Why Consider Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)?

When it comes to relationships, especially our romantic relationships, it’s only natural to run into challenges involving conflict, misunderstanding, and disconnection. 

For instance, you may have needs or desires that aren’t being met, but you don’t know how to communicate that without hurting your partner’s feelings. As a result, you may find yourself arguing a lot or avoiding each other.  

You and your spouse could be struggling to overcome compatibility issues or differing expectations for intimacy within your marriage. 

Or maybe you have been wounded in the past, leaving you unable to manage your frustration or activation levels around others, and you just don’t know how to interrupt that cycle on your own. 

Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples and individuals is a powerful way of treating all of these relationship issues at the source of the problem. It gives you the chance to heal your own attachment wounds from trauma or betrayal while building a clear understanding of the dynamics that you bring to your relationships. 

At its core, EFT psychotherapy is about providing new, novel experiences that rewire the brain, creating new neuropathways that allow you to fundamentally change how you navigate adversity in relationships. 

It enables you to start communicating and resolving conflict more effectively so you can then deepen your sense of security and connection with each other. 

What Is The Goal Of EFT Therapy?

EFT psychotherapy takes a person’s attachment system into consideration and explores how that affects their relationships. For instance, some people are either taught or naturally become hardwired during childhood to feel and express their needs more—while others feel like they don't need to express themselves as much. This can create problems, deep misunderstandings, and conflict. 

Part of the goal of Emotionally Focused Therapy is to help partners understand each other better. That includes acknowledging that we all have needs, but we relate to them and express them differently. So, in sessions, we work to build a greater understanding of each partner’s needs, attachment system, relational dynamics, and conflict cycle. 

EFT also strives to deepen your sense of safety and security with each other so that you can communicate in ways that result in change instead of arguments and more tension. 

How Is Emotionally Focused Therapy Effective?

EFT pairs exceptionally well with couples therapy and marriage counseling because it helps partners understand and better manage conflict. However, because it also has an attachment theory orientation, it does more than address the behavioral part of relationship issues. 

It helps couples understand where the emotional and psychological elements of the conflict are coming from, safeguarding the most vulnerable and precious parts of the relationship. So it's a very good approach both for tackling immediate challenges as well as helping couples understand each other more clearly, thereby creating a deeper sense of security together.

I also use this emotion-focused approach within the context of individual therapy, working through that same attachment-based lens to address everything from childhood trauma and neglect to depression and intimacy issues.

What Can You Expect To Learn Or Apply In Sessions?

Some of the things you’ll be able to take away from sessions include:

• Communication tools for sharing your thoughts, feelings, and needs

• Strategies for listening effectively and keeping the conversation flowing productively

• Skills for managing activation levels, self-soothing, and soothing your partner

• The ability to identify and resolve each person’s contribution to communication issues

• The capacity to take time outs and effectively operate in a two-person system

Couples Therapy Can Help Your Relationship Flourish

How Can EFT Psychotherapy Help Where Other Methods Fall Short?

I think this modality helps clients really identify and unpack what happens during conflict. Arguments and fights can be extremely activating of the nervous system. That tends to make us lose the mental traction of being able to manage and/or resolve fights and arguments. 

EFT provides a model of the relationship conflict cycle. That, in turn, helps couples understand their individual negative cycles, what gets them into trouble, and how to work together more effectively to avoid the same old pitfalls. 

It actually shows you how to build stronger bonds of connection and empathy—how to deepen your relationship through differences rather than letting them do harm. 

How Do I Tailor My Emotionally Focused Therapy Sessions?

I use a number of other modalities to supplement the therapeutic process and make sure that we’re not applying a one-size-fits-all approach to healing:

• PACT, or the Psychological Approach To Couples Therapy, is also oriented to helping couples function in a way that builds greater psychological safety and emotional security in the relationship.

• PAC (the Parent-Adult-Child model) allows us to make sense of the different parts of ourselves that we are communicating from or interpreting from, which can help us untangle complex communications between partners. 

• Experiential Couples Therapy, like EFT, strives to build new neural pathways directly through experiences between partners. If we can have new experiences with each other through guided conversation or experiential exercises, it builds alternative ways of thinking that lead to new ways of dealing with problems.

There Is Hope For You And Your Relationship

With Emotionally Focused Therapy, my main goal is to help individuals and couples cultivate new experiences and possibilities for their relationship. We do this by experiencing something new together, and when we do, we intentionally and directly change the brain. 

Essentially, we are rewiring the brain, which creates new neuropathways that lead to new thinking/conceptualizations, emotions, and behavior. This creates a new lens through which we can look at each other and our relationship and inspires a more positive, productive, and collaborative approach with each other.

We can talk intellectually about problems and gain insight—and it’s helpful to have a map of where we are. However, actual change and growth come from these direct experiences and the development of new neuropathways in the brain. 

I’ve spent several decades learning more and more about how relationships work (and what interferes with them working). That expertise combined with my experience in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy makes me confident that you truly can improve your relationship. 

Once you learn about your conflict cycle and acquire some basic communication tools, you should notice improvement and start to feel better.

My Background And History With EFT Psychotherapy

I've been studying and using EFT therapy for couples and individuals for about 10 years. While it is one of the central modalities that I use, I augment it with some other perspectives as well, which gives me a very helpful broad perspective. 

I studied directly with Sue Johnson, the founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy. I also participated in advanced trainings and supervision for many years. I continue to enhance and improve my skills by studying and taking further trainings and courses in EFT psychotherapy.

EFT is an approach that is based on attachment theory and an understanding of the necessity of feeling emotionally secure as mammals and human beings. That’s why it felt particularly applicable to romantic relationships. 

It's not only intuitively and psychologically grounded, but it is also well-researched and evidence-based. To date, I still find it to be one of the most effective approaches for understanding and managing conflict.

Let Help You Get To A Better Place In Your Relationship

If you are ready to enjoy deeper, more fulfilling connections in your relationships, I want to show you how. Please call 415-797-8297 or reach out for your free, 20-minute consultation to see how Emotionally Focused Therapy can help you.

Providing online EFT therapy for individuals and couples seeking to heal and improve their relationships in the San Francisco Bay and greater California area.

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