Singapore Community for Emotionally Focused Therapy (SGEFT)
What is Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)?
What is EFT?
Emotionally-Focused Therapy, or EFT, is an empirically validated humanistic and short-term psychotherapeutic approach to working with couples originated by Dr. Susan Johnson Ed.D in the early 1980s. It offers a comprehensive view of adult attachment and its role in romantic relationships through 30 years of experience working with couples, alongside a significant body of scientific research.
For couples looking to strengthen their relationships or to heal distressed relationships, EFT offers a unique way of focusing on each partner’s emotional experiences, restructuring their emotional responses that maintain the negative interaction patterns.
EFT is best known as a cutting edge, tested and proven couple intervention, but it is also used to address individual depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress (EFIT – Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy) and to repair family bonds (EFFT – Emotionally Focused Family Therapy). This model operationalizes the principles of attachment science using non-pathologizing experiential (paralleling Carl Rogers) and relational systems techniques (paralleling Salvador Minuchin) to focus on and change core organizing factors in both the self and key relationships.
Strengths of EFT
- EFT is based on clear, explicit research-based conceptualizations of individual growth, health and dysfunction and of relationship distress and adult love.
- EFT is collaborative and respectful of clients, combining experiential Rogerian techniques with structural systemic interventions.
- Change strategies and interventions are specified.
- Key moves and moments in the change process have been mapped into three stages of therapy and key change events that predict success at the end of therapy.
- EFT has been validated by over 30 years of empirical research. There is also research on the change processes and predictors of success.
- EFT has been applied to many different kinds of problems and populations.
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