So….What is Emotionally Focused Therapy?

As counsellors working from an EFT perspective ,we prioritise the emotional world.  We believe that lasting change comes by making sense of emotions through reflection, awareness and expression .

We have emotions because ….emotions

  1. They tell us what is important to us.
  2. They tell us what we need or want. That helps us figure out what to do.
  3. They give us a sense of consistency and wholeness.

There are  3 main kinds of problems people can have with their emotions:

  1. Sometimes the emotion that dominates is not the one we need to give attention to. This may be hidden underneath or inside it. Like becoming tearful when really you feel angry
  2. Sometimes the level of emotion is not right: Its too much and it overwhelms us .Perhaps its too little or too distant and we can’t use it to help us. When that happens ,we need to get the right “working level” .
  3. Sometimes we get stuck in an emotion because we are missing an important bit of it.  Either what its about , how we feel it in our body or because we are not able to put it into words.  Because we can’t connect make sense of the emotion we don’t know what action to take. When that happens we need to figure out which piece is missing and fill it in.

Constructive unpleasant emotions often contain great guiding wisdom. They can act as cues and direct our growth.

And being emotions, they often contain the energy to get the job done. Properly harnessed emotions often lead to profound shifts in our well-being.

Befriending and taking time to understand your emotional world can lead to powerful changes .

More information about EFT can be found at The Institute for Emotionally Focused Therapy’s website.

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