Full Course Description

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for Healing Trauma

Program Information

Objectives

Assess for attachment injury and trauma history in presenting couples.
Modify standard EFT couple therapy to meet the additional needs of trauma survivors.
Structure a supportive and secure couple therapy framework.
Demonstrate safe attachment as temporary attachment figure.
Analyze couple attachment styles and accurately match interventions.
Categorize interventions as appropriate for progressive stages of therapy.
Evaluate couple readiness to move through the stages and steps of the EFT process.
Develop effective attachment requests in couple communication to replace confused, angry, or counterproductive expressions.
Differentiate the common styles of couple engagement.
Modify and expand client window of tolerance to improve affective regulation.
Utilize the Experiencing Scale to gauge depth of ability for emotional expression.

Outline

Session 1 - Introduction to EFT with Trauma Survivors

The echoes of trauma in love relationships
- Triggers behind emotional dysregulation
The role of love in trauma relationships
- Emotion as a messenger of love
Multidimensional impact of trauma on survivors and their relationships
- Absence of templates for security and love
- Centrality of love relationships in treatment of trauma
Trusting and seeking refuge when relationships have been threatening
- Building a new intrapsychic template
- Moving from intrapsychic rigidity to flexibility
Development of defenses and rigidity
- Intrapsychic rigidity vs earned attachment security
- Durability of the longing to be loved
Identification of triggers and effective communication of reactions
- Window of tolerance and accepting anger
- Limbic stability and regulation
- Fear as primary emotion
Emotional regulation as dyadic experience
- Clinician as temporary secure attachment figure
Developing clarity and acceptance of emotional signals
- Somatic grounding of unmet attachment needs
Attachment protest and insecure attachment styles
- Primary and secondary emotions
Making it safe to hope again
Key elements of EFT Stage 1 and 2

Session 2 – EFT Orientation to Presenting Problems

Relationship distress and unmet attachment needs
- Resilience of needs for closeness and comfort
Catching hold of negative interactional patterns
Development of earned security
Addressing client defenses
- Clinician as temporary attachment figure
- When both partners have unmet attachment needs
- Heling clients befriend their inner world
Neuroception reset and generalization of threat
- Failure of intrapsychic template for validation
Accepting and managing reactive emotional responses
Couple cycles of withdrawal and blaming
Video case example - Elena and Candice
- Recovery from alcoholism - pursuit and withdrawal
- Responding to escalation in session
- Conveying intrapsychic presence through voice tone
- Therapeutic interventions: counter shaming, evoking, slowing, validation
- Scrambled emotional signals
- Fearful avoidant or chaotic defensive styles

Session 3 - Overview of Stage 1 of EFT for Trauma Survivors

Helping couples understand negative interaction patterns
Primacy of motives for connection
- All behaviors make sense if the context is known
Getting to primary emotions – seeing underneath attachment protest
Attachment theory as threat management
- Attachment security improves with emotional flexibility
Forms of adult attachment- working with hybrid styles
Emotional suppression as habitual memory
Co-regulation is a dyadic process - avoiding marginalization of either partner
Definition of secure attachment – earning attachment security
Continued video case example - Elena and Candice
- Withdrawal and shutting down as coping response to trauma history
- Principles of Stage 1 therapeutic intervention
- Making defenses situationally appropriate
- Tracking and reflecting behaviors
- Identifying triggers and protective reactions
- Use of enactment and structuring bonding moments
Creating safe templates for couple relationships
- The good news about sharing trauma
Resetting therapeutic expectations

Session 4 – Stage 1 EFT with Trauma Survivors: Demonstration and Analysis

Creating space – validation, reflection, containment
- Approaching the alien
- EFT therapist as process consultant
Emotional dysregulation as hallmark of trauma
- Loss of emotions as reliable guide
EFT therapist as process consultant, temporary attachment figure and surrogate processor
Development of emotional rigidity
Developing awareness of needs and negative interaction patterns
- Assessing tolerance for intrapsychic exploration
The five basic moves of EFT - The EFT therapist:
- Remains in the present and reflects the present process
- Focusses on the emotional music of the relationship
- Changes the emotional music into a new dance, a different interaction strategy
- Processes the enactment, evaluates the new dance steps
- Reflects the accomplishments and new competencies
Continued video case demonstration – Elena and Candice
- Reorienting the nervous system to emotion
- Managing overwhelm in session
- Using clinician emotion to move the process
- Tango moves 3 and 4 - enactment and fluidity
- Allowing client’s emotional exit in Stage 1
- Making experiential contact with fear
- Focused repetition to change procedural memory
- Processing the echoes of entanglement
Moving out of Stage 1

