Counseling Center
about EFT
emotionally focused therapy
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) created by Dr. Susan Johnson and Dr. Leslie Greenberg is a highly researched model of intervention–based on attachment theory–that helps couples move away from the negative patterns they seem to repeat over and over again. We help you move toward caring, trusting, and emotionally bonding experiences.
When partners are caught in these negative defensive patterns they tend to blame one another for their distress and think “If only he/she would change…or stop… or do more of… then I would feel seen, or appreciated, or valued, or respected or loved!” However, if these patterns persist there becomes an overwhelming sense of feeling hurt, lonely, abandoned, inadequate, invisible, not –valued, unimportant, unworthy or unloved. Even sometimes one may be left with the devastating feeling of being unlovable.
EFT therapists have extensive post degree training and certification that equips them to deal with couples recurring difficulty in a caring, sensitive, understanding, and non-pathological way. Yet the endpoint of this model moves beyond relieving a couples “stuckness.” EFT releases in couples their intrinsic ability to respond and grow with openness toward one another and their changing environment, and to feel empowered to actively choose to construct the way one lives and relates.
EFT helps couples heal from past or present relational trauma by releasing ones own ability to choose to love in ways that foster hope, trust, safety, and true intimacy. At Cottonwood Counseling Center we guide our couples through emotionally corrective and bonding experiences with their partner that send them toward their potential as a couple.