Emotionally Focused Therapy

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy
We are born to need each other. Accepting your need for emotional connection is not a sign of weakness, but maturity and strength.
– Sue Johnson

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Phone Consultation

We offer a complementary 20 minute phone consultation with one of our therapists or counselors Call 623-680-3486 or text 623-688-5115.

Live Your Best Life With Emotionally Focused Therapy.

Emotionally Focused Therapy, EFT, is an highly researched and clinically effective therapeutic approach that helps individuals, families, and couples heal from relational pain, trauma, and disconnection.  Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy, EFIT, helps individuals connect with parts of themselves that are wounded.  EFIT has especially shown to be helpful for people who have experienced relational trauma, abuse, neglect, grief and loss.  Emotionally Focused Family Therapy, EFFT, is for families who desire to learn how to create greater levels of attachment and bonding while also working to heal hurts within families.  Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, EFCT, helps couples learn how to step out of their negative interactions and to step into vulnerability which is one of the keys for a healthy and happy relationship.

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy Effectively Treats the Root Cause.

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Is your marriage or relationship stuck?  Do you miss feeling loved and connected with your spouse/partner?  Perhaps you are dealing with the effects of an affair or other violation of trust.  Maybe you have you tried couples counseling and had limited or no success.  Or perhaps you feel hopeless, lost, and confused?  Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) for couples can help you to overcome infidelity, recapture love, improve communication, and to resolve conflict.  Our EFCT therapists can help you in your relationship. Crossroads Family Counseling Center is committed to strengthening marriages and relationships by offering a variety of research based services including Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy.  EFCT couples counseling is a proven, tested, and empirically validated model that helps you express needs and concerns in a way that stops fighting, improves connection, and heals broken relationships. You will be able to find new solutions to those lingering problems, feel closer to your partner, and improve emotional, physical, and sexual intimacy.

Unlike other relationship models, Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy goes to the root of the destructive patterns, harsh words, and defensive reactions that overwhelms a relationship or marriage. When couples argue, fight, and do not get along it is usually because they do not feel safely connected, close, heard, valued and loved. EFCT helps you and your partner to improve communication, build trust, strengthen your emotional bond, and to increase connection which is the secret to a happy and fulfilling relationship.

EFCT has better outcomes than cognitive, behavioral, communication skill building, and other approaches to marital therapy. Research on the success of EFCT indicates that couples tend to move from distress to recovery in 15-20 sessions for 70-75% of the cases, and creates improvements in 90% of couples who complete EFCT. Compare this to the next highest leading model’s couple therapy rate which is only 35%.

Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy for Depression, Anxiety, and Trauma

EFIT helps individuals who are experiencing depression, anxiety, and relational trauma.   Every person that has experienced depression, anxiety, or trauma understands how disorganizing and painful they can be.  An EFIT therapist works with an individual by creating a safe space that allows the client to explore themselves and their world.  With the EFIT therapist’s empathy, guidance, and support the client can safely and bravely face what often feels frightening, alien, or even unacceptable. The client and the therapist work together in a collaborative process to discover what are often negative and self-defeating internal and external patterns of behavior.

The ultimate goal of EFIT is for personal healing and for greater connection with self and others. Depression, anxiety, and trauma are alleviated through processing painful experiences and emotions such as shame, fear, and grief.  There are times when the therapist and the client will talk about painful experiences and what those experiences have come to tell the client about themselves, others, and the world.  EFIT helps clients to be more open and engaged with their inner experience and with others.

Emotionally Focused Family Therapy for Improved Family Life

EFFT seeks to help families create a greater sense of connection with each other which helps overall functioning and promotes resilience in family relationships.  When families are struggling with high conflict, tension, or filled with patterns of disconnection and avoidance the root cause is often a lack of emotional safety and security.  The principle goal of EFFT is to re-establish, or in some instances establish, more secure patterns where attachment and caregiving responses are effective.  Another goal of EFFT is to help families learn how to repair emotional bonds with the inevitable hurts and attachment disruptions occur.  Hurts and wounds are a part of every family dynamic but not every family knows how to feel, deal, and heal with those disruptions.  An EFFT therapist will often guide a family into and through healing conversations which helps the family members experience and learn how to have these types of conversations on their own.

In family life, especially families with growing children, having a balance between flexibility and closeness is important to promote individual growth while also maintaining meaningful relationships at home.  EFFT helps families to find and maintain that balance so family members are safe and secure enough to grow into the best versions of themselves.

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How Can Emotionally Focused Therapy Help You, Your Relationship, or Your Family?

EFT was developed by Dr. Sue Johnson and Dr. Les Greenberg and draws heavily from John Bowlby’s Attachment Theory, systems theory which helps couples, families, and/or individuals see and understand the ways in which they become stuck in the same place, repeating the same mistakes, and seemingly unable to break free.  EFT is a relational approach meaning that the EFT therapist allows his/her empathy for and with the client to be expressed with genuineness and unconditional positive regard where the client is free to express their feelings and who they are without fear of judgment.  Finally, EFT is an experiential therapeutic approach which means that an EFT therapist will often help clients to engage in healing activities such as recreating or reenacting from the past and/or encouraging family members or a couple to express themselves vulnerably as is the case in EFFT and EFCT.   In summary, whereas many other therapy approaches focus on improving communication skills, problem solving, conflict resolution, changing negative thoughts, and setting firmer boundaries, EFT focuses on the root issues that lie behind disconnection within ourselves in within our relationships.

In a relatively short period of time EFT helps couples, families, and individuals to overcome self-defeating and relationship busting patterns of interaction and toxic beliefs.   EFT will help you in the healing process whether that be healing the relationship you have with yourself or with someone else.   Healing and growth are possible.  You can be more comfortable and confident in your own skin and in the relationships that matter the most to you.

Many of the therapists at Crossroads are trained in EFT and can work with you, your family, or with you and your spouse/partner.  In addition to EFT, your therapist may also utilize other therapeutic models and interventions such as EMDR, IFS, DBT, etc. based on your needs.  With this in mind, your therapist will work in coordination with you to offer the most appropriate interventions to help you achieve your goals.

I’m Interested.  What Are My Next Steps?

To learn more about Emotionally Focused Therapy for individuals, families, or couples please contact Crossroads by calling 623-680-3486, texting 623-688-5115, or emailing info@crossroadsfcc.com and ask to speak with one of our therapists. We offer a 20 minute complementary phone call.  You can ask all the questions you have and see if EFT at Crossroads is the right fit for you, your family, and/or your spouse/partner.

We have offices throughout the Valley of the Sun including Phoenix, Anthem, Online in Arizona, and Scottsdale.