Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) is a therapy adapted from its original protocol known as Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), developed by Sue Johnson, to meet the needs of families who are experiencing relational challenges and who are seeking to stabilize, restore, and strengthen relational bonds of the family unit. The focus of EFFT is to help caregivers understand the child or teens’ behaviors in terms of attachment needs in session together. EFFT identifies patterns of behaviors that interfere with attachment communication between family members. Using the science of attachment theory, EFFT works with the parent(s) to unlock the power of healthy relations to allow parent(s) to be accessible and responsive to their child/adolescent, based on their child’s or adolescent’s attachment-related emotions and needs.
Target goals of Emotionally Focused Family Therapy:
- Developing an awareness of unrecognized feelings and emotions that accompany a family’s unhealthy relational dynamics that are causing distress.
- Rethinking a child or adolescents’ behavior problems as a relational issue that stems from a lack of attunement to the child’s or adolescent’s emotional and or attachment needs.
- Fostering an understanding of and maintaining mindfulness of essential caregiver intentions through the awakening of attachment related needs of family members.
- Working toward developing more healthful interactions that address these attachment needs that can in turn, change behaviors.
