Reconnect Through Emotionally Focused Therapy

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Feeling emotionally disconnected from your partner? Stuck in the same painful arguments? Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is a proven approach that helps couples move from distress to secure connection by working with the emotions that drive your patterns. Whether you’re in crisis or simply want to deepen your bond, EFT can transform your relationship.

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When Emotionally Focused Therapy Can Help

EFT helps couples and individuals experiencing relationship distress, emotional disconnection, and patterns that keep them stuck. Understanding when this focused therapy approach can benefit you is the first step.

Common Signs You Could Benefit from EFT

If you find yourselves having the same arguments repeatedly, unable to break free from destructive patterns, EFT can help. These negative patterns often involve one partner pursuing connection while the other withdraws, or both partners attacking each other defensively. Using EFT principles, a therapist helps you identify these cycles and understand the emotions and attachment fears driving them. The therapy approach focuses on slowing down these reactive patterns so couples can see the underlying emotions and needs. Rather than staying stuck in blame and defensiveness, partners learn to share their vulnerable feelings and respond with empathy. This transformation of emotion by emotion, or changing emotion with emotion as described by emotion theorists, creates new, positive patterns of interaction that strengthen rather than damage the relationship.
One of the clearest signs you might benefit from emotionally focused therapy is feeling emotionally distant from your partner. You might be physically present but emotionally absent, going through the motions without genuine connection. The emotional bond that once felt strong has weakened or disappeared. EFT focuses on rebuilding this crucial emotional connection through understanding attachment needs and emotional responses. Research has found that EFT effectively helps distressed couples reconnect by addressing the underlying attachment needs that drive relationship behaviors. When couples learn to recognize and respond to each other’s emotional needs, they create secure attachment and deeper intimacy. An EFT therapist can guide you through this process, helping both partners understand their emotional experience and express needs in ways that draw you closer rather than pushing you apart.
Many people struggle with emotional awareness and emotional expression, which significantly impacts relationship quality. You might have difficulty identifying what you’re feeling, expressing emotion in constructive ways, or understanding your partner’s emotional experience. Emotion-focused therapy is particularly helpful for developing these skills because emotion is seen as foundational to the work. The therapist helps you develop emotional awareness, learn to identify types of emotion you’re experiencing, understand the difference between primary maladaptive emotion and adaptive emotion, and practice expressing emotion safely. This focus on working with emotion distinguishes EFT from other forms of therapy that might minimize emotional experience. By developing greater awareness of emotion and skill in emotional expression, you can communicate needs more effectively and respond to your partner with greater empathy and understanding.
Whether through infidelity, broken promises, or accumulated disappointments, damaged trust creates profound insecurity. You might feel constantly vigilant, unable to relax in the relationship. Your partner might feel like they can never do enough to prove themselves trustworthy. EFT addresses trust issues by working with the attachment injury at their core. Through structured conversations, the hurt partner expresses the pain and fear while the injuring partner truly hears and responds with understanding. This process creates corrective emotional experiences that gradually rebuild trust and security.
While many therapies focus primarily on communication skills, EFT recognizes that communication problems usually stem from emotional disconnection and attachment fears. When you feel insecure in the relationship, you communicate defensively, critically, or withdraw entirely. EFT improves communication by addressing the underlying emotional dynamics. As you feel more secure and understood, communication naturally becomes clearer and more effective. You’ll learn to express needs directly rather than through criticism, and to listen with empathy rather than defensiveness.
Major life challenges like illness, job loss, parenting stress, or grief can strain even strong relationships. When you’re overwhelmed individually, it’s harder to show up for your partner. Stress can trigger attachment fears, making you withdraw or become critical. EFT helps couples strengthen their bond so they can support each other through difficulties rather than letting stress push them apart. You’ll learn to turn toward each other during stress, express needs for support clearly, and provide comfort effectively. A secure relationship becomes a resource for weathering life’s storms.

