Emotionally Focused Therapy’s main goals are to expand and reorganize important emotional responses, implement and foster the creation of a secure bond between partners and help shift each partner’s position of interaction while initiating new cycles of interaction that are more beneficial. EFT helps create secure and lasting bonds between partners and family members and strives to reinforce the positive bonds that already exist. EFT is a practical technique that has enormous success with couples and can facilitate change in marriages and relationships that experience minimal to substantial suffering. EFT works to intervene where needed and create change to help relationships work more effectively through a spirit of harmony and respect. – Based on the definition at GoodTherapy.org
In other words, EFT is a proven and tested model of therapy that helps couples express their needs and concerns in a way that reduces fighting, improves communication, strengthens connection, builds trust, and improves emotional, physical and sexual intimacy. Unlike other models of couples therapy, EFT goes to the root of the negative and destructive patterns of communicating and interacting such as arguing, defensiveness and feeling overwhelmed which is the secret to successfully repairing a relationship.
According to studies of EFT:
- 90% of couples who complete therapy report significant improvement
- 70-75% of couples report complete absence of distress after 15-20 sessions
- Couples indicated their relationship continued to improve even after the therapy ended
- The next highest leading model of couples therapy rate of success is only 35%