Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for Couples

Strengthen your bond as a couple, feel more connected and rediscover the purpose of your relationship.

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is a short-term approach to helping distressed couples find their way back to a loving and close relationship.

Developed by leading Canadian psychologists Dr. Susan Johnson and Dr. Leslie Greenberg, the Emotionally Focused Therapy process helps couples let their guard down and feel safe with their partner, opening the door for intimacy and re-connection to take place.

Although our natural instinct is to move towards each other, we tend to override it when we feel upset in our relationship, usually based on things that happened previously in this relationship or somewhere in our past.

Fearful of our emotional response, we turn away as a means of protecting ourselves. Emotionally Focused Therapy supports couples to reconnect with this natural instinct of closeness and attachment.

EFT can be one of the quickest and easiest ways to go to the core of a couple’s distress patterns. Because it is an approach that supports both of you, many couples find it an effective way to get from distant or gridlocked conflict, towards a space where partners can rediscover a secure and loving bond.

The course of therapy usually takes 12 to 30 sessions, as couples are guided through the process of therapy.

Stage 1

Emotionally-Focused Therapy starts with looking at the negative or non-helpful cycle you are in. Understanding this current cycle and the underlying emotions helps identify the roadblocks hindering the desire to feel closer to each other.

Stage 2

At this stage it’s about reconnecting, learning to accept your experience as well as your partner’s, getting to discover aspects of yourself, and learning new ways of interacting with one another.

Stage 3

Here you and your partner consolidate your new way of being together and explores new solutions to your old patterns. You are able to apply these new skills to moving toward each other.

If you are looking to strengthen your bond and feel more connected as a couple, this may be the time for you to try some EFT sessions with one of the Steadfast counsellors.

In our counsellors’ words

“In EFT, we look at the negative cycle that the couple is stuck in. We learn to recognize it, name it and understand the deeper desire. At that point, we can start to change it by attending to the real emotional needs of each person. The couple then learns how to respond to each other in a way that tunes into themselves and each other in a meaningful way. In doing so, they create a positive cycle (experience) between the two of them.” – Laura Bradley