Do you still love your partner but can’t remember how to communicate without having the same arguments again and again?
Does it feel as though the bond between you and your partner has faded?
Do you find that you avoid opening up to your partner because you just don’t feel that he/she hears what you have to say?
Do you feel alone in your relationship or that your partner doesn’t care about you the way he/she used to?
If you answer yes to any of these questions, Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples can help you and your partner change negative patterns for good. Relationships often start with an intense connection but over time the spark that initially attracted you to each other can fade or disappear and often you feel the connection to your partner goes with it. EFT offers a way for couples of all ages to learn how to communicate in ways that bring you closer together by helping you understand negative patterns of communicating, allowing each of you to express thoughts and fears in safe and respectful ways and, finally, helping couples to feel more bonded and close again, or perhaps closer than ever before.
People in happy relationships also tend to enjoy better overall physical health and well-being. Research shows that marital satisfaction has been linked to better immune system functioning, recovery from illness and injury, and helps with the management of stressful situations.
EFT For clients
Explore options for Individuals, Couples and Families
EFT For clients
Explore options for Individuals, Couples and Families
The three stages - An Introduction to EFT
1. Recognize Negative Patterns
In the first stage, the focus is on helping couples to better understand the negative patterns of interacting and communicating that they repeatedly get stuck in. In stage one, key goals include helping couples to:
Better understand negative patterns of communication
Better understand what underlying feelings feed into conflict
Experience less conflict
Experience “more space” to begin to talk more deeply about important topics in the relationship
2. Create New Patterns
In the second stage, the focus is on creating new, more effective, and more emotionally satisfying ways of interacting and communicating together. Key goals include:
Helping each partner to see the other in a different, more understanding light
Helping each partner to feel more safe and secure in talking about very important things
Helping couples to feel more bonded and close again, or even closer than they ever have been
Helping couples to feel that sense of specialness and being valued again
3. Clarity and Preparedness
In the third stage, the focus is on building upon the gains that have already been made, and applying them directly to more specific issues within the relationship. Key goals include:
Having a clear sense of the old, negative pattern of interaction and communication.
Having a clear sense of the new, positive ways of interacting
Confidence about having the skills and strategies to help maintain these positive interactions together
Feeling prepared to end therapy with a hopeful outlook for the future
Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love
Heralded by the New York Times and Time magazine as the couple therapy with the highest rate of success, Emotionally Focused Therapy works because it views the love relationship as an attachment bond. This idea, once controversial, is now supported by science, and has become widely popular among therapists around the world.
In Hold me Tight, Dr. Sue Johnson presents Emotionally Focused Therapy to the general public for the first time. Johnson teaches that the way to save and enrich a relationship is to reestablish safe emotional connection and preserve the attachment bond. With this in mind, she focuses on key moments in a relationship-from Recognizing the Demon Dialogue to Revisiting a Rocky Moment-and uses them as touchpoints for seven healing conversations. Through case studies from her practice, illuminating advice, and practical exercises, couples will learn how to nurture their relationships and ensure a lifetime of love.
EFT FOR Therapists
EFT FOR Therapists
A Primer for Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT)— Cultivating Fitness and Growth in Every Client
by Susan M. Johnson, T. Leanne Campbell
This essential text applies the key interventions of EFT to working with individuals, providing an overview and clinical guide to treating clients with depression, anxiety, and traumatic stress.
Designed for therapists at all levels of expertise, this book introduces clinicians to EFIT techniques and change processes in a highly accessible and practical format. Beginning with a summary of attachment theory and science, chapters then describe the three stages of EFIT, macrointerventions such as the EFIT Tango, and various microinterventions through clinical exercises, case studies, and transcripts, highlighting the unique benefits of EFT as a cross-modality approach for treating emotional disorders. Exercises are interwoven throughout the text.
This book will appeal to therapists already working with couples and families as well as those just beginning their professional journey.
Attachment Theory in Practice: Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) with Individuals, Couples, and Families
Drawing on cutting-edge research on adult attachment--and providing an innovative roadmap for clinical practice--Susan M. Johnson argues that psychotherapy is most effective when it focuses on the healing power of emotional connection. The primary developer of emotionally focused therapy (EFT) for couples, Johnson now extends her attachment-based approach to individuals and families. The volume shows how EFT aligns perfectly with attachment theory as it provides proven techniques for treating anxiety, depression, and relationship problems. Each modality (individual, couple, and family therapy) is covered in paired chapters that respectively introduce key concepts and present an in-depth case example. Special features include instructive end-of-chapter exercises and reflection questions.
“A lucid treatise on psychotherapy that will prove useful to students as well as experienced practitioners. Drawing deftly from the wisdom of such pioneers as John Bowlby, Carl Rogers, and Harry Stack Sullivan—and from significant empirical research in emotional and interpersonal phenomena—Johnson has written an outstanding work that will have an impact on our field for a great many years.”