EFFT: Emotionally Focused
Therapy for Families…
& Resources for Families
The power of Emotionally Focused Therapy is now being applied to families!
As the ICEEFT website states:
Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) follows the principles and practices of Emotionally Focused Therapy to restore connection and promote resilience in family relationships. The principle goal of EFFT is to re-establish more secure family patterns where attachment and caregiving responses are effective and emotional bonds are repaired. These resources inform a network of security that provides the flexibility and closeness necessary for families to promote individual growth and meaningful relationships across generations.
The EFFT Approach
The EFT process of change in EFFT focuses on stabilizing a family’s negative interaction pattern, restructuring parent and child interactions, and consolidating the felt security gained through these new patterns of connection. Following principles of attachment science, the EFFT therapist guides the family to new patterns of parental availability, responsiveness and coherent attachment communications as they face developmental change and life challenges. In EFFT, the focus is on addressing blocks in parental caregiving responses and understanding the child or adolescent’s behavior in terms of attachment needs or fears. These blocks result from constrained, stuck responses to misattunement and injuries in family relationships. The EFFT therapist tracks the generational influences impacting these blocks and works through rigid patterns that disrupt attachment communication between parents, siblings and between parent and child. Work with parents focuses on the building of a coherent parenting team. The process of EFFT often moves quickly as family members become more responsive, accessible, and engaged with previously unacknowledged attachment-related emotions and needs.
Goals:
Accessing and expanding awareness of unacknowledged feelings associated with the family’s negative pattern.
Reframing family distress and child problems within relation blocks reinforcing this distress.
Promoting awareness and access to underlying caregiving intentions and disowned attachment related needs.
Facilitating the sharing of unmet attachment needs and effective caregiving responses.
- From: https://iceeft.com/what-is-eft/ (2020)
If you want a therapist who is specially trained in EFFT (Emotionally Focused Family Therapy), check out the Find a Therapist page of the Central PA EFT website and look for “Family” under “EFT Focus” for the therapists listed there.
Also search the global ICEEFT website’s Find a Therapist page and when you search, look for those therapists who are certified in “EFFT.”
What is EFFT (Emotionally Focused Family Therapy) and how does it help a family change and heal?
Dr. Sue Johnson describes the power of Emotionally Focused Family Therapy.
Check out these RESOURCES
to help your family’s bond!
(click on the image to get linked to the resource)
EFT Books to help your family’s connection:
EFT-Congruent and Attachment-Based
Books & Videos for Parents:
The Baby Book is like the instruction manual you wish came out with the baby! And The Attachment Parenting Book provides a valuable overarching philosophy of parenting that will serve you well for years. Feel free to reach out to me if you are wanting other recommendations on specific topics. (Click on the images to get linked to the resource.)
Videos:
Love Sense: From Infant to Adult (Still Face Experiments):
This video explains about attachment responses in families over the life span, how crucial it is to get a response from those who matter most to us, and why we go into attachment panic when we get a blank face.
The Story of the Weeping Camel:
This is a beautiful video of attachment in nature and how a Mongolian community came around a Mama camel and her baby when it was in Failure to Thrive and not nursing. Watch this video and notice how the camel singer attuned to the Mama. As she and the community supported the Mama, the Mama was able to relax and send signals to the baby that helped the baby come, get re-regulated, and have it’s needs met too. Notice there was some protest in the Mama at first, and even for the baby, but the singer continued attuning to the Mama and the natural attachment system kicked in as they felt soothed, safe, and supported.
There are lessons here for us parents! We need our community behind us to help us, and a safe someone (our partner, therapist, etc.) to tune in to us. And as we can center and get soothed, we can tune in to our children and provide what they need as our caregiver intent and parental heart are more clearly communicated.
Quotes for Parenting and Families:
“Belonging leads to becoming.”
“Connecting before correcting.”
“What’s shareable is bearable.”
Websites/Links for Parenting from Attachment Lens:
Hand in Hand Parenting is a great website with lots of resources to help parent kids from a place of connection. Super helpful!
Here Dr. Laura Markham, a Clinical Psychologist committed to attachment theory, helps parents figure out responses to the challenges of parenting while nurturing the bond AND learning how to care for ourselves as parents so WE feel better too!
Resources for Helping Children Through Grief:
FOR PARENTS WANTING TO HELP THEIR CHILDREN ANTICIPATE, PROCESS, AND WALK THROUGH LOSS AND GRIEF IN A CONNECTED, SUPPORTED MANNER, by Dr. Elisa Joy Seibert, Ph.D., M.Div.
How to talk with Children about Death by Delores Keunning - from her excellent book, Helping People Through Grief (1987). (Since this is a copyrighted resource, email me separately and I’ll be glad to help you find it.)
Parents with LGBTQ+ kids:
As a parent, you want to be supportive and attuning to what your kids need, while also making space for your own heart, feelings, raw spots. In EFT we know that we need to lean in to our partner to load-share in those moments, and then attune to our kids.
If you have kids who are LGBTQ+, check out the wealth of resources on the LGBTQ+ page under the Resources tab on this site. Be sure to check through all of the sections. There are lots of helps there! And a section just for Parents!! Feel free to reach out if you would like more support! I am glad to be here for you!
Workshops:
Use the Science of Attachment to help your family’s relationships! Consider a …
“Hold Me Tight®- Let Me Go” workshop for Parents and Teens, or
“Hold Me Tight®- Let Me Be” workshop for Parents and Adult Children.
The revolutionary new Hold Me Tight® educational program developed for couples has now been adapted to help parents and their older children improve their bond. This relationship education and enhancement program can help you learn how to exit negative cycles, create space for everyone’s emotions, get connection, and strengthen your bond.
Click here to find a workshop near you or online! (And if you don’t see an option coming up, just ask Dr. Seibert and she’ll be glad to check another way through ICEEFT to see if she can find one for you.)
Hold Me Tight® - Let Me Go for parents and teens
(Hold Me Tight® is a registered trademark to Dr. Sue Johnson.)