Is your relationship on the brink? Perhaps you and your partner feel like roommates living under the same roof, or maybe you spend most of your time arguing and bickering about all sorts of things. Or maybe you’ve just given up on the idea that things can ever get better. Many couples seeking therapy are hoping to regain a sense of intimacy, emotional connection, and trust in their relationship. Additionally, some couples turn to therapy to resolve issues of infidelity and/or abuse in the relationship.

To help couples repair their relationships, I use a specific type of therapy known as Emotionally-Focused Couples Therapy, or EFT for short. This type of therapy is a short-term, structured approach specifically for couples designed by Drs. Sue Johnson and Les Greenberg in the early 1980s. Research studies find that the majority (75-90%) of couples who participate in EFT significantly improve over the course of treatment and continue to improve at two-year follow-up.

                                                     

The goal of EFT is to help partners understand their destructive “dance” - how each responds to the other and interacts in the relationship - that keeps both partners feeling unsatisfied. Then, we work to explore key emotions fueling both partners’ roles in the dance, and foster new ways of interacting and relating to each other.

Unlike many couples therapy approaches, which teach partners how to use “I” statements and solve specific problems in their relationship (e.g., finances, parenting), EFT is a revolutionary approach that uses natural human emotions to understand why partners behave a certain way with the person closest to them. Exploring one’s hurt, fear, loneliness, shame, and sadness in the context of the relationship allows a new level of connectedness between partners to emerge, and new perspectives on how to solve specific problems relationship.

In an effort to create an emotionally safe environment during treatment for both partners, EFT may not be used with couples in which there is ongoing violence, infidelity, and/or substance abuse in the relationship.

I am one of only a handful of therapists in Arizona who has completed the rigorous EFT training, which took place over the course of a year and involved 80+ hours of didactic training and supervision.

To learn more about EFT, please click here to read a short article from Psychology Today. Click here to visit Dr. Johnson’s website.