How emtional Focused couple's therapy works

Emotional Focused Therapy (EFT) is a theory on couple’s therapy focusing on emotional reactions between relating partners. The focus of the theory is on how negative interaction cycles provoke negative and hostile emotional reactions among primary relational partners. The therapeutic focus is to correct emotional experiences in the couple’s relationship.

The theory uses attachment theory with a perspective that there are two relationship roles that play into negative interaction cycle to support the couple’s conflict namely the “withdrawer” and the “blamer” (pursuer). To Show how Emotional focused therapy works, I have created a fictious case of a couple named Bob and Cynthia.

Bob(27years) and Cynthia (25 years) have been married for approximately three years. They met when they started working together seven years ago. The source of their going for therapy was a recent conflict between them which resulted in Cynthia moving back to her parent’s home. They have been in therapy for six sessions. Both report that when they fight they try to Say the most hurtful thing that they can to each other. They continually revisit past issues and use intimate details against each other.

In this case Cynthia is the pursuer while Bob is the withdrawer. The pursuer partner does so due to the perceived disengagement in the relationship. Cynthia pursues Bob in order to engage him into the relationship because she feels “overwhelmed, rejected and alone”. If Bob does not respond to her she becomes more upset and pursues him further and brings up times when Bob disappointed her. Bob on the other hand reacts by withdrawing until the “nagging” eventually leads him to explode in name calling and brings up a past relationship that Cynthia had in the early part of their relationship

The first thing that a therapist does in such a case is to track and reflect on emotional experiences. This allows the therapist to focus on the process of therapy as well as build the therapeutic alliance and clarify relationship roles vis-à-vis who is the pursuer and who is the withdrawer. In our case we have identified Cynthia as the pursuer and Bob as the withdrawer. The other issue is to identify the attachment injury by encouraging the partners to discuss a particular painful incident where the other partner was inaccessible and unresponsive.

This is referred to as the “marker event”. For Cynthia this is the time that she had a miscarriage. She relates how every time Bob is not there she “re-experiences the miscarriage”. She reflects on how Bob appeared to be disinterested with the pregnancy and even when she was rushed to hospital he did not respond or return her calls. To make it worse, after the baby was lost, Bob did not comfort or empathize with her. On the Part of Bob, the injury pertains to the relationship that Jessica had with his best friend when Bob was away due to work demands.

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