Emotion-Focused Therapy: A Video Demonstration Over Six Sessions

Reviews the video, Emotion-Focused Therapy Over Time with Leslie S. Greenberg (2007). According to Sunich, the general goal of EFT is to increase emotion awareness. Clients are encouraged to experience and accept feelings as opposed to avoiding or denying unpleasant affective states. Essentially, the objective is to get in touch with and articulate adaptive primary emotional responses in order to access adaptive action tendencies. Of equal importance is to identify maladaptive emotional states that paralyze the individual and prevent adaptive reasoning and behavior. Clients are assisted in remaining focused on feelings and in overcoming avoidant tendencies. The second principle in EFT is emotion regulation. Primary emotions such as shame or secondary emotions such as hopelessness or despair are often powerful enough to overwhelm. As the person touches on these feelings, the supportive, validating, and empathic therapeutic relationship can help bring stability and comfort to assist in emotionally regulating. The third principle of EFT is emotion transformation. Maladaptive emotional responses are replaced by more adaptive responses. Greenberg employed a number of strategies in an integrated, eclectic fashion, geared to following the client in telling the story and directing the client into experiencing and transforming affect. These strategies are included in this video. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)