What is Emotion Focused Therapy?

Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) has developed from research and has a growing evidence base, including efficacy for depression, anxiety and trauma.

EFT helps you get past your conscious mind to what’s really going on underneath. It’s experiential, in that it facilitates clients to experience emotions in session, rather than just talk about them. EFT holds, that it’s the experiencing of emotion, in session, that opens the gateway to healing.

Why is it important to experience emotions rather than just talk about them?

When we remember a previously upsetting event and experience upset, we activate the same neural pathways that were active at the time of the actual event. Put another way, if we took a brain scan during the experience of an upsetting event, and another brain scan during a therapy session, when the client remembered the same upsetting event and re-experienced the emotions, then the emotional pattern of firing on the brain scan would look the same.

What is it important to activate the same emotional pattern of neural firing?

By activating the same pattern of neural firing, the emotional component of the memory becomes malleable, allowing the psychologist to work closely with the client to overlay a new emotional memory. This does not change the detail of the memory, but rather diminishes the emotional intensity of the memory. For example, fear, anger, loneliness or self-loathing are reduced.

I experienced those emotions before, I don’t want to experience them again!

The difference between the original experience and re-experiencing it during therapy can’t be compared. During therapy, the psychologist holds psychological and emotional safety paramount. The psychologist will monitor you closely, and make sure your arousal levels -all the body’s indicators of fear and anxiety – racing heart, breathing rapidly, sweating, trembling, feeling overwhelmed, dissociating – are kept very low and tolerable. If these symptoms start to rise, they are immediately attended to and decreased. Afterwards, clients usually comment that it wasn’t scary at all, though they were anticipating being fearful. They often report feeling empowered or as though they have let something go.

Is Emotion Focused Therapy safe for trauma?

Yes, EFT is very safe, research informed and evidence based for trauma. For more information on my approach to treating trauma with EFT, read this post here.