Susan Johnson – Emotionally Focused Therapy: On Target Couple Interventions In The Age Of Attachment

Do you dread your couples therapy sessions? Do you struggle with how to stem your distressed clients’ anger and hostility? Do you get tired of their emotional reactivity and lack of empathy?

Primary developer of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) and best-selling author of, Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love, Dr. Sue Johnson, shows you how the EFT method illustrates the new science of love and bonding. Emotionally focused therapy (EFT) harnesses the new science of love and relationships into a structured, on-target, effective roadmap we can follow to take couples from disaster to safety and emotional connection. Not only will Dr. Johnson show you how EFT can heal relationships, but also how EFT can create relationships that heal.

Finally, we know why relationships matter so much, what goes wrong with them, and what’s necessary for people to create secure, lasting bonds.

But you might be saying, “Sure, you can show me the studies proving that EFT works, BUT can you show me how to do it?” The answer is…YES!

You will leave with your own blueprint for EFT that allows you, the therapist to be on target – to go to the heart of the matter and shape new interactions that redefine the security of the bond between partners and create an environment of healing and growth.

Give examples of the laws of human bonding, how they operate in adult love relationships, and how these laws inform the clinician’s choices of treatment interventions. Identify the stages, steps and interventions of EFT and how they relate to case conceptualization. Account for the stuck places that perpetuate negative cycles and emotional disconnection in a client’s love relationships. Describe how to set up new bonding interactions among clients that redefine connection and change working models of attachment. Demonstrate how to adapt the model to different individuals to improve client engagement, including escalated, traumatized, and depressed partners. Review how the therapist’s style fits with the model or creates blocks in working with emotion and shaping new dances in the clinical setting.

What You’ll Learn In Emotionally Focused Therapy: On Target Couple Interventions In The Age Of Attachment

The State of Couple Therapy and the New Science of Attachment

• The map to basic relationship emotions and needs
• Understanding and containing distance and distress
• Shaping responsive bonding
• Understanding love relationships – invaluable to the therapist

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) – the Structure, Moves and Interventions

• The three stages of EFT
  1. De-escalation
  2. Restructuring Attachment
  3. Consolidation Emotionally Focused Therapy
• Key change events Emotionally Focused Therapy

Experiential and Systemic Interventions

• Reflection of emotional process
• Validation
• Evocative process questions
• Deepening and distilling emotion
• Interpretation – conjecture
• Reflecting interactions – feedback loops
• Reframing Emotionally Focused Therapy
• Shaping enactments
• Containing enactments that go awry

The Tasks of EFT – Outline, Video Viewing, and Exercises

• The core tasks of EFT
• Building an alliance
• Reprocessing and distilling emotion
• Choreographing new interactions

Dealing with Difficult and Attachment Injured Clients – Discussion and Exercises

• Dysregulated, escalated, and shut down, dismissing clients
• Attachment injuries (i.e. affairs) – Relationship traumas that destroy trust
• A model for forgiveness and reconciliation

Discussion of the New Era of Couple Therapy

• Growing into and applying the EFT model
• Gaining confidence in EFT – Maximize effectiveness in your practice
• Key changes and challenges in the field of couple therapy

More courses from the same author: Susan Johnson