The content of the presentation contains basic therapeutic stages and necessary skills and techniques applied on each stage of the therapy.

1. EMOTION FOCUSSED
THERAPY
PRESENTER: Mr. Varun Muthuchamy
CHAIRPERSON: Dr. Anisha Shah

2. Introduction
• Emotion focussed therapy is a brief, validated and systemic
approach to change the rigid interaction pattern and
emotional responses of distressed couples’ and to promote
the development of secure bond between partners.
• EFT formulated with the basic premise that the emotions are
connected with needs and the emotions has adaptive
potential innately that if activated and worked through, can
help people change problematic emotional states and
interpersonal relationships

3. Introduction
• Types of emotional responses:
• Primary adaptive: Initial emotional responses to a given
situation that have a clear beneficial value in the present
situation. (e.g. SADNESS at loss and FEAR at threat)
• Primary adaptive emotion responses "are attended to and
expressed in therapy in order to access the adaptive
information and action tendency to guide problem
solving”.

4. Introduction
• Types of emotional responses:
• Primary maladaptive: Emotional responses to a given
situation which is no longer useful. (e.g. SADNESS at the
joy of others and FEARFUL at non-harmful situation)
• Primary maladaptive emotion responses are accessed in
therapy with the aim of transforming the emotion scheme
through new experiences.

5. Introduction
• Types of emotional responses:
• Secondary reactive: Emotional responses to prior
emotional responses. (e.g. ANGRY about being angry and
SAD about their sadness)
• Secondary reactive emotion responses are accessed and
explored in therapy in order to increase awareness of
them and to arrive at more primary and adaptive emotion
responses

6. Introduction
• Types of emotional responses:
• Instrumental: Emotional responses are experienced and
expressed by a person because the person has learned
that the response has an effect on others. (e.g.
CROCODILE TEARS- instrumental sadness, BULLYING-
instrumental anger)
• IE are explored in therapy to increase the awareness of
their presence and to understand their effect on
interpersonal functioning.

7. Tornado Funnel Diagram
A. Experiential therapy
A
B
C
A
B
C
Theoretical Background
B. Systemic theory
C. Attachment theory
EFT

8. Stages and techniques in Therapy
• Engagement
• Assessment
• Reframing Interactional Cycle
• Choreographing Change
• Emotional Engagement
• Termination

9. ENGAGEMENT
• Goal is to create an alliance.
• Engagement is an ongoing process throughout the therapy
process.
• Goals and agendas of all individual in the room has to be
taken.
• By the end of this process the therapist must have an idea
about the major conflicts among the participants, their basic
interactional cycles and attachment position of each
individual.

10. ASSESSMENT
• Goal is to identify negative interactional attachment cycles
and the feelings (overt and vulnerable) that everyone
experiences during these cycles.
• Technique:
• Track and reflect:
• Interrupt and redirect: Used when one individual distracts
out from the topic of interactional cycle.

11. REFRAMING INTERACTIONAL CYCLE
• Goal is to access the unacknowledged vulnerable feelings of
all participants in therapy in the context of their defensive
emotional experiences that hold their interactional cycle in
place.
• Technique:
• Validation: Validation helps them to stay in contact with
their emotional experiences and removes one major block to
their engagement with their emotional states.

12. REFRAMING INTERACTIONAL CYCLE
• Heightening of emotions: Heightening is a way of helping
individuals fully experience and resonate with their
vulnerable emotions (ONLY); in addition, heightening is a
way of creating powerful emotional experiences in the
session.
• Change only occurs in the context of high arousal of
vulnerable affect.

13. REFRAMING INTERACTIONAL CYCLE
• Evocative Responding: This intervention focuses on the
tentative, unclear, or emerging aspects of individuals‘
experiences. It is presented in the form of reflection or
questions.
• d
• Empathic speculation: The therapist makes inferences about
an individual‘s current state and experience from nonverbal,
interactional, and contextual cues.
• The goal is not to offer insight or to label, but to facilitate
more intense experiencing through the new understandings
about emotions, thoughts, and behaviors that will arise.

14. CHOREOGRAPHING CHANGE
• Goal is to alter the interactional pattern among the
individuals (withdrawn to express and blamer to express
vulnerability).
• They are able to remain fully engaged in the interactional
cycles, expressing their own vulnerable feelings. In so doing,
each person is explicitly taking a new position with the
others in the room and this new position elicits a
reorganization of the interactional cycles

15. CHOREOGRAPHING CHANGE
• Restructuring interactions: Therapist encourages enactment
of the expression of vulnerable feelings thus turning new
emotional experience into new interaction.
• Example of withdrawer restructuring the interaction:

16. CHOREOGRAPHING CHANGE
• Each person in the therapy room sees the others differently
and interacts with them in a new way.
• Withdrawn family members are fully engaged in interactions,
experiencing their own vulnerable feelings and sharing them
with others.
• The more critical individuals are fully softened and have
acknowledged and shared their own attachment desires and
vulnerable feelings.
• Contact between all individuals in treatment has become
intense and authentic.

17. EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT
• Goal is to highlight the emergence of new solutions to
relationship problems.
• q
• The therapist becomes less directive and is a guide to keep
interactions on the new level of experiencing one another.
• x
• Techniques:
• Encouragement and support:
• Redirection: The therapist teaches participants to begin
interrupting their own negative interactional cycles and to
reframe it in more adaptive interactional cycles.

18. TERMINATION
• Goal is to consolidate changes that have been made and look
toward the future.
• All participants should be able to reflect on the changes they
have witnessed and made as well as the feelings these
changes have evoked.

19. TERMINATION:
• Aftercare Teaching: A plan should be discussed with all
clients for relapse management and prevention.
• The plan should be in the context of how they can expect
feelings of disconnection again at times, but what ways can
they reconnect with one another.

20. END STATE
• All participants in therapy should appear more flexible in
their relationship positions to one another
• All participants monitor and regulate negative affect in an
emotionally engaged manner.
• A sense of connectedness exists between all participants as
well as a decrease in negative cycles

21. References
• Greenberg, L.S., & Johnson, S.M. (1990). Emotional change processes
in couples therapy. In E.A. Blechman (Ed.), Emotions and the family:
For better or for worse (pp. 137-153). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
• Johnson, S. (1999). Emotionally focused couple therapy: Straight to
the heart. In J. Donovan (Ed.), Short-term couple therapy (pp. 13-42).
New York: Guilford.
• Johnson SM, Bradley B, Furrow J, et al: Becoming an Emotionally
Focused Couple Therapist: The Workbook. New York, Brunner-
Routledge, 2005

22. THaNK YoU