Emotionally focused therapy - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Emotionally focused therapy (EFT) is a short term psychotherapy approach to working with couples and more recently with families. It is substantially based on the principles of emotion theory and attachment theory

Attachment theory

Attachment theory describes the dynamics of long-term relationships between humans. Its most important tenet is that an infant needs to develop a relationship with at least one primary caregiver for social and emotional development to occur normally. Attachment theory is an interdisciplinary study...

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Emotionally focused therapy proposes that emotions themselves have an innately adaptive potential that, if activated, can help clients change problematic emotional states or unwanted self-experiences. Emotions are connected to our most essential needs. They rapidly alert us to situations important to our advancement. They also prepare and guide us in these important situations to take action towards meeting our needs. Clients undergoing EFT are helped to better identify, experience, explore, make sense of, transform and flexibly manage their emotional experiences.

Overview

Sue Johnson

Sue Johnson is one of the creators of Emotionally Focused Therapy or EFT. She is a Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Emotionally Focused Therapy. She is also the director of the Ottawa Couple and Family Institute.-Works:*Johnson, S.M. . ...

states in her book 'EFT with Trauma Survivors' that:

[A]ttachment theory...predicts that when attachment security is uncertain, a partner will pursue, fight, and even bully a spouse into responding to attachment cues, even if this has a negative general impact on the relationship (p. 179).

Emotionally Focused therapy (EFT), also known as Emotion-Focused Therapy for Couples (EFT-C) is an empirically supported humanistic treatment that arose out of emotion theory and attachment theory. It views emotions as centrally important in the experience of self, in both adaptive and maladaptive functioning, and in therapeutic change. From the EFT perspective change occurs by means of awareness, regulation, reflection, and transformation of emotion taking place within the context of an empathetically attuned relationship. EFT works on the basic principle that people must first arrive at a place before they can leave it. Therefore, in EFT an important goal is to arrive at the live experience of a maladaptive emotion (e.g., fear and shame) in order to transform it. The transformation comes from the client accessing a new primary adaptive emotional state in the session.

Core emotions of attachment and fears of loss of attachment arise deep in the brain. The deeper into the brain one goes the less it is available to the fast pace of everyday awareness. Emotions are physiological neuroendocrine responses to which we react, when they come into awareness, with thoughts and feelings about those feelings. In EFT the aim is to create a new relationship event to act as a kind of transformer and thereby change reactive emotion with positive emotions of attachment.

EFT-C is a short-term (8-20 sessions) structured approach that was originally developed in the 1980s by Leslie Greenberg and Sue Johnson. Now, Emotionally Focused Therapy is also used with families

Family therapy

Family therapy, also referred to as couple and family therapy, family systems therapy, and family counseling, is a branch of psychotherapy that works with families and couples in intimate relationships to nurture change and development. It tends to view change in terms of the systems of...

. There is significant research on this approach and it has been found that 70-75% of couples move from distress to recovery, and that these results appear to be less susceptible to relapse than those from other approaches. As such, EFT-C is an evidence based treatment protocol.

Basic Principles

1. Relationships are attachment bonds

2. Change involves a new experience of the self

3. Rigid interaction patterns create and reflect absorbing emotional states. It's systemic.

4. Emotion is the target and agent of change

5. The therapist is a process consultant

6. Partners are viewed as coping as optimally as they can given their current circumstances i.e. non-pathologizing.

One premise of EFT-C is that emotions bring the past alive. The past validates present day fears, blocks and styles of relating, which then fuels conflict. If there is to be long-lasting change, emotions are engaged and activated in the creation of new relationship events.

Another premise is that attachment is maintained by perceived responsiveness and accessibility and by emotional engagement and contact. When those are uncertain, attachment becomes insecure and then follows protest, clinging, depression or despair and detachment. These become stuck in rigid patterns or negative interaction cycles until the underlying need for secure attachment is addressed.

The interactions of distressed couples are characterized by negative cycles where, for example, one partner pursues while the other withdraws. The therapist helps the couples go to the underlying emotions that keep them stuck in those rigid positions and negative interaction cycles.

Using the notion of transforming emotion with emotion, the EFT-C therapist guides each partner to expressing emotions that pull for compassion and connection. EFT-C promotes soothing and helps clients deal with unstated and therefore unmet attachment needs.

Emotion regulation is involved in three major motivational systems central to couples therapy – styles of attachment

Attachment theory

, identity or working models of self and other, and attraction. These are elaborated below.

Styles of attachment

Johnson & Sims describe four attachment styles.

1. People who are secure and trusting perceive themselves as loveable, able to trust others and themselves in relationship. They give clear emotional signals, and are engaged, resourceful and flexible in unclear relationships. Secure partners express feelings, articulate needs, and allow their own vulnerability to show.

2. People who have a diminished ability to articulate feelings, tend to not acknowledge their need for attachment, and struggle to name their needs in a relationship. They tend to adopt a safe position and solve problems dispassionately without understanding the effect that their safe distance has on their partners.

3. People who are psychologically reactive and who exhibit anxious attachment. They tend to demand reassurance in an aggressive way, demand their partner's attachment and tend to use blame

Blame

Blame is the act of censuring, holding responsible, making negative statements about an individual or group that their action or actions are socially or morally irresponsible, the opposite of praise. When someone is morally responsible for doing something wrong their action is blameworthy...

strategies (including emotional blackmail

Emotional blackmail

Emotional blackmail is a term used to cover a central form of psychological manipulation - 'the use of a system of threats and punishment on a person by someone close to them in an attempt to control their behavior'. "Emotional blackmail.....

) in order to engage their partner.

4. People who have been traumatized and who vacillate between attachment and hostility.

Emotion focused couples therapy for trauma survivors

External links

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Overview

Basic Principles

Styles of attachment

Emotion focused couples therapy for trauma survivors

See also

Further reading

External links