I think this moment often occurs when someone is looking for a new therapist: You are reading a therapist’s bio (maybe the fifth one today), and you inevitably arrive at that list of self-identified “therapeutic approaches” or “modalities.” Unless you are particularly well-versed in counseling language, a thought might cross your mind that sounds something like, …What do these terms even mean? To someone who has never heard of the Gottman Method or Adlerian Psychology (for example), these words don’t actually communicate much about what you can expect your therapist to do, or principles they might defer to, while in therapy together.
One of my specialties at AFC is working with couples and families, and a modality that I frequently employ is Emotionally Focused Therapy, or EFT. There is excellent research to indicate that EFT is a powerful model for achieving more connectedness and understanding in relationships, and that EFT can help to meaningfully restructure distressing relational patterns. I love using EFT with folks and have personally witnessed how impactful it can be.
Whether you’re thinking about seeking support for a relationship through AFC or somewhere else, it can be nice to have an understanding of what to expect from an EFT therapist before you begin your first few sessions. I’d like to offer three basic tenets of EFT that might paint a picture of what to anticipate.
Basics of EFT:
Circular patterns
One of the primary beliefs underpinning EFT is that relational patterns are circular and reinforce each other. For example, partner A might become distant when partner B pesters them, and this distance causes partner B to pester even more. Or, put another way, partner A’s avoidance makes partner B anxious, and partner B’s anxiety causes them to be persistent in a manner that drives partner A to avoid. In EFT, one of the goals is to disrupt these feedback loops and introduce a different response.
Emotional granularity
EFT is also based on the idea that emotion is the primary driving force of our behavior. This means that it’s important that we be really explicit about what emotions are showing up in an interaction. Oftentimes when we have become habituated to another person, an interaction can go from 0 to 100 quickly, and in a flash, we can go from calm to furious. We might not even be sure how we got there! Or, we come up with theories about what the other person did to “get us there,” thereby abandoning the opportunity to explore our emotional landscape more thoroughly.
An EFT therapist may stop you and your partner multiple times throughout an interaction in order to slow things down and deepen and expand your understanding of the emotional experience taking place. This development of high specificity about feelings could be called emotional “granularity.”
EFT is experiential
EFT aims to create emotional experiences in the therapy room that restructure some of the difficult models of relating that you came in with. What this means is that your therapist should not only be helping you and your partner develop insight into what’s going on in your dynamic (by talking about it), but they should also be supporting you in actually choreographing new ways of relating.
As mentioned above regarding emotional granularity, this means that there may be times when your therapist is quite involved. After exploring the feelings that flooded your chest right after your partner said that one thing (you know the one!), an EFT therapist may support you in articulating a different response that aims to redirect that circular pattern that I referred to earlier.
If you are looking to improve a relationship with a partner, family member, or even a friend, EFT can be a profound tool for achieving this. As is often said when referring to the practice of EFT, relationships are a dance, and emotion is the music; it is within our ability to deepen our connection to the music and thereby choreograph a new dance.
If you’re interested in hearing more about EFT, you can check out this video of EFT founder, Sue Johnson, describing its philosophy and practice.
