All individuals and couples need connection, love, and support. When these needs are unsatisfied, we are in emotional pain. Couples disagree when they feel unheard by their partner, leaving them alone and angry while stuck in a rigid negative loop. This negative cycle gets in the way of feeling connected, loved, and supported. Eventually, this damages your relationship. Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) can help couples break out negative communication patterns and heal their relationship. This research-based therapy is considered the gold standard of couple’s counseling. Derived from adult attachment theory, EFT is designed to help couples learn to stop old and harmful communication habits that lead to emotional and physical disconnect and create a safe, secure relationship.
EFT is accepted by the American Psychological Association and is backed by over 30 years of empirical research. Studies have found:
- 70-75% of the couples reported an absence of distress
- 90% of the couples reported significant improvement in their relationship
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) emphasizes the importance of emotional engagement, secure attachment, and responsiveness between partners in healthy relationships. Rather than blaming couples for the distress in the relationship, EFT focuses on how the distress results from a rift in understanding each other. EFT explores and helps couples reorganize basic emotional reactions. The goal is to encourage couples to create a new pattern of interaction that will foster a secure connection/attachment between them. It enables partners to recognize and avoid getting trapped in these negative patterns, have a deeper understanding of their own and each other’s feelings, and find new ways of being with each other. EFT finds new ways for couples to express their feelings, be emotionally responsive, and learn how to comfort one another when facing a difficult situation.
Strengthens of Emotionally Focused Therapy:
- EFT is based on clear, explicit research-based conceptualizations of individual growth, health, dysfunction, relationship distress, and adult love.
- EFT is collaborative and respectful of clients, combining experiential Rogerian techniques with structural, systemic interventions.
- Change strategies and interventions are specified.
- Key moves and moments in the change process have been mapped into three stages of therapy and key change events that predict success at the end of therapy.
- EFT has been validated by over 30 years of empirical research. There is also research on the change processes and predictors of success.
- EFT has been applied to many different kinds of problems and populations.
Goals of Emotionally Focused Therapy:
- To expand and reorganize key emotional responses and, in the process, the organization of self.
- To create a positive shift in partners’ interactional positions and patterns.
- To foster the creation of a secure bond between partners.
At Inner Peace Therapies, Madiha Haroon is a Certified Emotionally Focused Therapist, and Supervisor in Training.
For more information, please visit www.iceeft.com.
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