Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples (EFCT)
Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFCT) is a short-term structured approach, encompassing 8 to 20 sessions, established in the 1980s based on attachment science. It employs a humanistic, experiential approach to restructure emotional experience, alongside a systemic structural approach to amend interactions. Extensive research underpins EFCT’s effectiveness, showcasing substantial treatment effect sizes with enduring results. EFCT has been utilized successfully across diverse settings and with various couples facing challenges like depression, anxiety, or forgiveness dilemmas. It’s employed across North America, Europe, Australia, among others, with both traditional and non-traditional couples, demonstrating its wide applicability and effectiveness. Discover how EFCT can revolutionize your work with couples by exploring our courses below.
EFCT Courses
By becoming certified in Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFCT), you can significantly enhance your therapeutic toolkit. This certification provides you with a research-supported approach to effectively address the intricate dynamics of couple relationships. As an EFCT therapist, you’ll be able to facilitate deeper emotional connections and improved communication among couples, bolstering your professional expertise and increasing your appeal to clients seeking meaningful and lasting relationship transformations.
Fundamentals of Emotionally Focused Therapy | Recommended
Engage with the essence of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) in our one-day Fundamentals of EFT course. Grounded in attachment science, this 6.25-hour workshop provides practical tools to enhance your therapeutic practice across individual, couple, and family modalities. Through didactic presentations, recorded client sessions, and experiential exercises, you’ll explore key EFT concepts and interventions. This course is a stepping stone into the transformative world of EFT, aligning you with effective techniques to address anxiety, depression, and relationship issues. Take this leap to augment your professional skills and make a lasting impact in your therapeutic journey.
EFCT Externship | Required for EFCT Certification
An Externship in Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy® is the introductory 24+ hour training in Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFCT) and the first step towards certification. This workshop includes the observation of live and/or video recorded therapy sessions, presentations of theory and clinical techniques, skills training exercises, and discussion of specific cases, clinical material and issues. An Externship will provide you with a roadmap to work with your clients’ underlying emotions and facilitate therapy conversations that increase feelings of secure attachment, closeness and connection.
EFCT Core Skills | Required for EFCT Certification
EFCT Core Skills is an advanced educational program with four 2-day modules, each focusing on distinct steps of the EFT model, delivered over approximately one year. Limited to 12-16 participants, the extended course offers over 48 hours of intensive instruction, practical exercises, and feedback.
A standard 24-hour option provides focused training online or in-person, covering the two stages essential for certification, with participants receiving certificates upon completion.
Both the 48- and 24-hour options qualify as a step towards Certification as an Emotionally Focused Couple Therapist.
SKILLS GUIDELINE FOR CERTIFICATION OVERVIEW (Click to expand)
Learning and integrating the EFT model includes development of the following skills. This list can be used as a guideline to assist supervisors and applicants to assess for readiness for certification.
Additional specific details and information for each EFT modality (EFIT, EFCT & EFFT) are available on the ICEEFT members website whereas this document is offered as a generic overview.
Alliance Skills
Therapist readily demonstrates…
– Attunement and empathic tracking of client’s experience.
– A safe-haven alliance (A.R.E.) including assessing risk, context, and contraindications.
– Focus on reactive patterns and validate client’s attachment strategies.
– Effectively engage with clients in all their diversity, including the negative impact of
– discrimination along with clients’ strengths and resilience.
Micro Skills
Therapist shows ability to …
– Reflect and validate client’s experience and identifies emotions and relational patterns.
– Validates vulnerabilities and coping strategies normalizing blocks.
– Asks evocative questions that help identify patterns, and elicit deeper emotions, underlying
– attachment fears, and longings.
– Asks open-ended questions and encourages self-reflection.
– Makes appropriate empathic conjectures that validate and deepen experience (e.g. self/other)
– Uses all micro skills together with RISSSSC prosody – slow, specific, soft, etc.
– Heightens experience with images and client’s emotional handles, where appropriate.
– Reframes experience – mostly in terms of attachment-related emotions.
– Evokes emotional experience and choreographs engaged encounters/enactments.
– Paces risk-taking holding client within the leading edge (e.g. window of tolerance).
Tango Skills
Therapist shows ability to …
Move 1: Identify relational patterns and affect regulation processes leading to self-perpetuating cycles.
Move 2: Assemble Emotion – Pinpoints trigger, perception, body sensation, meaning and action by focusing on and processing core emotions.
Move 2: Distills emotion with RISSSSC and engages present experience in highly focused manner.
Move 3: Sets up encounters/enactments that prompt new awareness and /or bonding experience.
Move 4: Processes encounters (Move 3) with client(s).
Move 5: Summarizes progress in the session, validating growth, contrasting new interactions and previous patterns.
The Steps to Certification in EFCT
Certification as an Emotionally Focused Couple Therapist elevates your professional credentials and opens doors for international collaboration, continuous learning, and practice growth. We invite you to explore the certification requirements for EFCT and join us in advancing an evidence-based, impactful modality that significantly enhances the quality of romantic relationships and the wellbeing of the individuals within those relationships.
There is fluidity in the sequence that you learn EFCT. “Fundamentals of EFT” is recommended to be taken first. “EFCT Externship” must be completed prior to “EFCT Core Skills”.
Additional Certification Steps
Supervision
Minimum of 8 hours of EFCT Supervision which can include up to 4 hours of group supervision.
Application Package to ICEEFT
Submit your application package to ICEEFT for review
Achievement: Certified EFCT Therapist!
Congratulations, you are a Certified EFCT Therapist! You have completed a major step on a lifelong learning journey.