What is the EFT Center of Los Angeles?

Members of the EFT Center of Los Angeles join with each other to share resources, create skill building opportunities, and organize training events for professionals interested in EFT.  The EFT Center will provide a website for publicizing EFT events and training opportunities in the Los Angeles and surrounding areas, and will maintain a directory of LA-area EFT therapists who are also members of International Center for Emotionally Focused Therapy.  

What is EFT?

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is a robust, well-known humanistic approach to psychotherapy formulated in the 1980’s by Dr. Sue Johnson and developed in tandem with the science of adult attachment, a profound developmental theory of personality, affect regulation, and intimate relationships.  This science has expanded our understanding of individual health and well being, as well as the nature of love relationships and family bonds.  

Emotionally Focused Therapy is most widely known as a powerful model of Couple Therapy (EFTC), however it is also used to address individual depression, anxiety, PTSD (EFIT), and to help families build stronger bonds (EFFT).  

EFT starts by acknowledging that people are inherently social, and that we are biologically hardwired to create and maintain strong emotional ties with our partner and loved ones.  With respect to relationships, this means acknowledging that you are attached to your partner and rely on your partner and your family members to fully thrive as well as mitigate the stress of life’s challenges. In its essence, everyone wants a positive answer to the question “Are you there for me?” You want to know that your important other is accessible, responsive, and engaged.

EFT sees distress in relationships as centered in the loss of secure emotional connection, and that a negative cycle or “dance” is established when that loss of connection is experienced. These cycles are often characterized by anger, criticism, leaving, or appearing indifferent, to name a few. Once established, these cycles can crop up over the slightest issue, and over time be corrosive to the bonds of trust and security in the relationship. EFT aims to help couples and family members stop these negative cycles by first identifying and mapping out this cycle, then  identifying and articulating needs and clarifyingclarify emotional signals in a way that helps the other to have greater understanding, compassion and responsiveness. In turn, a more secure, strong resilient bond is cultivated.   This process leaves room for couples and families to experience one another in new ways, and can be powerfully transformative in relationships.  

As it pertains to individuals, EFT understands and holds as a central tenet that individuals facing the struggles and stress of life do the best they can  to get through.  Though the strategies to survive may get one through the night, they may end up keeping one feeling stuck, and can give rise to and perpetuate symptoms of anxiety and depression, feeling overwhelmed, hopeless or helpless.  EFIT helps individuals understand better the strategies they have developed to navigate the world, to assess how it may help and hinder them, and to establish new ways to engage with themselves and others.  This path can lead one to a more robust feeling of personal empowerment,  more fulfilling interpersonal relationships, improved self esteem, symptom reduction and general sense of wellbeing. 

EFT for couples meets APA’s “Gold Standard” for empirically validated intervention in the field of psychology.  Over three decades of research on EFT for couples has shown that it is effective in 70% to 90% of the cases.  For an extensive list of the body of research conducted on EFT, go to EFT Research (iceeft.com).  

EFT has also generated many relationship education programs, for example Hold Me Tight: Conversations for Connection and its online version www.holdmetightonline.com, and Healing Hearts Together for couples dealing with cardiac dysfunction