Additional Benefits of Emotionally Focused Therapy

EFT isn’t only for distressed couples. Many couples use it preventatively, before problems become severe. If you’re engaged or considering deeper commitment, EFT helps you understand attachment patterns and emotional needs, develop skills for maintaining connection under stress, and build a secure foundation. This proactive approach gives couples tools to maintain relationship health long-term. Getting support before patterns become entrenched can save years of distress later.
EFT isn’t only for distressed couples. Many couples use emotionally focused therapy for couples preventatively, before problems become severe. If you’re engaged or considering deeper commitment, EFT helps you understand attachment patterns and emotional needs, develop skills for maintaining connection under stress, address potential areas of vulnerability, and build a secure foundation. This proactive use of EFT gives couples tools to maintain their relationship health long-term. Research shows that couples who understand EFT principles and practice them early are better equipped to handle inevitable challenges. Getting support from an emotionally focused therapist before patterns become entrenched can save years of distress later.
Emotionally focused family therapy extends EFT principles to parent-child and broader family relationships. Parents and children also need secure emotional bonds, and similar patterns of pursuit and withdrawal can damage these relationships. EFT helps family members understand each other’s attachment needs, improve emotional communication across generations, repair ruptures in parent-child relationships, and create more secure family bonds. This is particularly valuable when families are struggling with adolescent behavior, divorce impact, or intergenerational patterns.
While EFT is best known for couples work, emotion-focused therapy for individuals helps those struggling with relationship patterns rooted in attachment issues. You might repeatedly choose unavailable partners, struggle with intimacy, or experience anxiety in relationships. Individual EFT helps you understand your attachment style, process emotions related to past relationships or childhood experiences, develop healthier relationship patterns, and prepare for future partnerships. This work can be transformative even when you’re not currently in a relationship.
Infidelity creates profound attachment injury, shattering trust and security. Healing requires more than apology. It requires deep emotional processing and rebuilding of the attachment bond. EFT helps couples recover from affairs through structured work addressing the attachment wound, processing both partners’ emotional experiences, understanding what led to the affair, creating corrective experiences that restore safety, and rebuilding trust gradually. Many couples not only survive infidelity but ultimately develop stronger relationships than before.
Individual mental health issues often improve through EFT couple therapy as the relationship becomes more secure and supportive. Research shows relationship quality significantly affects mental health, so improving the relationship often reduces symptoms. Conversely, depression or anxiety in one partner affects relationship dynamics, sometimes creating pursuit-withdraw patterns as the struggling partner withdraws and the other pursues. EFT addresses these dynamics while supporting the individual’s healing.
If you’re questioning whether your relationship can or should continue, EFT can help you make that decision from a place of clarity rather than reactive distress. Some couples discover through EFT that their relationship can be saved and even thrive. Others gain clarity that separation is the healthiest choice, but they do so with less animosity and better ability to co-parent if children are involved. EFT helps you understand what’s actually happening in your relationship and whether the bond can be repaired.

If you recognize these struggles, EFT offers a proven path to healing and deeper connection.

This evidence-based therapeutic approach helps people transform their most important relationships.

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70-75% success rate

EFT helps 70-75% of couples move from distress to recovery, with 90% showing significant improvement in their relationship
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Results that last

Research shows improvements from EFT are maintained long-term, with couples reporting lasting positive changes years after therapy
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8-20 sessions

Most couples see meaningful progress within 8-20 sessions, making EFT one of the most efficient couples therapy approaches

Understanding Emotionally Focused Therapy:
EFT Theory and Individual Therapy Foundations

Emotionally Focused Therapy was developed by Sue Johnson and Les Greenberg in the 1980s as a synthesis of attachment theory, experiential therapy, and research on emotion. Sue Johnson, a clinical psychologist, focused primarily on applying EFT to couple therapy, while Leslie Greenberg (often referred to as Les Greenberg in the literature) developed emotion-focused therapy for individuals.

EFT works by helping partners understand and reshape the emotional responses that organize their interactions. When people get stuck in negative patterns, it’s often because primary emotions like fear or hurt get covered by secondary reactive emotions like anger.

EFT helps you access these deeper, primary emotions and express them to your partner in ways that create connection rather than distance. This process, what Greenberg describes as changing emotion with emotion or the transformation of emotion by emotion, allows new emotional experiences to reshape old patterns. Through this work, distressed couples can move from destructive cycles to secure connection.

