Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples At

Marriage Care

International Centre for Excellence in EFT (ICEEFT)
Four-day Externship Tuesday 13th-Friday 16th March 2018

Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples at

The Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3), 297 Euston Road, London, NW1 3AQ

What is EFT for couples?

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples is a short term structuredapproach to couples therapy based on the science of adult love and bonding (attachment theory). Developed in the 1980’s by Sue Johnson and Les Greenberg, this highly researchedand evidence-based approachhelps couples to understand and respond to each other’s needs effectively. EFT concepts have been validated by over 20 years of empirical research as well as research on the process of change and predictors of relationship success.It is a respectful, warm and scientifically proven method of resolving chronic and acute relationship conflict. Studies show that 70-75% of couples working with an EFT therapist move from relationship distress to recovery during the course of therapy and approximately 90% show significant improvements.

For more information take a look on the ICEEFT website

What is the externship?

This 4 day course is the foundation part of the training towards becoming an EFT couple therapist.

Who should attend?

The externship is recommended to all professionals who counsel couples/families/ individuals, including psychiatrists, psychologists, family physicians, social workers, psychiatric nurses, counsellors, clergy, and students training in these professions.

How EFT works

When we can’t connect safely with our partner, we descend into attachment panic due to the fear of losing connection with our beloved. We automatically respond by angry protesting or silent withdrawal (the fight or flight response). The very thing we do to protect our vulnerability triggers our partner’s own protest or withdrawal. This cycle is a “neural duet” between partners - we impact each other both physiologically and emotionally thereby creating a negative feedback loop.

EFT offers a systematic map comprising three stages andnine steps with change interventionsthat transform the negative cycles underpinning relationship distress. Couples learn to identify their unique cycleand own the vulnerability underlying their reactivity. They see their part in co-creating the cycle as it comes up in the session and at home. Couples learn to access and regulate the emotions underlying their reactions and instead send clear coherent emotional signals of their needs to their partner. They also learn how to respond in a healthy open-hearted way to the signals that are sent to them. Thus couples begin to actively create new positive cycles of love and connection where they can express their needs and fears and create a safe and secure bond characterised by mutual accessibility and responsiveness.

Goals of EFT

•To expand and re-organize key emotional responses

•To create a positive shift in partners’ interactional positions in the cycle

•To facilitate the creation of a safe secure bond between partners

Course objectives

The course will run from 9.00am - 5.00pm each day in London. Participants will

learn the key assumptions of adult attachment theory and relationship repair.
learn thebasics of the EFT model –stages and steps, experiential and systemic concepts of the EFT approach to couples therapy.
develop skills and interventions in helping partners reprocess the emotional responses that maintain relational distress.
Develop skills and interventions in helping partners shape new interactional patterns and bonding events using enactments.
develop skills to overcome therapeutic impasses with couples.
The programme includes theory, discussion of clinical material and interventions, observation of at least one live interview, skills training using clinical examples and exercises, tape reviews and role plays.

Who will be running the course?

Gail Palmer is one of the founding members of the Ottawa Couple and Family Institute and co-director of the International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy and is Chair of the Education Committee. For over twenty years, Gail has trained and supervised therapists and students in Emotionally Focused Therapy and has conducted Externships, Core Skills Trainings and workshops on a number of EFT topics across Canada, USA and Europe. Working with families is a particular interest to Gail and she has developed the application of the model to families with both presenting and writing on EFFT. She is co-author of Becoming an Emotionally Focused Couple Therapist:The Workbook.

She is an Approved Supervisor with the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy and is a family therapy professor at the School of Social Work at Carleton University in Ottawa.She is a couple and family therapy lecturer at the School of Social Work at Carleton University and St. Paul's University in Ottawa.