Emotionally Focused Online Couples Counseling

Dr. Sue Johnson, the founder of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, in her article “What You Need to Know about Love,” explains “what love is about and how it works.” She wrote that “the need we have as children to be able to call to a special one and know that this person will respond with reassurance and comfort never goes away. To know that we are loved is the safe haven we all long for. The longing for this is wired into our brains from the cradle to the grave.” Need for emotional connection – knowing that your loved one will be here for you in times of hardships – is the most basic longing. 

It is difficult to express heartfelt feelings when we feel vulnerable, especially when vulnerabilities trigger fear of rejection, mistrust or feeling unlovable. These fears prevent partners from getting in touch with their soft feelings of hurt and sadness. Instead, they revert to anger or shut down and come across as emotionally unavailable or angry to another partner. Couples become stuck in a negative cycle of miscommunication. As a result, partners may feel disconnected, alone, unappreciated and unloved.

 Partners are longing for emotional connection; however, communication gets distorted, and they both feel not heard. Partners get caught up in a negative cycle of blaming and withdrawing, and they are both hurting. 

 With the help of an EFT marriage counselor, couples are able to identify and prevent the negative cycle of miscommunication that leads to disconnection, express their heartfelt feelings and needs in a way that allows both partners to feel heard and respond to each other in a soft way.

 During marriage counseling the couples also have an opportunity to heal emotional injuries, clarify misunderstandings, practice communication skills, repair a relationship rapture, regain self-confidence, and restore trust. 

By helping partners communicate their attachment needs and respond in an emphatic way to each other, an EFT therapist assists couples to overwrite negative past experiences with attachment figures with new positive experiences, thus, creating emotionally corrective experiences. As a result, couples are able to heal their attachment wounds and have more satisfying relationships.