What makes EFT particularly effective is its focus on the attachment bond itself. Rather than just teaching communication skills or conflict resolution techniques, EFT restructures the emotional bond between partners. When you feel securely attached, communication naturally improves, conflicts become easier to resolve, and you’re better equipped to weather life’s challenges together. This is why EFT creates lasting change that continues long after therapy ends.

EFT recognizes that humans have an innate need for secure emotional bonds with significant others. When these bonds feel threatened, we experience powerful emotional responses designed to restore connection. Rather than viewing emotion as something to control or eliminate, EFT sees emotion as adaptive and central to healing.

This therapeutic approach is grounded in decades of research showing that emotion is central to human experience and that the quality of our attachment bonds fundamentally affects our well-being. The Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy continues to advance research and training in this approach.

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The Three Stages of EFT

EFT follows a structured process with three main stages.
Stage 1 focuses on de-escalation, where the therapist helps couples identify and step out of negative patterns. During this phase, couples begin to recognize the cycle they’re stuck in and understand the emotions driving it.

Stage 2 involves restructuring the attachment bond, where partners access and share deeper emotions, respond to each other’s needs, and create new patterns of connection. This is where the most transformative work happens.

Stage 3 focuses on consolidation, helping couples apply their new understanding and skills to specific issues and solidifying changes. Each EFT session builds on previous work, gradually transforming the relationship through systematic attention to emotion and attachment needs.

The principles and techniques used in each stage are carefully designed to create safety and promote emotional risk-taking.
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The Role of the EFT Therapist

EFT therapists are trained to work skillfully with emotion, creating safety for deep emotional work. The therapist helps identify emotion schematic patterns, slow down interactions to access primary emotions, validate and normalize emotional responses, choreograph new interactions between partners, and help partners create corrective emotional experiences.

The therapist work is active and directive in shaping the process while being collaborative and respectful of clients’ experiences. An emotionally focused therapist doesn’t take sides but instead helps both partners understand their emotions and attachment needs.

The therapist helps couples see that their struggle isn’t about one person being wrong but about a pattern that’s trapping them both. This empathic, process-oriented approach distinguishes EFT from more behavioral or cognitive approaches like behavior therapy that focus primarily on changing actions or thoughts rather than accessing and transforming emotion.
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Evidence Base and Effectiveness

EFT is one of the most researched approaches to couples therapy, with extensive evidence supporting its effectiveness. Studies show that 70-75% of couples move from distress to recovery, and approximately 90% show significant improvement. These effects are maintained over time, with follow-up studies showing lasting benefits.

EFT has also been adapted successfully for various populations and issues including affair recovery, trauma, and attachment injuries. The therapy for individuals format also shows strong evidence for treating depression and anxiety. What makes EFT particularly effective is its focus on emotion regulation and restructuring attachment bonds, which addresses core issues rather than just surface symptoms.

Whether through emotion-focused coping strategies or creating positive emotion in relationships, the approach targets fundamental change mechanisms that create lasting transformation.

At its core, the EFT model integrates several key ideas. First, attachment theory demonstrates that humans have an innate need for secure emotional bonds with significant others. When these bonds feel threatened, we experience powerful emotional responses designed to restore connection. Second, principles of emotion processing show that accessing, experiencing, and transforming emotion is essential for change.

Third, EFT recognizes that emotion and emotional experience provide crucial information about our needs and drives our behavior in relationships. Rather than viewing emotion as something to control or eliminate, emotion focused therapy sees emotion as adaptive and central to healing. This integration of reason and emotion, drawing from both humanistic experiential therapy traditions like Gestalt therapy and scientific research from emotion theorists, makes EFT unique among therapy approaches.

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Strengthen Emotional Bond

Rebuild the emotional connection and secure attachment that forms the foundation of a healthy, resilient relationship.
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Break Negative Cycles

Identify and interrupt the patterns of pursue-withdraw or criticism-defense that keep you stuck in conflict and disconnection.

