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Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)

Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT) has evolved in recent years to have a significant impact on the field of psychotherapy. Its increasing popularity and the growing support for its efficacy with a wide variety of problems have made EFT an important approach to psychotherapy treatment. Emotion Focused Therapy is an empirically-supported humanistic treatment that views emotions as centrally important in human functioning and therapeutic change. EFT involves a therapeutic style that combines both following and guiding the client’s experiential process, emphasizing the importance of both relationship and intervention skills. It views emotion as the fundamental datum of human experience while recognizing the importance of meaning making, and views emotion and cognition as inextricably intertwined.

EFT proposes that emotions themselves have an innately adaptive potential that if activated can help clients change problematic emotional states or unwanted self experiences. This view of emotion is based on the view, now gaining ample empirical support, that emotion at its core is an innate and adaptive system that has evolved to help us survive and thrive.

Emotions are connected to our most essential needs. They rapidly alert us to situations important to our well-being. They also prepare and guide us to take action towards meeting our needs. Individuals and couples benefit from therapy with the help of an empathically attuned relationship with their therapist, who seeks to help them to better identify, experience, explore, make sense of, transform, and more flexibly manage their emotions. As a result, persons receiving EFT treatment become stronger and are more skillful in accessing the important information and meanings about themselves and their world that emotions contain, and become more skillful in using that information to live vitally and adaptively ( taken directly from; International Society for Emotion Focused Therapy What-is-EFT)

Renew EFT

Healing Patterns within
Ourselves & Our Relationships

trau·ma. /ˈtrômə/

can have a profound and lasting impact on both the mind and body, but healing is possible, and methods like Emotionally Focused Therapy can be incredibly effective.

Emotion is what drives behavior. So many other therapeutic approaches focus on thoughts or behaviors alone, but EFT recognizes that lasting change happens when we address the emotions underneath. We don’t just talk about feelings—we help you experience them, understand them, and work through them in the moment.

The second reason EFT works is our focus on what we call “attunement.” This means tuning into your client emotionally and that means teaching our clients how to connect emotionally with their children, their spouses, their partners, and the people they work with.

Emotional attunement is about slowing down and deeply listening to the other person, trying to deeply understand the other person. And then, when this deep listening happens, the other person will FEEL seen and heard and validated. You know that attunement is happening when the other person is experiencing your emotional connection. This is the heart of secure attachment. When partners learn to attune to each other—really seeing, hearing, and responding to each other’s emotional needs. When this starts happening regularly, then relationships will start healing and transforming. The defensive patterns that have caused so much pain begin to shift, and genuine connection becomes possible again.

Emotion as a Compass: EFT views emotion as an innate, adaptive system that provides essential information about an individual's needs, goals, and concerns.
The Power of Feeling: A fundamental tenet is that "one has to feel a feeling in order to change it". The therapy helps clients move from avoiding emotions to accepting and transforming them.
Attachment Focus: Especially in couple therapy, EFT is grounded in attachment theory, viewing distress as a result of threatened emotional bonds.