Your relationship is riddled with challenges, but you’re not sure what to do.
You want to find a therapist who can help you and your partner or spouse re-build the secure bond you once shared.
It’s time to make a change in your relationship and get couples therapy or marriage counseling.
Perhaps, you’ve felt disconnected from your partner for quite a while. Maybe you’ve noticed you don’t spend time together or have much to talk about. This makes you feel lonely and unloved. Or perhaps, you and your partner are arguing all the time. Now, you don’t want to spend time with them or come home because you’re not sure what will set them off.
You know this isn’t healthy. Perhaps, you’ve asked friends for suggestions, or you’ve searched the internet for what a healthy relationship looks like, but everything you try seems to push your loved one further away. This leaves you at the end of the rope and you realize you have to seek help from a skilled couples therapist to save your marriage.
Our counseling office in Wake Forest, NC (serving the greater Raleigh, NC area) offers Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) for all kinds of couples at any stage in life. Our goal is to help you or your loved one solve your problems, connect, and create lasting love.
What is Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy?
Emotionally focused couples therapy (EFT) is a short-term form of couple therapy. EFT was developed by Dr. Sue Johnson and Dr. Les Greenberg. It is a research-based approach to strengthening relationships between two adults. To do this your therapist will help you look at the negative patterns of behavior in your relationship and teach you tools to connect with each other.
EFT is based on the attachment theory. It asserts that attachment creates feelings of safety that help you cope with distress and challenging life experiences. You form attachments at birth with your caregivers. These can either be secure or insecure. If you grew up with insecure attachments you likely had to worry if the people who were entrusted to care for you would take care of your needs. When they didn’t you felt let down and hurt. These painful feelings may have caused you to develop coping mechanisms and negative communication patterns that can cause problems in your current relationships. For example, if your parents were emotionally unavailable and did not validate your feelings you likely stopped expressing them. This can make a partner very frustrated and cause misunderstandings and hurt feelings.
How EFT couples therapy Works:
EFT works at creating a healthy dependency between both partners. What this means is that the partners are both able to depend on each other to respond appropriately to their needs. The therapy process is broken down into three main parts: de-escalation, restructuring, and consolidation.
Deescalation:
During these initial sessions, an EFT couples therapist will listen to your complaints so they can learn where your problems lie. Then we focus on figuring out what your negative patterns of interaction are. These are the things you do or say that cause conflict with your partner. For example, when they bring up a complaint, you immediately shut down and look at your phone. This makes them feel invalidated hurts their feelings.
In each session, we reveal a new layer of emotions that are triggering conflict and learn what coping techniques you use to avoid this conflict. Even though these techniques don’t work anymore, it’s important to understand them so you can avoid them in the future.
Restructuring:
This is the part of the therapeutic process where you learn to confidently share your needs with your partner and how to respond when your partner shares their needs with you.
Learning how to share your needs appropriately and be vulnerable with your loved one will ultimately reduce conflict and create feelings of satisfaction. It helps build a strong emotional bond.
Consolidation:
In this step, you will work on learning communication strategies to help you avoid the places in your relationship where you’re becoming stuck. Once you learn how to express your needs in a way your partner can understand and respond to then you will begin to notice a positive long-lasting change.
Does EFT couples therapy actually work?
Research shows the EFT is very successful at helping couples in crisis strengthen their relationship. In fact, many consider it to be the “gold standard.” Furthermore, couples who have gotten emotionally focused couples therapy tend to see benefits long after their therapeutic relationship with their therapist has ended and are less likely to relapse into conflict again.
Begin EFT Couples Therapy in wake forest, NC With My-Therapist or Online in North Carolina and Georgia
Creating a healthier relationship is possible. You can learn to strengthen your bond and create a safe haven between you and your partner with EFT couples therapy. Our Wake Forest therapy practice has caring therapists who specialize in EFT couples therapy (serving the greater Raleigh, NC area). To start your therapy journey, follow these simple steps:
Meet with one of our caring therapists
Start improving your relationship today!
There are also several books that might be of interest. Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy For Dummies by Brent Bradley and Jamies Furrow, Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love by Sue Johnson, or An Emotionally Focused Workbook for Couples: The Two of Us by Veronica Kallos-Lilly and Jennifer Fitzgeralds are all good places to start.
Read More: Dr. Sue Johnson | Real Love Stories
Other Services Offered With My-Therapist
We are happy to offer a variety of mental health services. Other services include online therapy, family therapy, individual therapy for relationship issues, couples workshops, couples therapy, prenatal therapy, child loss therapy, teen therapy, and couples intensive therapy. We also offer support through premarital counseling, divorce counseling, foundations of lasting love, co-parenting counseling, and AAMFT supervision. Read our blog to learn more about us and our services!