How Emotionally Focused Therapy Helps You Heal

Emotionally focused therapy provides evidence-based support for couples struggling with disconnection, conflict, and relationship distress. This attachment-based approach helps you understand the emotional patterns driving your interactions and teaches you to express vulnerable feelings safely. EFT helps you break negative cycles, rebuild trust, and create the secure connection you’ve been longing for. You don’t have to navigate this alone.

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Express Vulnerable Emotions

Learn to share your deeper feelings and needs in ways that draw your partner closer rather than pushing them away.
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Attachment Science-Based

Benefit from a therapy approach grounded in decades of research on adult attachment, emotion, and neuroscience.

How EFT Focuses on Emotion

Emotionally focused therapy uses specific therapy techniques grounded in principles of emotion processing and attachment theory to create lasting change in relationships.

Access and Process Primary Emotions

One of the core ways EFT helps is by teaching emotion awareness and helping you access primary emotions beneath reactive responses. The therapist helps clients identify what they’re truly feeling underneath anger or defensiveness, often discovering fear, hurt, or loneliness.

By expressing emotion at this deeper level, you help partners understand your experience and respond with compassion rather than defensiveness. An emotion-focused approach recognizes that simply changing behavior without addressing underlying emotion leads to temporary fixes rather than lasting transformation.

Through careful attention to emotional experience in each therapy session, you develop ability to identify and communicate about different types of emotion. This includes recognizing the difference between an adaptive emotion that guides you toward meeting needs versus a primary maladaptive emotion based on past wounds that may no longer serve you.

Restructure Negative Interaction Patterns

EFT helps by identifying and changing negative patterns that damage relationships. These patterns typically involve one partner pursuing connection while the other withdraws, creating escalating distress.

Using EFT, the therapist helps you see these patterns clearly, understand the emotions and attachment fears driving each position, step out of reactive positions, and create new patterns based on emotional accessibility and responsiveness. The regulation of emotion becomes possible when both partners feel safe enough to share vulnerabilities.

As you practice new ways of interacting in therapy, guided by EFT principles, these patterns gradually replace old destructive cycles. You learn that conflict isn’t the problem; the pattern of disconnection is. By addressing the pattern rather than specific content, you develop skills applicable to any future challenge.

Strengthen Emotional Bonds Through Attachment

The ultimate goal of EFT is strengthening the emotional bond between partners by creating secure attachment. Based on principles of emotion and attachment research, EFT helps people meet each other’s fundamental attachment needs for safety, comfort, and connection.

The therapist helps partners understand their attachment styles and needs, recognize how unmet attachment needs create relationship distress, respond to each other’s bids for connection, and create experiences of being truly seen and responded to. This work on the attachment bond is what makes EFT so powerful.

Other relationship therapy might teach communication skills, but without addressing underlying attachment security, these skills often fail under stress. EFT creates actual changes in how securely attached partners feel, which fundamentally transforms the relationship and provides resilience for navigating life’s challenges together.

Create Corrective Emotional Experiences

One of the most powerful mechanisms in EFT is creating corrective emotional experiences where past wounds are healed through new interactions.

The therapist helps partners revisit moments of injury or disconnection in a new way, with one partner expressing previously hidden vulnerable emotions and the other responding with empathy and reassurance rather than defensiveness or withdrawal. These corrective experiences literally reshape emotion schematic memories, allowing you to develop new expectations about relationships and new ways of being together.

This concept, central to EFT theory, explains why the approach creates lasting change. You’re not just learning techniques; you’re having actual experiences of secure connection that reorganize how you relate. Through emotion coaching from the therapist and practice in therapy sessions, you develop capacity to create these experiences yourselves, maintaining and deepening connection over time.

Our Approach to Emotionally Focused Therapy: Healing the Heart of Your Relationship

At Relationship Counseling Center of California, we use Emotionally Focused Therapy to help you break destructive cycles, access vulnerable emotions, and create the secure emotional bond you’ve been longing for.

Evidence-Based EFT Implementation

We follow the structured EFT model as developed by Sue Johnson and researched extensively through clinical psychology studies.

Our approach to couples therapy stays true to core EFT principles while adapting to each couple’s unique needs. We draw on the principles of emotion processing articulated by Greenberg and other emotion theorists, ensuring our work is grounded in both theory and research. EFT practitioners must understand not just techniques but the underlying principles that make them effective.

