Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
EFT for Couples (EFCT)
EFT is a short term (8 to 20 sessions) structured approach, originally developed for couple therapy and based on attachment science, formulated in the 1980’s. Interventions in EFCT integrate a humanistic, experiential approach to restructuring emotional experience and a systemic structural approach to restructuring interactions. A substantial body of research now exists on the effectiveness of EFCT. This research shows large treatment effect sizes and stable results over time. EFCT is used successfully with many different kinds of couples in private practice, university training centers and hospital clinics. Research exists for couples dealing with depression, with anxiety resulting from trauma, with medical illness and with forgiveness dilemmas. EFCT is used with varied cultural groups and educational levels across North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Africa and Asia. It is used with traditional and non-traditional couples, including same-sex couples.
Goals:
To expand and re-organize key emotional responses and, in the process, the organization of the dance with loved ones.
To create a positive shift in partners interactional messages and patterns.
To foster the creation of a secure bond between partners.
EFT for Individuals (EFIT)
EFIT is an attachment science-based approach to individual therapy that, like the other EFT interventions, EFCT for couples and EFFT for families, offers ways to reshape and make sense of inner experience and relational interventions focused on reshaping patterns of engagement with significant others and the individual as a younger self. Emotion is given precedence across treatment modalities given its powerful role in structuring both inner experience and motivation and key interactional patterns in relationships. Emotion links and organizes core experience and interaction.
Goals:
To offer corrective experiences that positively impact models of self and other and shape stable, lasting change.
To offer transformative moments where vulnerability is encountered with balance and difficult moments befriended.
To enable clients to move into the openness, responsiveness and full engagement that characterises secure attachment with others.
To enable clients to shape a coherent sense of a competent self that can deal with existential life issues and become a fully alive human being.