Couples Counseling
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT/EFCT) is a research-backed and proven method designed to help couples break free from negative patterns, foster secure attachments, and build lasting emotional connections. Grounded in attachment theory, EFT focuses on identifying and transforming the emotional responses that underlie relationship conflicts, as well as connecting thoughts and meaning making as well as corresponding action tendencies. The central premise is that by addressing deep-seated emotions and attachment needs, couples can create a secure and loving bond.
Key Principles of EFT:
1. Understanding Attachment: EFT emphasizes the significance of attachment bonds in adult relationships. It explores how people respond emotionally to their partner's needs and vulnerabilities, how individuals make sense of their own world and their partner’s world, and how they move further or closer apart in the process.
2. Identifying Patterns: EFT helps couples recognize negative interaction patterns that contribute to distress. By understanding these patterns, couples can interrupt the cycle of conflict and create positive, supportive dynamics.
3. Promoting Emotional Regulation: Through EFT, couples learn to regulate their emotions more effectively. This includes expressing needs and fears in a way that fosters empathy and understanding from their partner.
4. Creating Secure Bonds: The ultimate goal of EFT is to create a secure emotional bond between partners. By reshaping how couples connect on an emotional level, EFT facilitates a deeper sense of intimacy and trust.
Research Support for EFT: (view more at https://iceeft.com/eft-research-3/)
Numerous research studies have demonstrated the efficacy of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy:
1. High Success Rates: Studies have consistently shown that EFT is associated with a significant improvement in relationship satisfaction. Couples who undergo EFT often report higher levels of connection and reduced relationship distress.
2. Long-Term Benefits: Research indicates that the positive effects of EFT are not only immediate but also enduring. Couples often maintain improvements in their relationship well beyond the conclusion of therapy.
3. Reduced Relapse Rates: Compared to other forms of couples therapy, EFT has been found to have lower relapse rates, suggesting that the changes made during therapy are more likely to be sustained over time.
4. Positive Impact on Individual Well-being: EFT not only enhances relationship satisfaction but has also been associated with improvements in individual well-being, including decreased symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Embark on a journey of emotional healing and relational growth with Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy. You and your partner will be guided through a process that has been scientifically proven to revitalize relationships and create lasting bonds. Invest in the health and happiness of your marriage by exploring the transformative power of EFT.
Couple’s therapy intensives are a short-term, concentrated form of therapy for couples, designed to revitalize and strengthen your relationship through the proven approach of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT). Couples are offered three hour blocks of time, offered two weeks apart to start and three weeks apart as the intensive model wraps up. This approach allows couples the convenience of receiving larger blocks of time and more potential progress at an increased pace. The intensive format may be preferable for couple who have busy schedules and are seeking uninterrupted time to focus on their relationship. For more information, use the contact form and we will respond to inquiries to answer questions and more fully explain what to expect.
What can we expect in Couples Counseling?
Couples Counseling helps couples identify the predictable and understandable patterns that have developed over time...the ones that have prevented you both from connecting in the way you would like. You will be assisted to identify goals, track and label your negative interaction cycles, restructure the bond between you both, and then consolidate and integrate the changes into new ways of being connected with one another.
What are couples counseling sessions like?
Sessions are generally one-hour, though longer sessions are available upon request. Your counselor will act as a process consultant, tracking the important details of how you interact, deepening your understanding of and experience of emotional states, and sharing those with your partner.
What is the frequency of sessions, and for how long?
EFT is a short-term (8-20 sessions depending on the level of distress), structured therapy. Research studies find that 70-75% of couples move from distress to recovery in 10-12 sessions and 90% show significant improvement. It is a present-focused, non-blaming, humanistic, and client-centered model. It is currently the best delineated and most empirically validated couples therapy of the past 25 years. Couples typically meet every two weeks to start, and often space out to every three weeks approaching completion of services. Additional "booster" sessions are always available as needed following completion of couples counseling. Many couples continue the process beyond 8-20 sessions, as they continue to move away from the original stressors that brought them in and toward the connection they have been desiring.
Will you see us individually too?
Outside of one early session where the therapist may choose to meet with each partner briefly (regarding the couples counseling process), our therapists will not simultaneously see individuals for ongoing couples therapy and ongoing individual therapy simultaneously. The reason for this is that the research indicates best practices for the couples therapist to engage in couples counseling only, as forming therapeutic relationships outside the couples counseling process has the potential to create perceived bias, as well as the complexity of maintaining confidentiality of individual sessions versus couples sessions.
If an individual would like ongoing therapy for himself or herself, that is possible once the couples counseling process has completed. We do not recommend switching back and forth between individual and couples modalities. If you cannot decide, we would recommend utilizing us for couples counseling, given our expertise and training, and allowing us to provide referrals out to an individual therapist, as there are few well-trained couples counselors in our area, but many more well-trained individual therapists available.
Do you offer online Couples Counseling via telehealth?
Yes, we are happy to connect with you online. We do recommend, where possible, at least beginning the process in person before switching to an online only format. But, if circumstances prevent that, completing all of your couples counseling sessions online is completely acceptable as well, and also just as effective.
Why do you work with couples?
I (Alex) deeply enjoy and feel called to working with couples. In my own marriage: I want to feel close to my partner; my partner matters to me; disconnection from my partner is unsettling; secure connection with my partner makes me a better person, parent, worker, etc. I also view the marital relationship to be one of the only ways we get to "participate" in redemption. Just as Christ did for us what we could not do for ourselves, in our marriages, we get to do for our partners what should have and could have been done for them the first time (in their childhood, adolescence, and prior relationships). This gift is transformative, powerful, and long-lasting...and we are positioned as the only ones who can offer this singular and unique gift by being joined in loving relationship with our partner.
Do you offer couples counseling intensives?
Yes! Sessions are typically scheduled for three-hour blocks every two weeks to start, and every three weeks approaching completion. Feel free to speak with us to learn more.
Do you offer events, retreats, or seminars for couples?
Yes! View our events page here.