We continue learning through connection with the Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy and other training resources, ensuring our practice reflects current best practices in using EFT with couples and individuals.

Comprehensive Couple Work

Our primary focus is emotionally focused therapy for couples, helping partners strengthen their emotional bond and create secure attachment.

Whether you’re distressed couples in crisis or generally satisfied couples wanting to deepen connection, we provide tailored support. Helping couples through the three stages of EFT, we pay careful attention to pacing and safety, ensuring each partner feels heard before moving deeper.

We address specific issues like infidelity, life transitions, or communication problems through the lens of attachment and emotion. The therapeutic relationship we create models the secure, responsive connection we help you build with each other. Our goal is not just solving current problems but helping you develop understanding and skills that serve your relationship for life.

Individual and Family Applications

While couple work is our primary focus, we also offer therapy for individuals using emotion-focused principles and family therapy when appropriate.

For individuals struggling with depression and anxiety, particularly when related to relationship patterns, emotion-focused therapy helps you understand and transform problematic emotion schemes.

We use emotion-focused coping strategies to help you regulate difficult emotions and respond more adaptively. For families, we apply emotionally focused family therapy principles to strengthen parent-child bonds and improve family communication. Whether working with couples and individuals or whole family systems, the core focus remains the same: accessing, understanding, and transforming emotion to create secure connections and healthier functioning.

Safe, Structured Therapeutic Process

Safety is paramount in EFT work because accessing vulnerable emotions requires trust. We carefully structure the therapeutic process to ensure both partners feel safe enough to take emotional risks.

Each EFT session builds systematically on previous work, following the proven stages of the model. The therapist helps regulate emotion in sessions, preventing escalation while helping you stay engaged with difficult feelings. We move at a pace that respects your readiness while gently encouraging growth.

The structure of EFT, combined with the therapist’s skill in working with emotion, creates conditions for transformation that many people haven’t experienced in other forms of therapy. You’ll find that having a knowledgeable guide helps you navigate emotional territory that felt too scary to approach alone or with your partner.

Integration with Other Therapeutic Approaches

While we primarily use the EFT model, we recognize that comprehensive care sometimes requires integrating other approaches. EFT shares roots with experiential therapy and has connections to Gestalt therapy in its focus on present emotional experience.

When helpful, we might incorporate elements from psychodynamic therapy to understand historical patterns or from other therapy techniques to address specific issues. However, the foundation remains emotionally focused, with emotion is seen as foundational to all the work we do.

This integration respects the principles of EFT while ensuring you receive comprehensive support for your unique situation. Whether addressing trauma, addiction, or other issues alongside relationship work, we maintain focus on emotion and attachment as primary change mechanisms.

Supporting Professional Development

For therapists interested in learning this approach, we provide information about how to become an EFT therapist and where to find quality training.

While we don’t offer formal certification training ourselves, we’re connected to the broader EFT community and can guide those interested in incorporating EFT in their professional practice. Becoming trained in emotionally focused therapy requires structured learning through approved training programs, typically including workshops, supervision, and practice.

For clients, this means we understand the depth and rigor required to practice EFT competently. Our ongoing commitment to developing expertise in this therapy approach ensures you receive skilled, informed care that truly embodies the excellence in emotionally focused therapy principles.

Who Benefits from EFT:
Individuals and Couples Seeking Connection

Emotionally focused therapy helps people facing various relationship and individual challenges, all rooted in emotion and attachment needs.

Couples feeling emotionally disconnected

Partners stuck in conflict cycles

Couples recovering from infidelity

Those experiencing attachment injuries

Couples navigating life transitions

Partners with communication difficulties

Individuals struggling with relationship patterns

People experiencing depression or anxiety

Those wanting to prevent relationship problems

Families seeking stronger bonds

Couples preparing for commitment

Anyone seeking deeper emotional connection

Is EFT Right for You?

If you’re struggling with emotional connection in your relationship, feeling stuck in patterns despite trying to change, or dealing with attachment injuries that won’t heal, EFT may be an excellent fit. This approach is particularly powerful when both partners are willing to engage with emotions, though even hesitant partners often find the process valuable once they experience the safety the therapist creates.

