Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy
Helping to bring lasting change to your relationship
Emotionally Focussed Couples Therapy
Emotionally Focussed Couples Therapy has been created from the enormous amount of scientific research that has been undertaken in the last 25 years to understand how and why good relationships do or don’t work. It is at present the best tested and most successful of couples’ therapies that are available. More than 7 out of 10 couples reported that a course of Emotionally Focussed Couples Therapy helped them recover completely from marital distress. And just under 20% said that their relationship had “significantly improved”.
Some people associate scientific research with sterilised laboratories and logical detective work and not with love and emotion, which has so long been the preserve of poets, writers, musicians and singers. Some are at first surprised and even sceptical that scientific research has turned its attention to the theme of love.
However, this painstaking detective work has been aided by modern technology which can now look inside the brain as it is functioning and discover how love does and doesn’t work.
In the past 25 years, these scientists have scrutinised a wide variety of couples and analysed how they interact one video frame at a time. They have studied couples who are able to thrive in connection with each other as well as to couples experiencing distress and pain and distance.
These investigations have produced verifiable, repeatable and indisputable evidence about how love works and what gets in the way of a healthy and fulfilling relationship.
Emotionally Focussed Couples Therapy has studied and learned from how some people are able to have a great relationship and it teaches its therapists how to share these insights effectively with couples who are struggling with all sorts of issues, including – finding it hard to be close – a loss of connection and intimacy – feeling stuck in unhappy ways of relating and can’t find a way out – arguing, fighting, distrust and disappointments – abortion and miscarriages – an affair – sexual health – differences over finances including bankruptcy – esteem – depression – mental health and addiction issues.
Now there is realistic hope for all couples who are struggling in their relationships and this hope is based on observable and repeatable research which has been tried and tested.
The International Centre for Emotionally Focussed Couples Therapy, led by Dr. Sue Johnson in Canada [drsuejohnson.com], has made all this research available to therapists and to the general public; its training provides the therapist with the means to offer attuned support for couples so they can restore and then deepen their love connection
This offers hope to couples who find themselves just getting by, or surviving a relationship that promised so much more. Relationships don’t have to be an endurance test where we forgot how to love the person we want to love. The way to healthy and happy relationships is no longer a mystery or a matter of luck.
It turns out that there are patterns to how love does and doesn’t work. By studying in close detail the couples who find their way out of their stuck patterns of relating, clearly discernible steps can be seen that are recognisable and predictable. This provides a frame of orientation which all couples can benefit from.
Books and On Line Resources
There isn’t enough space in a website to go into the details of Emotionally Focussed Couples Therapy, but I will offer a brief overview. If you want to find out more about this method, you will find that it is laid out clearly in the following 2 books : –
“An Emotionally Focused Workbook for Couples: The Two of Us” by Veronica Kallos-Lilly and Jennifer Fitzgerald
Also, if you search on line for “drsuejohnson.com” or go on YouTube, you should find many clips that will give you a feel for what Emotionally Focussed Couples Therapy is and how it might benefit your relationship. It has been proven to work for relationships and marriages that are long term, medium term and even relatively new. It works for every “kind” of couple – hetero-sexual couples, same sex couples and inter-racial couples.
A Brief Overview of Emotionally Focussed Couples Therapy and What to Expect from Your Sessions
Each couple brings their own unique difficulties to therapy and it is the purpose of therapy to discover what that is and then go about creating lasting change which strengthens your capacity to express yourselves and enjoy spending time together once again.
Some couples come to therapy because there is a sense of something missing rather than a big conflict. Perhaps distance has taken the place of intimacy. If this is your situation we will work to understand what has been lost and find effective and reliable ways to communicate about is what is really important to you.
Other couples come to therapy because everything that they have tried on their own hasn’t worked. They are stuck in patterns of tension and conflict and whatever they try to do adds fuel to the fire and doesn’t bring the resolution that they had hoped for.
The first step in a journey back to a healthy relationship involves creating a safer space for you to lay the foundations necessary for a deeper, lasting change. For couples who are suffering from stuck cycles of arguing which end up going nowhere, we will work to help you to decrease the tension, calm the troubled waters and create a safe place for you to communicate more effectively about what is important for each of you.
Emotionally Focussed Couples Therapy sees the process of couples’ therapy unfolding in three stages.
Stage One
We will identify the places where you struggle and then help you to find new and more effective ways of addressing the difficult conversations in your relationship.
I will bring an empathic and impartial presence to our meetings. I am interested in how each of you experience your relationship from your own perspective and I want to help both of you feel seen and heard in what is important to you. Whether you think you are good at talking about how you feel or not, most people know inside themselves what is important to them.
Once we have established ways to decrease the conflicts and arguments between you and your partner, we can start having different, more connected conversations about the particular difficulties you find so hard in your relationship.
During this phase, couples who are able to meet weekly generally experience the best results.
Stage Two
With a more secure base, we can establish reliable and long-lasting change that helps you engage each other without getting caught in escalating cycles of conflict and distance. This puts you in charge of how your partnership can work; the aim of Emotionally Focussed Couples Therapy is to help you both to move from surviving to thriving together.
We will work to become aware of the underlying motivations beneath your specific and unique difficulties; we will come to understand what triggers are at play as you communicate throughout your days together. And with this growing awareness will come the opportunity to change your dance steps so you can create more satisfying and beneficial ways of collaborating in your partnership together.
As this phase develops, some couples continue to meet weekly while other couples choose to meet fortnightly.
Stage Three
This allows you to strengthen and build on the foundations of your established in the first two stages, so you can reap the rewards of your hard work and talk about how you want to apply the benefits to the different areas of your life.
In this stage, many couples will be electing to meet fortnightly.
Emotionally Focussed Couples Therapy is not intended as a long term therapy, but please note that in the case of an affair, the therapy would generally need to last longer in order to fully address the situation, perhaps up to a year.
It is a tried and tested approach with verified results; please feel free to get in touch by phone or email and see what benefits Emotionally Focussed Couples Therapy can bring to the hopes and dreams of your couple.
