In the book The Practice of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy: Creating Connection, Susan M. Johnson offers a comprehensive view of EFT in working with couples. The brilliant insights of this therapeutic manual want to reconsider love and authentic connection among partners not simply as naïve and overwhelming feelings but rather the core for a successful couple therapy that can bring long-lasting healing. EFT offers a unique horizon for therapists who are looking to understand the nature of marital distressed and overcome the impasse of negative emotions and interactions of a distressed couple. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the underlying philosophy of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy with its main values and principles and to …show more content…
Especially with couples, EFT helps me to feel grounded and productive in my work during the session and not to be lost in the content of their distress. I think EFT provides a clear framework and map for working with couples and it is useful and safe also for the clients who learn to work with their intense emotions by understanding that the ‘enemy’ is not the partner bur rather the malicious cycle of interaction. Especially early in treatment, I see the vital importance of helping clients to access on each partner’s underlying emotions and share them toward the other partner because rarely these emotions are expressed in daily interactions. Nonetheless, in my sessions, I understood how these underlying and primary emotions such as fear, sadness, loneliness, and shame are often out of consciousness and hidden from the self and the other partner, especially with my male clients. Generally, at the beginning, my clients came in and complaining about some aspects of the other partner or reporting issue such as anger or anxiety. However, when these new vulnerable emotions are experienced and processed, clients learn new healing emotional patterns in their daily life outside my …show more content…
I also learned how important is to create a safe and collaborative environment in my office. In fact, despite of my natural skill of being insightful, nothing can be done for the benefit of the client if before the individual does not feel accepted, understood, and welcomed. Because EFT is a powerful experiential therapy, the experience of the therapy room itself is the main factor in the present moment that anchors clients during their emotional exploration. When they are in distress, my priority is always to ask questions that bring them back to the present experience of the therapy. Simple questions such as “How do you feel right now” or “What’s going on in there?” are powerful tools that helps my clients to find not only concrete answers but new meaning and aspects of self to integrate them into new relationship interactions with the partner or other important
So if we want joy, love, and empathy in our lives, we need to let vulnerability into our hearts.... ... middle of paper ... ... But instead of reacting negatively, I was pleased to see that Anabella and Francisco and Santos – and all my other students – understood. They saw that I was trying my best, and that for any positive change to occur, we, all, had to put ourselves at risk in the arena.
Fosha’s development of the affective model of change began with the observation that affect has enormous transformative power. Unlike other agents of change that are often slow and cumulative, affect can result in intense change very rapidly. The primary goal of the affective model of change is to identify, make sense of, and utilize its power in the context of a therapeutic relationship. This relational feature of the affective model of change draws heavily from literature on attachment, and the notion that our early attachment styles pervade our way of relating to the world as adults. Fosha argues that by synergistically linking emotion and attachment, the transformative power of affect can be harnessed in the relational process of psychotherapy and utilized in a manner that results in lasting therapeutic change.
Stickley, T. & Freshwater, D. (2006). “The Art of Listening to the Therapeutic Relationship” Journal of Mental health Practice. 9 (5) pp12 - 18.
The first working model was a conscious model in which she viewed herself as capable and strong and others as insufficient and needy. The second internal working model was unconscious and refers to her internal belief that she was flawed, inadequate and dependent on others. By validating and gaining insight into the client’s subjective experience, we were able to work on the client’s ability to tolerate the anxiety of her need for connection and the lack of safety she felt in her relational world to express that need. Using my own countertransference and making enactments explicit, we could challenge these internal working models and begin to explore new ways of being. Slowly, she was able to experience a new way of understanding her relational needs, tolerate the grief of lack of attunement from her attachment figures, and develop more intrapsychic space for her affective experience.
