Hello! Welcome to my Couples Counseling page.
If you’re here, you’re likely wanting to learn more about what Emotionally Focused Therapy, or EFT, can do to help create the relationship with your partner that supports greater vulnerability and authenticity with each other.
Let’s start with some questions about your relationship.
Do any of these sound like your relationship?
- You and your spouse don’t communicate honestly or with respect
- You, or your partner, have had a betrayal of trust
- You live like roommates rather than lovers
- You feel isolated and alone
- You are together only because of your children
- You both genuinely want to improve your relationship
- Do you feel being vulnerable with your partner is difficult?
- Do you wish your partner were more sensitive to your emotional needs?
If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, I can help you and your partner improve the quality and safety felt in your relationship through a model of therapy created by Susan M. Johnson Ed.D, called Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples, (EFT).
“All of us, from the cradle to the grave, are happiest when life is organized as a series of excursions, long or short, from the secure base provided by our attachment figures.”
– John Bowlby
The ability for us to be “accessible, responsive and emotionally engaged”, (Sue uses the acronym A.R.E) with our partner is directly related to how much we trust our partner will be there for us.
EFT for Couples is based on the theory of Attachment.
Adult love and the attachment bonds we form in our adult intimate relationships are like “road maps” that allow the therapist to help you, as the couple, take steps toward a stronger bond that allows for safety to be created and vulnerability to be shared.
EFT can offer not only stronger emotional bonds between you and your partner, but research is discovering strong attachment bonds have been linked to improved physical health such as improved cardiovascular health, lower depression and anxiety rates, and increased levels of immune system function.
From an attachment perspective, science is finding higher levels of the hormone oxytocin (nicknamed the “cuddle hormone”) and it’s link not only to many health benefits but to the emotional bonding between partners and children.
If you’d like to find out more about EFT, or its empirically backed research, or if EFT is the right model of therapy for you and your partner, please contact me.