EFT works well for various types of couples, including those in heterosexual or LGBTQIA+ relationships, newlyweds or long-term partners, and couples of all cultural backgrounds. The focus on universal attachment needs and emotions transcends specific demographics, though the expression may vary. Research has found that EFT is effective across diverse populations, making it widely applicable.

Individual therapy using emotion-focused principles benefits people whose challenges relate to relationships, emotion regulation, or attachment difficulties. If you struggle with expressing emotion, understanding your patterns, or creating satisfying connections, this approach helps. The key is willingness to engage with emotional experience, which the therapist helps you develop even if it feels unfamiliar initially.

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What to Expect:
The EFT Session Process

Understanding what emotionally focused therapy involves helps you approach this work with confidence and realistic expectations.
Step 1: Free Consultation (10 minutes)
Your journey begins with a free phone consultation where we’ll discuss what brings you to therapy and whether EFT might be a good fit. We’ll talk about your relationship challenges or individual struggles, your goals for therapy, whether both partners are willing to participate (for couple work), and what you’ve tried before. This conversation helps us determine if our approach aligns with your needs. You can ask about EFT, how it differs from other therapy approaches, and what to expect from the process. We’ll provide honest feedback about whether emotionally focused therapy seems appropriate for your situation. There’s no pressure to commit; just an opportunity to learn more and see if this approach resonates with you.
Step 2: Comprehensive Assessment
In your first full sessions, we conduct thorough assessment to understand your relationship patterns, individual histories, and current struggles. For couple therapy, we’ll explore your relationship history and current dynamics, each partner’s attachment style and emotional patterns, specific conflicts or issues you’re facing, and strengths in your relationship. For individual therapy, we’ll examine your relationship patterns, emotional experience, and attachment history. This assessment helps us understand your unique situation and begin identifying the emotion and emotional patterns that need attention. The therapist helps you start recognizing your typical emotional responses and how they affect your relationships. By the end of assessment, you’ll have clearer understanding of what we’ll work on and how EFT can help.
Step 3: De-escalation Stage (Sessions 1-7 typically)
The first stage of EFT focuses on identifying and de-escalating negative patterns. During this phase, you’ll learn to recognize the cycle you’re stuck in, understand the emotions and attachment fears driving each position, see how you each contribute to the pattern, and begin stepping out of reactive positions. The therapist helps slow down your interactions to access primary emotions beneath surface reactions. You’ll begin practicing emotional awareness and expressing emotions more openly. This stage creates the safety needed for deeper work ahead. Many couples experience significant relief even in this phase as understanding replaces blame and compassion begins replacing defensiveness. The principles of emotion processing guide this work, helping you see emotions as informative rather than dangerous.
Step 4: Restructuring Stage (Sessions 8-15 typically)
In the second stage, the core transformation happens. This involves accessing and expressing deeper, more vulnerable emotions, one partner taking emotional risks by sharing attachment needs, the other partner responding with care and empathy, creating new patterns of connection and responsiveness, and having corrective emotional experiences that reshape the relationship. The therapist helps choreograph these key moments, ensuring safety while encouraging risk-taking. This is often where expressing emotion becomes truly transformative, as partners finally feel seen and responded to at the deepest level. You’ll experience how changing emotion with emotion actually works, as new positive emotions reshape old painful patterns. The awareness of emotion developed in earlier stages allows this deep work to unfold. Many couples describe this stage as the most powerful therapeutic work they’ve ever done.
Step 5: Consolidation Stage (Final Sessions)
The final stage focuses on consolidating changes and preparing you to maintain them independently. You’ll apply your new understanding and skills to specific issues, practice maintaining connection in various contexts, identify potential challenges and how to handle them, and celebrate the transformation you’ve achieved. The therapist helps you understand that the EFT principles you’ve learned will guide you for life. You’ve learned not just to solve current problems but to approach any future challenges from a place of secure connection and emotional attunement. Many couples complete intensive work in 15-20 sessions, though some need more or less depending on their situation. The goal is equipping you to help partners stay connected and to use emotion as a guide rather than threat. Follow-up sessions may be scheduled as needed to support continued growth.

