Emotionally Focused Therapy

Emotionally focused therapy and emotion-focused therapy (EFT) are related humanistic approaches to psychotherapy that aim to resolve emotional and relationship issues with individuals, couples and families. They combine experiential therapy techniques, including person-centered and Gestalt therapies, with systemic therapy and attachment theory, on the central premise that emotions influence cognition, motivate behavior and are strongly linked to needs. Treatment goals include transforming maladaptive behaviors such as emotional avoidance and developing awareness, acceptance, expression and regulation of emotion along with understanding of relationships; EFT is usually a short-term treatment of eight to twenty sessions. Emotion-focused therapy for individuals was originally known as process-experiential therapy and is still referred to by that name in some contexts, and it is distinct from emotion-focused coping, a separate concept describing coping strategies for managing emotions, though EFT has been used to improve clients' emotion-focused coping abilities.