Emotion-Focused Therapy

Emotions in and of themselves aren’t bad or good, it’s the way they are expressed that can have negative impacts on your life and on those around you. Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) helps you identify emotions, their triggers and their impacts. EFT acknowledges that it is just as detrimental to avoid emotions as it is to express them negatively. It is a collaborative approach between the therapist and client to explore reasons why you avoid unpleasant emotions, why some emotions are stronger than others and how you release those emotions.

The way emotions play out in our lives impacts everything and learning how to express emotions in healthy ways can benefit you greatly. Learning how to channel rage at work or fear in the spotlight can help you remove patterns that are preventing you from achieving your goals and creating a positive, fulfilled life.

Benefits of Emotion-Focused Therapy

• Improved communication skills
• Improved relationships
• Improved self-esteem and self-awareness
• Decreased mood disorder symptoms

How does Emotion-Focused Therapy work?

Emotion-Focused Therapy works through one-on-one talk sessions with your therapist with a focus on emotions and emotional reactions. During an EFT session with your therapist, you will talk through challenges and the happenings of daily life, identifying emotions that arise with each event. Together, you and your therapist consider your reactions to emotions and how they impact situations in life. You’ll find patterns that contribute negatively to your life and discover the reasons why emotions arise when they do. Through EFT sessions, you and your therapist will find tools to change the way you react to emotions and change the impact emotions have in your life.

Why is Emotion-Focused Therapy effective?

Emotion-Focused Therapy gives you a non-judgmental space where you can unpack and analyze your emotions. Through EFT sessions, therapists work with clients to identify strong emotions and identify the way you react to those emotions. Every emotional reaction will have either a positive or negative impact on your life. Through EFT, you retrain yourself to react differently to strong emotions, thus changing the way you interact with the world around you.

How is Emotion-Focused Therapy used?

Emotion-Focused Therapy is used in a variety of ways because emotions impact our lives in a variety of ways. EFT can help with mood disorders and anger issues, eating disorders and body image issues and with PTSD and other stress disorders. Through focusing on the power of our reactions to emotions, we can learn how to better cope with events in our lives and build a path to a positive future.

Emotion-Focused Therapy maintains that emotions aren’t negative or positive, they are indicators of how you feel about the things going on around you. How you react to the emotions that arise on a day-to-day basis is what can have a negative or positive impact on your life. Through EFT, you will retrain your emotional reactions to contribute positively to your wellbeing, your outlook and your life in general.