Couples Therapy
You may feel anxious and insecure and try to push for more connections. You are frustrated and start to withdraw. You love each other but don’t know where to start. Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) helps couples shift from a reactive interactional pattern to a place of safety where they can reach for each other and ask for their needs to be met. Whether you are in a new relationship or have been together for years, working with an EFT couples therapist will help you and your partner better understand the underlying emotions that drive the negative pattern in your relationship to build deeper connection and intimacy in your relationship.
How can EFT help you and your partner?
identify reactions that contribute to conflict and disconnection
understand underlying emotions that drive each other’s responses
learn to be attuned and responsive to each other
ask in a vulnerable, non-blaming way for your needs to be met
experience each other as a source of safety and security
deepen your emotional connection and intimacy
Trust and communication
Do you feel that you and your partner cannot discuss difficult things without it turning into a fight or an argument? Both of you feel drained and exhausted. You feel desperate for a new way to improve your communication. An EFT couples therapist can help you identify the negative interactional cycle or pattern at work in your relationship, understand the underlying emotions that drive the reactive behaviour, and improve your responsiveness to each other.
New parenthood
Parenthood is one of the biggest and most difficult transitions that many couples go through. You are beyond joyful to have a family with your partner yet it seems to pull you further and further apart from each other. You are stressed and sleep deprived and feel like there is little time or energy left for each other. Many couples tell me that they live parallel lives and run a business called family together. Seeking marriage counselling will help you reconnect and deepen your bond and intimacy.
Relationship during or after fertility treatment
Infertility is often the first crisis a couple faces. Both you and your partner are drowning in feelings of failure and uncertainty. Fertility treatment is expensive and replaces the intimate experience of conception with test after test. The endless clinic visits also take a toll on your own mental, emotional and physical health. Partners may have different expectations on the process and outcome. Couples therapy will help reclaim your emotional connection and intimacy.
Recovering from an affair or infidelity
Trust is broken and connection is lost when an affair happens. There is hurt, anger, blame, guilt, and humiliation. For the betrayed, you feel lost and doubt your own judgement and perception. For the one who has had an affair, you may be dealing with feelings of guilt and shame. It takes tremendous courage and vulnerability for couples to work through the pain and shame of an affair. A certified couples therapist can help you and your partner explore the impact of an affair in a safe and sensitive space. When both partners are committed to the process of healing and repair, couples therapy will help you grieve the loss of your first relationship and rebuild a new, stronger relationship.
Marriage preparation
You are ready to take your relationship to the next level and you want to enrich your relationship. Marriage preparation will help you understand the strengths and areas of growth in your relationship, your sensitivities, your communication and attachment styles, your needs and expectations, as well as consider practical areas such as finances, parenting, relationship with extended families, and more. Being proactive in pursuing counselling for marriage will help you feel prepared to create a long-lasting and successful marriage.
Cross-cultural and interfaith relationships
Do you feel that it seems more and more difficult to communicate with your partner about your different cultural beliefs and practices? Cross-cultural and interfaith relationships can be exciting and interesting; but it can also be challenging to navigate the differences. You may attribute different meanings and importance to relationships and family; you may have conflicts over religious practices, parenting styles, and expectations regarding in-laws’ level of involvement. Cross-cultural and interfaith couples therapy will help both of you gain clarity and become more curious about your own and your partner’s beliefs and values to achieve mutual respect and support.
Mental health and substance use in relationships
Are you or your partner’s mental health issues or substance use behaviours pulling you further and further apart from each other? Depression, anxiety, alcohol use, etc. can be like the third person in a relationship, bringing distance and disconnection and leaving both partners feeling alone and defeated. Couples therapy can help process resentment, shame, guilt, and other difficult emotions to recreate safety for both of you.
What is Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)?
EFT is an effective, highly researched, and empirically validated therapy model that helps couples experiencing distress to reconnect with one another. EFT sees a relationship as an attachment bond, similar to how a child depends on a caregiver for nurture and protection. It is based on 50 years of research into adult love and attachment. It recognizes adults’ basic emotional needs for safety and closeness in intimate relationships. Perceived threats to the security and emotional bond in the relationship may result in distress and feelings of isolation and loneliness for many couples. EFT therapists strive to support and create safety for both partners; they guide the clients to process, make sense of, and express their emotions in new ways to their partners to recreate a more secure emotional bond.
EFT is experiential; it focuses on how people experience their partners and their relationships and how they express those emotions. EFT is also systemic; it examines the whole relationship and the interactional patterns between the couple. EFT is not about the content of the conflicts, or about teaching people communication and negotiation skills; instead, the goal of EFT is to help couples create more positive bonding patterns and a more secure emotional bond.
Created by Dr. Sue Johnson and Dr. Les Greenberg, EFT is a model of couple therapy with research indicating that 70-75% of couples who participate move from distress to recovery and approximately 90% show significant improvement. Couples report satisfaction, trust, and increased intimacy as a result of feeling more secure with their partner.
See Dr. Sue Johnson's groundbreaking book Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love for a more in-depth understanding of how EFT with a trained therapist can help you. For more information about Dr. Sue Johnson, visit www.drsuejohnson.com.
For more information about EFT, please visit International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy.