Gottman’s Seven Principles are: Enhance Your Love Maps, Nurture Your Fondness and Admiration, Turn Toward each Other Instead of Away, Let Your Partner Influence You, Solve your Solvable Problems, Overcome Gridlock and Create Shared Meaning. These seven principles are crucial since they emphasize and reinforce positive techniques that can be integrated into the relationship to overcome the difficult stages. According to Gottman, emotional intelligence is the key that can bond couples together eradicating the possibility of a
Experiential Family Therapy is a therapy that encourages patients to address subconscious issues through actions, and role playing. It is a treatment that is used for a group of people in order to determine the source of problem in the family (Gurman and Kniskern, 2014). Experiential Family Therapy has its strengths and weaknesses. One of the strengths of this therapy is that, it focuses on the present and patients are able to express their emotions on what is happening to them presently. The client will have time to share everything about his/her life experiences one on one without any fears. As a result, it helps the client in the healing process because, he/she is able to express their feelings freely and come out of the problem. Therefore, in this type of therapy, the clients are deeply involved in solving their issues. It helps clients to scrutinize their individual connections and to initiate a self-discovery through therapy, on how their relationships influence their current behaviors (Gurman and Kniskern, 2014). By examining their personal relationships through experiential family therapy, family members are able to
Regardless of the treatment method, the findings of scientific research stress the importance of a relationship-based treatment which operates on trust and openness. All researchers claim that developing a strong therapeutic alliance in the beginning influences the course of the treatment and its success. The early development of this kind of relationship with the patients will improve the therapists' chances of success.
For clients who express their experiences for the first time in counseling, it can be a powerful force to help them heal. It is important for the counselor to pay close attention to the person’s body language, affect and tone. The counselor must consider the possible scenarios that may occur in the first session. Cultural aspects of the client must be considered. From the client’s perspective, the first session is an important session, even if the first session is mostly an information gathering session. The client may have experiences much trauma in their life, never being able to trust a person with their closest feelings. This is why it is very important to establish rapport and trust in...
To explain, the client should not be inferior to the counselor; the environment should be two people discussing an issue and ways to make a difference. A therapist should occasionally share similar experiences; therefore, sessions should make clients feel comfortable. To add, the client should feel safe due to the positive atmosphere the therapist brings to the session. The goal is to finally give the client a chance to be heard, regularly people are muted and feel like they are insignificant to society. Similarly, to Person-centered therapy where communication with the client is unconditionally positive. The therapist needs to genuinely care about the client needs for them to fully express themselves successfully. Furthermore, clients should be encouraging to make their own choices which model how to identify and use power responsibly. Hence, this will help the client feel more confident in everyday life when making a meaningful
Humboldt Journal of Social Relations 32.1, TRANSLATIONAL APPLIED SOCIOLOGY (2009): 158-83. JSTOR.Web. 11 May 2014. Chalmers, Jennifer H. "Romantic Love: Is It a Realistic Goal for Marriage Therapy?" Romantic Love: Is It a Realistic Goal for Marriage Therapy?
New York, NY: Guilford Press. Gurman, A., (Ed.). Clinical Handbook of Couple Therapy (4th ed.). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Stickley,T. & Freshwater, D. (2006). “The Art of Listening to the Therapeutic Relationship” Journal of Mental health Practice. 9 (5) pp12 - 18.
Reflecting on my work as a therapist, I recognize the importance of the therapeutic relationship. For instance, in EFT the therapist, “the therapeutic relationship, characterized by presence, empathy, acceptance, and congruence, helps clients to feel safe enough to face dreaded feelings and painful memories (Greenberg, 2014).
The techniques used in marriage and family counseling can be different. For instance, counselors will sometimes handle family therapy in different ways than they would couples or marital therapy. Both family and marriage c...
Mending the Attachment and Couples Therapy African Americans experienced an attachment rupture through the implementation of slavery that continues to impact the contemporary relationship. Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) also known as Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) can be used to rebuild the attachment within couples and address the historical attachment issues they experience. “The goal of EFT is to reprocess experience and reorganize interactions to create a secure bond between the partners, a sense of secure connectedness. The focus here is always on attachment concerns; on safety, and contact; and on the obstacles to the above.”