Emotionally Focused Therapy - Overview

Overview

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

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.

Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples was originally developed in the 1980s by Sue Johnson and Les Greenberg. As a doctoral student, Sue Johnson, now a professor at the University of Ottawa, found that couple in distress were caught in a dreadful dance that kept them stuck and unable to resolve their conflicts. Using John Bowlby attachment theory, she developed a treatment to help these couples in distress. She believed that basic attachment issues were underneath these negative cycle of interactions. Today, EFT is one of the most empirically validated types of couple’s therapy. There is significant research on this approach and it has been found that 70-75% of couples move from distress to recovery, and that 90% show significant improvements. These results appear to be less susceptible to relapse than those from other approaches. As such, EFT-C is an evidence based treatment protocol.

More recently, Emotionally Focused Therapy has also been used with families. Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) has developed from EFT and utilizes the EFT approach with families, specifically children and parents. EFFT sessions are conducted either weekly or biweekly for approximately 10-15 sessions. The aim of EFFT is to repair, instigate, and restore attachment bonds between the family members. It is important that because of its emotional intensity, EFFT is not recommended for all families.