Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for Relationships

What’s is happening to us?

 You’re arguing a lot and feeling more and more distant from each other, maybe even thinking about leaving; you don’t want to live with these heated arguments or this cold and hostile  atmosphere. The same bad record keeps on playing, you try to get close and end up even further away. Your partner keeps misunderstanding you and you find yourself wondering where did the love go? The passion? Now all you see is their faults and all you feel is how bad they make you feel. One of you finally finds the courage to suggest going to see someone together, to get help, and the other one actually agrees, which also takes courage. 

The next step

The next step is to find the person - a counsellor/therapist - who is hopefully going to help you make sense of what’s happening and find your way back to each other. You come across the acronym EFT and wonder about it.

Studies have found EFT has a 70-75% success rate in supporting people to move from distress to recovery in their intimate partner relationships and a staggering 90% overall show significant improvement.

Why EFT? What is it anyway?

Some history

Emotionally Focused Therapy has been around for over 40 years and was originally developed by Sue Johnson and Les Greenberg who were working a lot with couples, both as therapists and researchers. The work has its roots in John Bowlby’s attachment theory, which originally focused on children and their biological need to form a close emotional bond with their caregivers. Sadly, Bowlby didn’t live long enough to see the next iteration of his work which is all about how adults also need safe, ongoing physical and emotional closeness to thrive. Mary Ainsworth’s (inspired by Bowlby’s research) identified four main attachment styles which are now commonly known as: secure, avoidant, anxious and disorganised. 

These days there is also EFT for individuals (EFIT) and for families (EFFT).

Safety and security

In a nutshell, EFT is all about supporting you and your partner to create/re-create a relationship that is a safe haven with a secure base. When your attachment fears and unmet needs are constantly playing on the screen between you, life is s**t! And if you throw children in the mix, it’s really s**t!

Making the implicit explicit

Once safety is achieved, you’ll be okay about sharing what’s really going on on the inside. EFT is also about making the implicit explicit. A lot of the time, you’re not even aware of your core emotions and your attachment fears and longings, as they’re buried so deep because they had to be: without safety, why would you risk being vulnerable?

EFT is experiential 

Over time, you’ll be encouraged to be in your emotions and feel them from the inside out and the bottom up. This is different from a top down, cognitive approach where the focus is on giving you lots of information. In EFT sessions you’ll get asked to tune into your body, into your felt sense and to trust the signals it’s sending you. Emotion is an active change agent and research backs this up; emotional corrective experience in a safe environment is where the change happens.

Additionally, in EFT sessions you’ll experience lots of engaged encounters (aka enactments) which  happen throughout the sessions; you’re encouraged to turn to each other and share your newly uncovered emotions, fears and longings. This may feel a bit clunky and awkward at first, but it’s worth it as it paves the way for becoming more willing to have courageous conversations.

What’s the process of EFT?

Stage 1 of EFT

The first few sessions involve you and the therapist working together, as a team of detectives or trackers, to uncover your and your partner’s patterns. You know that bad record that keeps getting played, over and over? This is you and your partner caught in a negative cycle, stuck in a gruelling groove: the more they do that, the more you do this and the more you do this, the more they do that and round you go, trapping yourselves in a tail-spin where you both end up feeling out of control or completely flat. As well as estranged from each other.

Tracking the Cycle

The cycle starts with a trigger; you will each be triggered by the other. For now, let’s say your partner triggers you with a non-verbal cue, like a sigh, an eye-roll or a pursing of their lips. Or a verbal cue - “Really? What?! You always/never…!” The content or the story of these cycles is different for each relationship and becomes the focus for partners (a way of trying to control the chaos: “I’m right!”, “No, I’m right!”) but the dance of the cycle, underneath the content, is usually the same. 

So back to the trigger…You get triggered which sets off your alarm system in your limbic brain: DANGER DANGER! Lion, tiger! Of course, an eye-roll is not the same as a tiger but your ancient  limbic system doesn’t know this. Your body (often the gut, throat or chest) reacts; heat, tension or fluttering - it’s different for everyone. And you feel a core emotion that you might not even register: sadness, fear, shame or anger, along with an attachment fear, “I’m scared of being alone”, “I’m scared of getting too close”, “I don’t deserve their love”, underneath which sits an  attachment longing, “I yearn: to be seen; to know I’m enough; to feel safe” etc.

On the outside though, you’re in protective mode, moving into action, into your particular fight, flight or fawning response. Rather than your core emotions being evident, surface level ‘fast and protective’ emotions flare, such as irritation, frustration, hostility or shut down. Maybe you snipe back at them (which then triggers them), or walk away from them (which also triggers them) or try to appease them (which may also trigger them). By now, all is lost as they’ve gone into protective mode too. The meaning you both make out of the cycle will be about each other; “They’re so mean, distant, volatile, inauthentic” and yourself; “I’m not good enough”, “I’m a bad person” etc. And the relationship, “We’re not good together”, “We’re not compatible”.

The Cycle is The Enemy - Not your Partner!

It’s not you! And it’s not them! It’s the negative cycle you create between you. In time, once you’ve tracked your negative cycle in the therapy room, you’ll be able to get some distance from it and see that it isn’t your partner that’s dragging you down, or you - it’s the cycle. You’ll soon begin to recognise it when it appears at home; you’ll be able to name your moves and hopefully take responsibility for your part in the cycle and then make different choices. This will create the space to start building more safety between you and also begin to create some positive cycles. 

Stage 2 of EFT

Stage 1 is about stabilising the relationship by creating safety, tracking the cycle and understanding and reframing your moves. Stage 2 is about restructuring your relationship and going deeper; accessing and sharing vulnerable emotions; as well as being about what’s going on between you, it’s also about what’s going on inside you. Often, childhood wounds - attachment injuries surface here. Stage 2 involves working towards acceptance and learning to voice your attachment needs. 

Stage 3 of EFT

The final stage is about consolidation; reinforcing and celebrating the changes in the relationship and in each other. It’s also about problem-solving some of the practical issues that may still be lingering.

The dance of adult love

In its most basic form, an emotion is a signal that’s providing us with information. EFT encourages couples to really listen and be engaged with their felt sense and their emotional world and with their partner’s emotional world, so that each others’ old moves and steps in the dance are known and so new ones can be created. The dance of adult love requires safe emotional responsiveness for healthy connection to occur, which requires us to be in touch with our emotions. But the challenge is, our emotional world moves so fast, especially when we’re interacting with our intimate partner. Sometimes we need someone else to help us slow it down and make sense of it and then to share it with each other. All of which needs to be done in a safe container and it takes practice, as well as each partner’s commitment to the relationship and commitment to the process. This is essentially the nuts and bolts of EFT.