Couples Coaching
I’m incredibly excited to be offering this service to my clients. While grief is at the core of my practice, couples work is a close second.
Attachment is an integral part of our human experience; it shapes how we form relationships. While attachment is often talked about in the context of childhood, it also holds true in the realm of marriage, where our attachments to our primary caregivers can shape how we relate, respond, and connect with our partners.
It was during my own period of loss that I began to delve deeper into the concept of attachment and its influence on relationships. The passing of someone close triggered my attachment system, causing a profound shift in my own marriage. This pivotal moment introduced me to the transformative power of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) in navigating attachment-related challenges.
By understanding attachment theory, we gain valuable insight into how our early relationships with primary caregivers shape our attachment styles and impact our adult relationships. Our attachment styles, whether secure or insecure, heavily influence our patterns of relating and responding to our partners. These patterns can foster emotional closeness and security or lead to cycles of conflict and disconnection.
Enter Emotionally Focused Therapy—a well-established approach that works on the foundation of attachment theory. EFT focuses on identifying and reshaping negative patterns of interaction within relationships, ultimately fostering safer emotional connections between partners. It endeavors to create a secure base from which both partners can explore and express their needs, desires, and vulnerabilities, leading to greater intimacy and a stronger bond. With the guidance of a skilled EFT therapist, you learn to recognize the triggers that activate your attachment system. By identifying these triggers, you learn to communicate your needs and fears to your partner in a way that allows for connection on a deeper level and fosters understanding. Through EFT, we explore the underlying emotions that drive negative cycles and learn healthier ways of engaging and responding to each other's needs.
Emotionally Based Therapy
My husband and I had to both identify how our own attachment relationships were impacting our ability to connect during an incredibly difficult time in our lives. I drank the kool-aid, and now I am selling it. EFT is hands down, the best approach to couple’s counseling out there. I say that from a professional stand point, but also a personal one. EFT introduces you to a connection that you didn’t even know existed.
Drink the kool-aid. I promise you it is worth it.
What is EFT?
EFT (Emotionally Based Therapy) is based on 50 years of research on bonding. Bonding between mother and child, and bonding between partners in an intimate relationship. EFT provides a map to uncover, what matters in a relationship, how they work and where they go wrong in addition to how to make the relationship right. The goal of EFT is not to enhance communication patterns, or learn how to “fight fair” but to create a secure emotional bond between two partners. Change happens during the process, in session.
EFT has changed the way we view relationships. The number one phrase searched on Google last year was, “What is love.” We have struggled for years to attempt to make sense out of what we were told doesn’t make sense. We now know that not only does it make sense, but we can shape it. In a world plagued with chronic loneliness, there is hope that the longing to belong can be eliminated, and your partner can be the one to help do this.
