partner come to catch and slow your negative cycles, I will then work with you both to dig deep within yourself to understand and know your core relationship needs and longings, and gather the presence and courage to ask for them to be met. Previous hurts and injuries are more safely unpacked and addressed at this point in the work. Typically withdrawn partners are re-engaged in the relationship more fully, and typically pursuant partners are safely softened. This is the most important part of EFT, where the emotional bond between you and your partner is transformed and strengthened. At first you may experience your self and your partner feeling and saying things you never knew or expected, but I will help you stay safe and learn about these previously unknown parts of yourself and your partner. Doing this part of the work will ultimately be deeply rewarding and enriching for you and your partner.
Finally, once your emotional bond has been transformed, I will guide you and your partner to revisit old problems, but this time you will naturally talk about it in new, organic, supportive ways. You and your partner will consolidate the gains you've made in our therapy, and you likely won't feel the need for my support. This will be because you and your partner have come to possess the most supportive relationship in your life, and my consultation will only be needed to help you protect it. You two will see each other as the most important players in your relationship.
As you and your partner come to catch and slow your negative cycles, I will then work with you both to dig deep within yourself to understand and know your core relationship needs and longings, and gather the presence and courage to ask for them to be met. Previous hurts and injuries are more safely unpacked and addressed at this point in the work. Typically withdrawn partners are re-engaged in the relationship more fully, and typically pursuant partners are safely softened. This is the most important part of EFT, where the emotional bond between you and your partner is transformed and strengthened. At first you may experience your self and your partner feeling and saying things you never knew or expected, but I will help you stay safe and learn about these previously unknown parts of yourself and your partner. Doing this part of the work will ultimately be deeply rewarding and enriching for you and your partner.
Finally, once your emotional bond has been transformed, I will guide you and your partner to revisit old problems, but this time you will naturally talk about it in new, organic, supportive ways. You and your partner will consolidate the gains you've made in our therapy, and you likely won't feel the need for my support. This will be because you and your partner have come to possess the most supportive relationship in your life, and my consultation will only be needed to help you protect it. You two will see each other as the most important players in your relationship.
What Makes EFT Different From Other Approaches?
Emotionally Focused Therapy focuses on both individual and interactive components to our lives, using attachment theory and research to make sense of and order human social behaviors. EFT is experiential, humanistic, emotion-privileging, systemic, and attachment-based. Although there are many promising models that are sensible and use scientific principles and underpinnings that nearly all relationship therapists are in agreement about (e.g. Gottman Method, PACT, Imago Therapy), for relationships, only EFT and IBCT (Integrative Behavioral Couples Therapy) are empirically-supported forms of couples therapy. Where IBCT could be considered a "top down," skills and education approach, EFT could be considered a "bottom up," experiential approach. In short, EFT provides a proven, validating, growth-oriented therapeutic experience, and Emotionally Focused Therapists who are pursuing or have completed certification consistently deliver this empowering therapy.
Where Did This Come From?
EFT was developed during the 1980s and 90s by psychologists Les Greenberg and Susan Johnson of York University in Ontario, Canada. Sue Johnson went on to become the pioneer and primary developer in Emotionally Focused Therapy, and has put the approach through the most rigorous research protocols numerous times to insure the approach is predictably effective. The International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy, or ICEEFT, currently boasts a large international membership, as EFT has been effectively adapted globally across cultures.
What EFT Training Have You Had?
I am a ICEEFT Certified Emotionally Focused Therapy Practitioner and Supervisor for Couples, Families and Individuals, having completed all required training, supervision, and therapeutic behavioral evaluation. Outside of this process, I continue to engage in a combination of learning and training activities including academic readings, training videos/courses, EFT peer consult groups, and one-on-one EFT supervision.
What If I Want to Learn More?
In addition to talking directly with me about any questions you have, you can learn more about EFT by visiting http://www.iceeft.com/ (where you can also verify my training and membership).
James is currently waitlisting new clients at this time. To connect to available employees under James's supervision at North Carolina Therapy Professionals or to join James's waitlist, please visit https://www.nctherapists.com/
Let's work together to create connections and build your life how you want.
Let's work together to create connections and build your life how you want.