Timeline and Duration:
How Long Does EFT Take?

EFT is typically a short-to-medium term therapy approach. Most couples complete the work in 15-20 sessions, though some may need fewer or more depending on the severity of distress and presence of complicating factors like trauma or affairs. Individual therapy using emotion-focused principles may be shorter or longer depending on goals and issues addressed.

Sessions typically occur weekly, at least initially. As you make progress, frequency may decrease. The structured nature of EFT means there’s a clear path and endpoint, unlike open-ended therapy. However, we don’t rush through stages before you’re ready. The process unfolds at a pace that respects your emotional capacity while encouraging growth.

Research shows that changes from EFT are lasting. Because the therapy works at the level of attachment bonds and emotion processing, not just surface behavior, the transformation tends to stick. Couples report maintaining improvements years after therapy ends. This makes EFT an efficient investment in your relationship’s long-term health and happiness.

Therapists Who Specialize in Emotion Focused Therapy

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Constance Leger
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Licensed Clinical Social Worker
LCSW #76698
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Kyra Zimmerman

Associate Marriage & Family Therapist
AMFT #138218
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Kat Wiles

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Aundrea Ruppert

Associate Marriage and Family Therapist
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Quentina Johnson

Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor
LPCC #19185
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Monica Ferraro

Associate Marriage and Family Therapist
AMFT #130104
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Common Questions About Emotionally Focused Therapy

