Specialists in Emotion-Focused Therapy for Couples
Disagreements can be frustrating, especially when you don’t feel heard by your partner. Frequent arguments can leave you feeling angry and alone. Eventually, this can hurt your relationship. Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) can help couples break out of negative communication patterns and heal their relationship.
Emotionally focused couples therapy is research based and considered the gold standard of couple’s counseling. It can help each member of the couple become more aware of their emotions. Members of the couple also learn new strategies to cope with and respond to their partner during different situations.
What is Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT)?
Emotion-Focused Therapy doesn’t blame couples for the distress in the relationship. Instead, it focuses on how the distress is a result of not understanding each other.
When we don’t understand our partner, how we feel about and respond to them changes. As communication and connection get worse, couples wind up in a negative cycle. Intimacy decreases and couples react quickly and harshly instead of carefully and thoughtfully.
What is the goal of EFT for couples?
If you feel you and your partner have lost that special connection and sense of safety, emotion focused couple’s therapy can help. The goal of emotion focused therapy techniques is to help each partner feel and talk about their emotions in a safe and healing space. This is called developing a “secure attachment.” When a positive cycle forms, partners can have healthy emotional experiences like feeling comforted and protected.
EFT Therapy may help individuals and couples concerned about:
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Addiction
- Chronic illness
- Family disharmony
- Trauma
- Self-confidence
- Pain-management
- Anger issues
THERAPISTS WHO CAN HELP
NYC Therapists Who Specialize in Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT)
Connecting with the right therapist is the most important factor in your search. We’re here to help you find a great match.
How emotionally focused therapy for couples works
To strengthen relationships, each partner must feel safe enough to be honest and vulnerable. You learned how to respond to your feelings long before youryou met your partner. As you were growing up, your parents, friends, siblings, and life situations played an important role in how you learned to deal with your feelings. Those responses may have helped you then. However, those same responses cause problems in your closest relationships now.
Emotionally focused therapists help you understand your reactions to different emotions. Then, you learn how your reaction creates a specific response from your partner and vice versa. Finally, each of you develop new ways of understanding each others’ feelings and changing how you respond to them. As a result, conflict decreases and understanding increases.
Emotion-Focused Therapy FAQs
What are the stages of Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT)?
EFT is a three-stage process that helps couples create a new way of understanding each other and their relationship.
First Stage of EFT:
Members of the couple learn about their own emotions, what sets them off, and how they respond to their partner. EFT counseling helps the couple understand the negative cycle they are in. Members learn to talk to each other about what’s underneath their feelings. As a result, they understand each other’s reactions better.
Second Stage of EFT:
During the second stage, couples talk honestly about the feelings they have pushed aside. Each partner talks about their needs and fears while the other partner practices listening and supporting. During this stage, couples work hard on accepting each other’s needs and being there for each other. As a result, they feel safer with and closer to each other.
Third Stage of EFT:
During the third and final stage, couples practice these new EFT techniques outside of sessions. During appointments, couples talk with their therapist about past situations and how they can have different emotional experiences given what they have learned. They also talk about how they might handle future challenges given what they now know about each other.
What is Emotion-focused therapy for Individuals and Families?
Individuals and families can also benefit from Emotion-Focused Therapy. With the help of an EFT therapist, families and individuals learn about their emotional responses and how to manage them better. Then, they learn emotion focused therapy techniques to help them respond to emotions in a healthier and safer way.
Emotion-Focused Individual Therapy can help individuals suffering from depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Emotion-Focused Family Therapy can help family members learn how to improve communication and cope during difficult times.
Are you ready to have the relationships you want?
Get in touch today.
Our NYC EFT Therapists can help your relationships thrive. You’ll get the tools and techniques you need to understand, process, and respond to feelings in a healthier way. As a result, you’ll feel more relief, safety, and connection in your relationships.