Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)

Emotions define our view of life

Emotions are feelings that guide our decisions – about everything.

If we don’t have them under control, they guide just about everything in our life.

Self-awareness keeps you in control

Being aware of our emotions can help us make better choices.

Hopefully, those choices will be based on more facts and less emotions.

Challenges prompt emotional responses

The tempo of life, demands of society, loneliness, and other factors can create challenges to how we respond emotionally.

Sometimes, these feelings contribute to a downward spiral that increases stress, anxiety, depression, relationships, and the way we see life.

Early learning establishes patterns

When we were children, we learned how to connect with others from the attachment styles we developed with our primary caregiver. In most cases, these were our parents.

We either learned to expect our needs to be met and developed a secure attachment, or we learned that others were unreliable or unwilling to meet our needs, resulting in the development of an insecure attachment.

These attachment styles carry over into adulthood and affect the quality of our romantic relationships.

Emotions can drive a wedge between partners

Challenges experienced by one or both partners can create stress in a relationship, one ruled by negative emotions rather than bonding.

A lasting relationship for couples should be based on the establishment of a strong emotional bond, one based on collaboration, openness, respect, and positive engagement.

It is all about finding that initial connection that brought you together and even making that connection stronger as you grow in the relationship.

EFT helps make that reconnection

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) allows couples to interrupt the patterns of disconnection. EFT is an empirically validated form of couples therapy.

Research studies find that 70-75% of couples move from distress to recovery, and approximately 90% show significant improvements in their relationship.

Through a series of carefully scripted steps and stages, EFT helps each partner discover their own deep emotional needs as well as the needs of their partner.

The arguments couples have most often involve blaming each other for destructive behaviors that are ongoing and very painful.

EFT teaches couples how to interrupt the cycles that cause disconnection and recreate new interactional patterns that externalize the problem and allow each partner to see how they can meet the others’ emotional needs.

Learning to re-organize emotional responses

By externalizing the problem, EFT shifts the blame for relationship conflict from either partner to the negative communication patterns between them.

Couples learn to express their deep emotional needs from a place of vulnerability, so they can ask for their deepest needs to be met.

EFT helps couples be empathetic and emotionally available so that their attachment bond is strengthened. As a result, their relationship becomes a safe place for each partner.

Regain intimacy in your relationship

Together, we can work toward an improved relationship, one based on trust, intimacy, and emotional security.

Let me help get things back on track! It’s time.

Call me at (215) 830-1434 – let’s get started!