Many people, particularly those who didn’t grow up in emotionally expressive environments, feel uncomfortable with emotional expression initially. This is very common and doesn’t prevent you from benefiting from EFT. The therapist helps you develop emotional awareness and expression skills gradually, starting where you are. You’ll learn that emotions provide important information and that expressing them can actually strengthen rather than weaken relationships. The process of learning emotion awareness and emotional expression is part of the therapy itself. EFT helps clients identify emotions even when this is initially difficult, teaching you to recognize and articulate what you’re feeling. Over time, most people find that becoming more comfortable with emotion enriches their relationships and their lives in general.
Unlike many therapy approaches that focus primarily on communication skills or problem-solving, EFT focuses on emotion and attachment as the primary drivers of relationship patterns. The therapy approach is based on the understanding that relationship distress stems from unmet attachment needs and difficulty accessing and expressing vulnerable emotions. While other approaches like behavior therapy might teach you how to communicate better, EFT helps you understand why you communicate the way you do and transforms the underlying emotional patterns. This focus on emotion and attachment, drawing from both clinical psychology research and neuroscience, makes EFT particularly powerful for creating lasting change rather than just teaching techniques that may fail under stress.
While it’s ideal when both partners are highly motivated, EFT can work even when one partner is more hesitant. The therapist helps create safety and builds trust gradually, allowing even reluctant partners to engage. Often, partners who initially resist become more engaged once they experience the therapist’s empathy and see that this isn’t about blame. The collaborative and respectful of clients’ nature of the approach helps both partners feel safe enough to participate. That said, both partners do need to attend sessions and be willing to try, even if motivation levels differ. If one partner absolutely refuses to participate, couple therapy isn’t possible, though individual therapy using emotion-focused principles might help you understand patterns and make changes from your side.
Many people, particularly those who didn’t grow up in emotionally expressive environments, feel uncomfortable with emotional expression initially. This is very common and doesn’t prevent you from benefiting from EFT. The therapist helps you develop emotional awareness and expression skills gradually, starting where you are. You’ll learn that emotions provide important information and that expressing them can actually strengthen rather than weaken relationships. The process of learning emotional awareness is part of the therapy itself. Over time, most people find that becoming more comfortable with emotion enriches their relationships and their lives in general.
Yes, EFT works with couples who have been struggling for extended periods. The length of distress doesn’t necessarily determine whether EFT will help; what matters more is whether you’re willing to engage with the process and whether sufficient positive emotion and connection remain to build on. Even couples who have been stuck in negative patterns for years can benefit because EFT addresses the underlying attachment fears and unmet needs driving those patterns. The research found that EFT helps couples across various levels of distress. However, honesty about your situation during assessment helps us determine if EFT is appropriate or if other interventions might be needed first. The therapist will assess factors like the presence of active affairs, substance abuse, or domestic violence that might need addressing before or alongside EFT.
EFT can benefit couples at any stage of relationship, including those who are dating, engaged, or in newer relationships. In fact, learning EFT principles early can help you build a strong foundation and avoid developing problematic patterns. For newer couples, the work might focus more on understanding attachment needs and building secure connection rather than repairing damage from years of conflict. Whether you’re committed life partners or exploring whether to deepen your relationship, emotionally focused therapy can help you understand your patterns and strengthen your emotional bond. The length of your relationship matters less than your willingness to engage with emotion and attachment needs.
Absolutely not. EFT focuses on universal attachment needs and emotional processes that apply to all humans regardless of gender or sexual orientation. The principles work equally well for LGBTQIA+ couples as for heterosexual couples because attachment and emotion are fundamental human experiences. In fact, EFT’s focus on attachment may be particularly relevant for LGBTQIA+ couples who may have faced invalidation or rejection related to their identities, affecting their attachment security. An EFT therapist should be affirming and knowledgeable about diverse relationship structures and identities. At our practice, we’re committed to providing inclusive, affirming care for all couples regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, or relationship structure.
If a crisis occurs during EFT, whether it’s discovery of an affair, job loss, health issue, or other major stressor, the therapist will help you navigate it while maintaining the therapeutic work. Sometimes crises require temporarily shifting focus to stabilize the situation before returning to the structured EFT process. The attachment security and emotion regulation skills you’re developing through EFT actually help you handle crises more effectively. The therapist provides additional support during crisis periods, potentially increasing session frequency or providing resources. The EFT model is flexible enough to address urgent needs while maintaining focus on the underlying relationship patterns and attachment bonds. Having a skilled therapist as a resource during crisis can make a significant difference in how you weather the storm together.
Legitimate EFT training comes from approved sources connected to the International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy (ICEEFT) and similar organizations. Therapists can pursue various levels of certification, with full certification requiring extensive training, supervision, and demonstrated competence. When seeking EFT, you can ask about the therapist’s training background, whether they’ve completed formal EFT training programs, if they receive supervision in EFT, and how extensively they use EFT in their practice. At our practice, we’re transparent about our training and approach. While not all effective EFT practitioners are formally certified, training and ongoing education in the EFT model ensure the therapy is delivered with fidelity to the principles that make it effective.
Individual mental health issues like depression and anxiety often improve through EFT couple therapy as the relationship becomes more secure and supportive. Research shows that relationship quality significantly affects mental health, so improving the relationship often reduces individual symptoms. The treatment of depression through emotion-focused approaches addresses how emotion regulation and attachment security affect mood. However, sometimes individual therapy for individuals experiencing severe symptoms is needed alongside or before couple work. The therapist will help assess what combination of individual and couple therapy makes sense for your situation. Mental health issues don’t prevent you from benefiting from EFT; they may just require thoughtful planning about how to structure treatment most effectively.
We understand that the cost of therapy is an important consideration. We accept most major insurance companies. You can check to see if we accept your insurance here. Many insurance plans do cover therapy. We also accept cash payments for clients who do not have or do not want to use insurance.

Ready to Transform Your Relationship Through EFT?

You don’t have to stay stuck in painful patterns or settle for emotional distance. Emotionally focused therapy offers a proven path to deeper connection, secure attachment, and lasting relationship happiness. Whether you’re a couple in distress or simply wanting to strengthen your bond, EFT can help you create the relationship you desire.

Your first step is simple: schedule a free consultation. We’ll discuss your situation, explain how EFT works, and determine if this approach is right for you. This conversation is confidential, informative, and free from pressure. You deserve a relationship where you feel truly seen, valued, and securely connected.

Complimentary 10-minute consultation. Let’s see if we’re the right fit for your needs.

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Call Us: 559-633-9030

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Crisis Support:

If you’re experiencing a mental health crisis, please call 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) or go to your nearest emergency room.
Our practice is not equipped for crisis intervention.