Session 5 – Overview of Stage 2 of EFT with trauma survivors

Stage 2 – restructuring the relationship bond
- Initiated when deescalation has provided a secure enough base to allow for risk taking
The steps of Stage 2
- Accessing implicit needs, fears and models of self
- Softening change events
- Translate those into messages the partner can hear and understand – “catching the bullet” when partners cannot respond usefully
- Identifying and expressing attachment needs effectively, meeting those needs, managing risk
  - Use of repetition, imagery, connection to facilitate expression
- Accomplishing bonding events in the therapeutic setting
Differences between EFT for trauma and standard EFT
Use of the Experiencing Scale – gauging depth of emotional expression
- Making the subjective objective
- Associating with and befriending the inner world
- Assessing readiness for Stage 2
Revising view of self and other
- Viewing self as worthy of safety, affection, and love
Continued video case demonstration – Elena and Candice
- Reciprocal affective engagement
- Emotion forms the bedrock of our sensations
- Preparing for enactment
- Amplifying and making contact with emotion
- Producing intrapsychic coherence and order

Session 6 – Stage 2 EFT with Trauma Survivors: Demonstration and Analysis

Restructuring the couple bond
- Change in EFT therapy occurs in session before it does out of session
Revising client view of self and others – will others respond when needed
- Shifting from individual coping to relational coping
- Stretching the window of tolerance
Creating a healthy working distance from affect
Healing emotional constriction and rigidity
Adapting classic EFT to trauma survivor couples
- Addressing shame and identity – shame as defense strategy
- Restoring safety to connection
- Separating the client from their shame
Continued video case demonstration – Elena and Candice
- Softening of pursuer role
- Effective response to partner fear
- Dealing safely with intrapartner violence
- Using RISSSSC – the structured approach of EFT
- Use of proxy voice
- Preparing for enactment
Revision of internal working models
Establishing gains and continued post therapy growth
Further resources for EFT therapist development

Target Audience

Psychologists
Physicians
Addiction Counselors
Counselors
Social Workers
Marriage & Family Therapists
Nurses
Other Behavioral Health Professionals

Copyright : 09/14/2020

Healing Trauma through Connection

Program Information

Objectives

Practice an Emotionally Focused Therapy approach when working with couples in which one or both partners has been affected by trauma.
Demonstrate how traumatized partners can provide corrective emotional experiences for each other as it relates to clinical treatment.
Assess the most effective ways to create enactments between partners to alleviate symptoms of trauma.
Incorporate an understanding of neuroscience and attachment theory into your clinical decision-making and judgment.

Outline

Practice an Emotionally Focused Therapy approach when working with couples in which one or both partners has been affected by trauma.

Key EFT interventions central to working with emotion both intrapsychically and interpersonally
How to pace intrapsychic and interpersonal work

Explain how traumatized partners can provide corrective emotional experiences for each other as it relates to clinical treatment.

How to work with trauma with couples with attention to heightening and/or containing emotion
Positively and durably shifting affect regulation capacities
Positively and durably shifting models of self and other

Assess the most effective ways to create enactments between partners to alleviate symptoms of trauma.

How to work with trauma with couples, and work within the 'therapeutic window" both individually and relationally
How to work with emotion "moment-to-moment" with the goal of facilitating bonding and trauma resolution

Incorporate an understanding of neuroscience and attachment theory with the aim of further informing your clinical decision-making and judgment.

Clinical assessment and identification of various personal and relationship factors that impact clinical decision-making
Impact of trauma from an attachment perspective with regard to mental health assessment and intervention more generally

Target Audience

Psychologists
Physicians
Addiction Counselors
Counselors
Social Workers
Marriage & Family Therapists
Nurses
Other Behavioral Health Professionals