emotions

What is Emotionally Focused Therapy?

What is Emotionally Focused Therapy?

Maybe you’re familiar with this scenario: you and your partner (or parent, sibling, or friend) are both home after a long day at work, eating dinner together, when the conversation veers off-course into an argument. It could be about family plans for the holidays, or money, or household tasks that need to get done, but the fight feels too familiar. You’ve had this same fight before, even if it was technically about a different issue, and you and your loved one have reverted to the same feelings and reactions. You feel stuck. Why would something as innocuous as a family holiday gathering or a sink full of dishes trigger such intense feelings? Why can't you seem to react differently whenever the topic comes up? Something has to change, but you don’t know how to make it happen. 

Feeling stuck in your emotions and relational patterns is common, and it’s exactly the kind of issue that Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is designed to help.

Meta-Emotions: Having Feelings about your Feelings

Meta-Emotions: Having Feelings about your Feelings

Two friends Paul and Marty are out for a coffee catching up about life and work. At some point near the end of their catch up, Marty mentions a recent promotion - a promotion Paul himself had been vying for as well (unbeknownst to Marty). This sparked immediate jealousy in Paul. Slowly after his initial glimmer of envy, Paul quickly began to become angry toward himself for feeling jealous, which spirals him into self-shame and deeper despair. He thinks to himself, ”how can I be feeling this way? I am such a “bad friend”.”