Let’s Begin at the Beginning

Emotionally Focused Therapy is a form of couples therapy founded by Dr. Sue Johnson (now called Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy or EFCT). EFCT is extremely well researched and is considered the gold standard of couples therapy. Johnson and team have also branched out to explore how to apply EFT to individual therapy (EFIT) and family therapy (EFFT) which require additional training and specialization. EFIT is relatively new and you may not know much about it! This blog can help with that.

What is EFIT?

EFIT digs to the root of the patterns that are causing clients to stay stuck using attachment science. Whether it’s depression, anxiety, or PTSD, research shows that EFIT can help. Note that EFIT can look a little different than other types of therapy. It uses emotion to drill down to the deep roots of the issues, many of which are established in early childhood. Your therapist guides you through something called a corrective emotional experience which can feel like therapy magic but it’s not. It’s the kind of emotional experience we all need to process the things that happen to us. With these experiences things shift – your identity and sense of self can expand and that can bring about new thought patterns and new behaviors. 

That might sound a little mysterious or maybe intimidating so I wanted to break down a few things that I want all my clients to know about EFIT. 

I want you to know that… this work focuses on relationships. It doesn’t matter who is literally in the therapy room, you are greatly impacted by those relationships all the time. I’m going to get to know the “cast of characters” in your life that have shaped you.

I want you to know that…we talk about your childhood a lot for a reason! It’s in childhood that we learn many things that impact how we show up in the world today – if it is safe to connect with others, how to be in relationship, how to regulate emotions, how to build an identity and sense of self, and how to handle conflict, and so on. These early learnings are so powerful that we often hold on to them past the time of their usefulness. Cognitively we might know we want to change them but we often find ourselves unable to create that change. EFIT can help. 

I want you to know…you can have earned secure attachment. You may not have had an emotionally secure connection with your primary caregivers (often parents) but that doesn’t mean you can’t have that with romantic partners or other important relationships. EFIT is grounded in attachment science which believes that our most basic, core, innate need we have as social, emotional mammals is safe connection with other humans. Emotional isolation (not knowing you matter to someone else) triggers helplessness in our brains and is inherently traumatizing. This is why we might use unhealthy attachment coping strategies to survive. 

(What do I mean by safe and secure connections? This means that these people care about your joy and pain, you can reach for them and they reach for you in times of distress with a felt sense of belonging and trust, they will come when you call. Unsafe and insecure connection looks like the fight/flight response – hypervigilance around relationships, high anxiety, having too many needs. It can also look like the freeze response – shutting down or minimizing needs, feeling lost, not knowing how to connect with self or others.)

I want you to know…I believe that you are stuck, not dysfunctional. There is nothing wrong with you. Whatever is happening in your life likely makes perfect sense when we zoom out and look at the context! I want to understand the emotional pain you are in and help you safely move through those feelings. This is incredibly hard to do on your own.

I want you to know…insight alone isn’t enough to bring change. If knowledge alone were enough, wouldn’t something like smoking cigarettes be a thing of the past? There’s a huge gap between that insight and the actual change itself. EFIT can be one path through that gap. 

I want you to know…you have to have experiences to be able to enact change. Albert Einstein said “Learning is experience. Everything else is just information.” In EFIT, lasting change is brought about by something called a corrective emotional experience that your therapist can help create in a safe way. This happens over time, only when that safe relationship is established between yourself and your therapist.

I want you to know…it might be hard to face some of the things you need to face. That’s okay. I want to be with you on that journey. EFIT believes you have to face emotions that are “frightening, alien, and unacceptable” but you can’t do that alone. 

What I want for every client to come out of therapy being able to do:

• Live a full and meaningful life
• Appreciate and experience the present moment
• Be open to new experiences and ideas
• Increase psychological flexibility and let go of rigid structures that may not serve you
• Be connected to your own inner knowing 
• Be connected to your own creativity 
• Be able to feel a full range of emotions
• Have a secure relationship with yourself and other important people in your life

If these are things you want too, I’d love to help you on your journey. Reach out to schedule a consult call here.