About Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)

Couple distress is the single most common reason for seeking therapy. It undermines family functioning and is strongly associated with depression, anxiety disorders, and alcoholism. Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples (EFT) offers a comprehensive theory of adult love and attachment, as well as a process for healing distressed relationships. It recognizes that relationship distress results from a perceived threat to basic adult needs for safety, security, and closeness in intimate relationships.

This experiential/systemic therapy focuses on helping partners restructure the emotional responses that maintain their negative interaction patterns. Through a series of nine steps, the therapist leads the couple away from conflict deadlock into new bonding interactions. EFT is now one of the best delineated and empirically-validated approaches in the field of couple therapy.

Goals of EFT

• To expand and re-organize key emotional responses.
• To create a shift in partners' interactional positions.
• To foster the creation of a secure bond between partners.

Strengths of EFT

• Clear, explicit conceptualizations of relationship distress and adult love. These
  conceptualizations are supported by empirical research on the nature of couple
  distress and adult attachment.
• Change strategies and interventions are specified. The change process has
  been mapped into nine steps and specific change events.
• EFT is empirically validated and there is also research on the change process
  and predictors of success.
• EFT has been applied to many different kinds of problems and populations.

For more information about EFT, see Sue Johnson's
(co-author of EFT) official web site at www.eft.ca.