Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy
What is Emotionally Focused Couple’s Therapy (EFT)? More importantly, how can Emotionally Couple’s Therapy help your relationship? Emotionally Focused Couple’s Therapy is a brief, in comparison to other relationship counseling models, couple’s counseling model that helps couples by creating and strengthening emotional connections or bonds. EFT was created in the 1980’s by Sue Johnson and Les Greenberg. Since then, EFT has volumes of research supporting its effectiveness in treating couple’s who are experiencing relationship distress. Because of this Emotionally Focused Couple’s Therapy has grown in its popularity among marriage counselors and with couples who are seeking couple’s counseling services.
If your relationship is in trouble then getting help through an experienced couple’s counselor is better than getting no help at all. However, the research in support of EFT shows that it is a highly effective approach to marriage counseling and couple’s counseling. An Emotionally Focused Couple’s Therapist can help your relationship by first focusing on helping the couple to identify the negative pattern of interaction in their relationship. What couple’s therapists know is that couple’s who are in distress fall into predictable patterns of interaction which, if left unchecked, eventually threaten the very existence of the relationship.
The patterns are mostly a variation of the most common pattern which is where you have one partner who is more distant, shut down, emotionally closed off while the other partner is often pursuing. The pursuing partner may fall into defensive emotions such as anger or frustration or show defensive reactions such as blaming, attacking, and being critical. The distant partner can react with anger too and defensive behaviors too. The common thread between the pursuing and withdrawing partner is that neither partner shares their underlying emotions, especially the emotion of fear, or their unmet emotional needs with the other. This is the main reason why the couple engages in and eventually becomes stuck in negative patterns.
Once your couple’s therapist helps you and your partner to identify your pattern and all of its nuances the next steps of shifting the negative interactions become the focus. The way that an Emotionally Focused Couple’s Therapist helps couple’s to change their pattern is by working from the inside out. What I mean by this is that that the EFT therapist focuses on identifying, accessing, and then utilizing the deeper emotions to create positive change in the relationship. For instance, an angry and blaming partner often will express deeper feelings of fear, hurt, sadness, loneliness and a need to know they are loved. The EFT therapists helps partners to move past their protective mechanism’s and into vulnerability. When this focus on the deeper emotion and vulnerability happens it usually evokes a response of care from the receiving partner. This explicit expression of the attachment emotions and needs stops the negative patterns and leads to more caring, comforting, and connecting interactions in the relationship.
What we see with Emotionally Focused Couple’s Therapy is that in matter of time is that the couple feels more safe and secure with one another resulting in new and better ways of dealing with conflict. The key to a successful relationship is having a strong foundation that can serve as anchor during times of distress. Reciprocally sharing deep emotions and emotional needs while also providing care to one another is how couples can build a strong marriage or relationship foundation. Reciprocal sharing and caring is the way to go!
Finding and Emotionally Focused Couple’s Therapist Near You!
If you are in the Phoenix, Arizona or Scottsdale, Arizona areas then a Crossroads therapist can help you in your relationship. All of the counselors at Crossroads are trained in and practice Emotionally Focused Couple’s Therapist. It is the mission of Crossroads Phoenix and Scottsdale Relationship Centers to help couple’s create, recapture, and sustain emotional connection in their relationship. The Crossroads therapists provide marriage counseling, premarital counseling, couple’s therapy and even family counseling utilizing EFT. If you want an Emotionally Focused Couple’s Therapist to help you in your relationship please call us today at 623-680-3486 or email info@crossroadsfcc.com for more information.
To learn more about EFT click here.