If you were to magically teleport into counselors’ offices across the country, you’d likely hear them asking their clients some variation of “And how does that make you feel?” or “How do you experience that feeling in your body?” The following article will shed light on why counselors have such a persistent curiosity about emotion and introduce you to a style of therapy that was designed to help clients resolve their bad feelings.

What is Emotion-Focused Therapy?

Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) is a type of talk therapy that was created in the 1980’s by Psychologists Laura Rice, Leslie Greenberg and Robert Elliot (Elliott & Greenberg, 2021). Before they created EFT, they first conducted research on the process of how clients made positive changes in therapy (Rice & Greenberg, 1984). By reverse engineering recorded counseling sessions, they found that therapy was most impactful when counselors helped clients to process their emotions. This finding was in contrast to other types of therapy which believed the counselor’s main role was to help clients change unhelpful thought patterns (Elliott, 2004).

Further research focused on how counselors could best facilitate a client’s emotional processing. The results showed that counselors needed to be highly attentive to their clients by offering a balance of being both passive and active during sessions. Simply put, if counselors knew how to “read the room”, they would know when to alternate from simply being good listeners to being active emotional processing “guides”. These findings were formulated into a model of therapy which later became known as Emotion-Focused Therapy.

What is emotion and why is it important in therapy?

Emotion can be thought of as a guide that communicates with us about our fundamental needs (Elliott & Greenberg, 2021). Fear tells us to seek safety, sadness motivates us to seek comfort, and joy lets us know when something is going right in our lives. Although emotion is believed to be generally helpful, EFT recognizes that our emotions can also cause us to feel stuck, bad, or not good about ourselves. Likewise, feeling too much emotion can make us overwhelmed, and having too little of emotion can make us feel detached. When our emotions are functioning efficiently, they help us to survive and thrive.

In EFT, problems like depression and anxiety are believed to be the result of emotions that have not been fully resolved (Elliott, 2004). Unpacking unresolved emotions by ourselves can be difficult because they often reside outside of our everyday conscious awareness. Sigmond Freud called this phenomenon “the unconscious”. Modern psychology refers to these hidden emotions as “implicit schemas” (Ecker et al., 2022). The general task of EFT is to activate, explore, express, and reflect upon implicit schemas in a safe therapeutic relationship. This process can help clients overcome negative emotion.

What does Emotion-Focused Therapy look like?

Emotion-Focused Therapy starts by creating a strong therapeutic alliance. EFT counselors strive to be non-judgmental, authentic, compassionate, present, and curious about the inner world of their clients. This type of bond is not only crucial for therapeutic work, it is believed to be healing in and of itself (Rogers, 1995). EFT counselors do not work from a predetermined program. Client and counselor collaborate to determine the goals for therapy. The only agenda of EFT counselors is to fully present with their clients and to offer them helpful ways to process their negative emotions. Sessions can range from meaningful dialogue focused on the client's feelings to in-session exercises designed to access complicated emotions, all of which is done at the pace of each individual client.

If you're interested in experiencing the transformative power of Emotion-Focused Therapy, don't hesitate to reach out to us today at 719-362-0558. Our team of compassionate counselors is here to support you on your journey towards emotional healing and empowerment. Take the first step towards a brighter tomorrow and contact us now.

References

Ecker, B., Group, T. &. F., Ticic, R., & Hulley, L. (2022). Unlocking the emotional brain: Eliminating Symptoms at Their Roots Using Memory Reconsolidation. Routledge.

Elliott, R. (2004). Learning emotion-focused therapy: The process-experiential approach to change. In American Psychological Association eBooks. https://doi.org/10.1037/10725-000

Elliott, R., & Greenberg, L. (2021). Emotion-Focused counselling in action. Counselling in Action Series.

Rice, L. N., & Greenberg, L. S. (1984). Patterns of change: Intensive Analysis of Psychotherapy Process. Guilford Publication.

Rogers, C. R. (1995). On becoming a person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

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