Emotionally Focused Therapy
Created by Dr. Sue Johnson,EFT is considered the gold standard of couples therapy. It is based upon rigorous research with the highest positive outcomes of all couples therapy. It dives well beneath couples conflicts or estrangement to find the emotional disconnection that is really going on.
Deep within everyone is a longing, a need, for secure attachment. We need to feel that we are seen, heard, and nurtured at our very deepest level.We need to feel that we are known and loved for who we are beneath our roles in our partner’s life. And to know that our partner will never leave us.
Unfortunately people often don’t recognize these basic needs, or feel too embarrassed to communicate them to their partners. They may have been brought up to suppress such deep longings, or not even have the language to express it. Maybe they never had it. Maybe their caregivers never gave it to them.
So they grow up with an emptiness they subconsciously want their partners to fill, or put walls up so no one will disappoint them again.This turns into the main presenting issue when couples walk into the therapist’s office the first time. “We just can’t communicate.”
It’s not about who didn’t do their chores, or who’s supposed to do what. It’s not the socks on the floor or the laundry undone. It’s not conflicting work schedules and it’s not the kids. It’s unmet longings to feel safe and attached to your partner,
What couples do is get trapped into a painful cycle which obscures the real problem. For example Mary wants to spend time with her partner. In turn the partner placates her then goes upstairs to his or her computer gaming.
Mary feels rejected and alone. She walls herself off when the partner finally wants to be with her. So the partner goes back upstairs again for the computer gaming…and Mary feels rejected all over again. And so the cycle continues, round and round…
In EFT therapy couples learn to recognize the cycle they’re caught in and begin to see it as their mutual enemy. The enemy which is preventing access to communicating their deep needs and emotions and getting them met. They mutually catch themselves moving into the cycle and mutually catch it before it continues to suck them in. With the help of the EFT therapist, they learn to recognize the emotions they may not even have a name for, and the pain beneath the surface. They learn it’s not the surface dynamics but the emotional dynamics they’re caught up in.
You can both get unstuck and get your deepest needs met. You deserve no less.
