Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy Training
For Therapists

Increase your effectiveness with couples

Transform your practice

Train in the leading approach to couples therapy, providing a clear road map and solid research base for helping couple transform relationship struggles into relationship harmony.

Developed in the 1980’s by  Sue Johnson and Les Greenberg, EFT is a short term structured approach to helping distressed couples transform their relationship.  Based on the attachment model, this approach places emphasises on the importance of emotions in shaping both inner experience and significant patterns of interaction that occur in couple’s relationships. Emotion is viewed as a powerful agent of change in therapy, not just an expression of marital distress. Through expanding partners’ emotional experience around  basic attachment needs and structuring change events to shift pattern of negative interactions, EFT therapists help couples create a more secure and safe bond in their relationship.

Based on extensive research

Over 20 years of scientific research demonstrating a high success rate

70-75% of couples move from relationship distress to recovery, and

Approximately 90% of couples improve their level of satisfaction in the relationship.

Are you a therapist looking to advance or train in couples therapy

• As a therapist do you sometimes feel lost, like you are flying by the seat of your pants when working with couples?
• Looking for new intervention strategies to revitalize your couples work?
• Wanting to train in marriage counselling?

Couples come to therapy looking for help to deal with their ongoing and repetitive arguments that are causing disconnection in their relationship. 

These couples often bring highly intense and reactive emotion in to the therapy room, which can be unnerving for the therapist.  It can be confusing and difficult to know what to do.  When this happens the therapeutic process can be hijacked or bogged down.

When we lack knowledge on how to work with negative emotions that escalate between partners, it is normal to feel overwhelmed and we inadvertently shut down the clients emotions.

Closing down the clients emotions provide containment and helps you feel more in control of the session.  However, this causes you to miss the opportunity to use the expressed emotions to help partners gain access and help them express the deeper hurts that underlie their arguments.  Guiding and supporting partners in sharing their vulnerable feelings experienced in the relationship, helps them evoke and express compassion toward each other.  This also empowers them to become aware and assertive about their needs in the relationship.

Helping couples connect on this deeper level, not only leaves you feeling more in control of the sessions, but allows you to facilitate healing couple’s relationship bond.

EFT will enable you to:

• Discover a remarkably effective road map for navigating couples through conflict deadlock
• Learn how to harness their emotions to help couples create and maintain a close connection
• Help your couples experience bonding emotions and find their happily ever after

EFT offers:

An Attachment Framework

Model of adult love helps you to formulate the couple’s presenting issues through an attachment lens and get to the heart of their problems.

A  Roadmap to Heal Distressed Relationships

1st Stage: Cycle De-escalation, help couples unlatch from conflict, ease tension, and diffuse power struggles. Typically, frequency and intensity of conflict decline markedly, creating safety for the second stage of therapy,

2nd stage: Reconnection enhances relationship intimacy. During Reconnection, the partners learn to communicate their needs in a manner that creates closeness and enhances responsiveness to each other.

3rd stage: Consolidation, New ways  of interacting come together as partners resolve long standing issues in their relationship and prepare to end therapy.

Strategies for Even the Most Challenging Couples

EFT helps overcome hurdles known to impede the effectiveness of other therapies. Research finds EFT to be highly effective with couples who present with poor prognostic indicators (for other therapeutic approaches), such as, very low marital satisfaction and partners lacking in emotional awareness.

Effective Interventions for Breaking Through Relationship and Therapeutic Impasses

Intervention techniques are specifically designed to break through highly stuck relationship impasses and attachment injuries.

Methods that are Adaptable to Specific Populations

EFT adapted to working with specific populations such as, trauma survivors and partners suffering from low sexual desire and other sexual problems. EFT is remarkably effective with couples in which one partner suffers from depression, low self-esteem, or anxiety.