What is Emotion Focused Therapy?

Emotion-focused therapy (EFT) is a therapeutic treatment based on the idea that emotions are a key to who people are and a guide for individual choice and decision-making. This type of therapy assumes that when people lack awareness of their emotions or avoid unpleasant emotions, they are unable to use the important information provided by these emotions.

Therapists qualified in EFT can often be of assistance to clients by helping them learn how to gain a greater awareness of their emotions, become better at using information provided by productive emotions, and cope with and decrease any negative effects of non-productive emotions.

In EFT, the therapist and the client collaborate in an active process, where both are viewed as equal contributors. The person seeking treatment is seen as the person most capable of interpreting their own emotional experiences.

EFT theory is based on the study of the human emotional experience. The Scientific study of human emotions provides information about how emotions are produced, their importance to human functioning, and how they are related to thought and behavior.

The core concept of EFT is emotional schemas. These emotion schemas are models that show the ways in which emotion can be experienced physically, can influence thinking and can guide future action. EFT works by helping individuals both accept and change their personal emotion schemas.