description of the steps 1-4

1. Lecture 7. EFT for Couples
Stage 1: Steps 1-4
Assessment and Cycle De-
escalation
Couple Counselling Skills
Kevin Standish

2. Learning Objectives
Describe theory of Stage 1
Identify the 4 Steps
Identify the skills used in each step
Understand withdraw engagement and
blamer softening

3. Principles & Concepts
Looks within at how partners construct
their emotional experience of relatedness
Looks between at how partners engage
each other.

4. Focus of EFT: The 4 P’s
Experiential
Present
Primary Affect
Systemic
Process (time)
Positions / Patterns
The therapist is a process consultant

5. 4 P’s
Present experience
Deal with the past when it comes into the present
to validate client’s responses as it relates to how
they coped/survived
When emotion is re-experienced it is now in the
present
Focus is on current positions/patterns
Don’t ask “why”, focus on what is.

6. 4 P’s
Primary emotions
Validating and moving from secondary to
primary emotions
Stay with emotions, create safe haven
Organize the emotion of a past experience
so that client can engage in the here & now

7. 4 P’s
Process patterns
Look individually how each person is processing in
the moment
“What happens…then what…then what”
Positions
The position each partner is taking in the
relationship
Work to create new position & new patterns

8. 3 Tasks of EFT
1. Create and maintaining a
therapeutic alliance.
2. Accessing and reformulating
emotion.
3. Restructuring key interactions.

9. Task 1 Interventions
Therapeutic Alliance
1. Empathic Attunement
2. Acceptance
3. Genuineness
4. Continuous active alliance monitoring

10. Task 2 Interventions
Accessing and Reformulating Emotion
 Fostering an emotion focus
 Primary, and secondary emotions
are key focus

11. Key Issues when focusing on Emotion
1. Involvement: requires direct engagement
and experience of the emotions.
2. Exploration: leads a process of emotional
discovery based on personal experiences.
3. New emotion: discover and expand
previously unrecognized or unformulated
emotional experiences. Support engagement
with primary emotions.

12. Task 3 Interventions
1. Tracking & reflecting patterns & cycles of
interactions
2. Framing and reframing problems in terms of
negative cycles and attachment responses.
3. Using enactments to shape interactions
(choreographing new events to modify, step
by step, each partner’s position).

13. Restructuring Interactions
 Enactments
 Used to shape and restructure interactions.
1. Enacting present positions
2. Turning new emotional experiences into
new interactions.
3. Highlighting rarely occurring responses.

14. Enactments
Phase 1: Making the request to make
contact
Phase 2: Maintaining the focus, blocking
detours, and containing and framing
escalations
Phase 3: Processing each partner’s
experience of the enactment

15. Skills for Emotional Engagement:
R-I-S-S-S-C
Emotional EngagementR: The therapist intentionally REPEATS key words and
phrases for emphasis.
I:Therapist uses IMAGES or word pictures that evoke
emotions more than abstract labels tend to do.
S:Therapist frames responses to clients in SIMPLE and
concise phrases.
S:Therapist will SLOW the process of the session and the
pace of her speech to enable deepening of emotional
experience
S:Therapist will use SOFT and soothing tone of voice to
encourage a client to deepen experience.
C:Therapist uses CLIENT words and phrases in a
supportive/validating way.

16. Enactment reflections in action
 If you watch Johnson doing this kind of therapy, it may seem she goes on and
on at times about the same issues. However, it is the act of saying these
things, hearing these things, and afterward finding nothing horrible
happened… that helps people tolerate their emotions and feel safe when they
express them. Good EFT therapists use techniques like:
 Speaking slowly, calmly, and patiently, checking with the client to make sure
they are remaining engaged. This sets the tone for the session, and if they
communicate that they can tolerate the intimacy, and are not afraid of it, they
can help the clients do the same.
 Reflective statements (“It seems you are feeling terribly scared by that”). This is
a validation of Rogers, but it is also helping the partner listening to
understand the key points, the words to describe what they see in the other,
and the power of these emotions.
 Validation (“And it’s hard to even talk about this kind of fear, especially for you
given your past experiences with relationships”). This kind of statement helps
the partner listening see the link between the past and the present, and helps
the partner speaking see it and accept it too.

17. Enactment reflections in action
 Evocative questions (“What’s happening now for you as I say
that… What’s it like to say that out loud, here and now?”). In
some sense, this is drawing attention to meta-emotion, or
emotions about emotions and expressing feelings. It can help
the partner speaking be mindful of the moment, attend to
what they feel in their bodies as they talk, and “own” in a very
concrete way their feelings.
 Heightening (using images like “It feels like a noose around
your throat that could strangle you at any time” to evoke
imagery that captures their emotional experiences, or asking
one person to repeat something to their partner).

19. The Role of the Therapist in Stage 1
Develop an alliance,
identify the negative cycle,
identify and access underlying emotions,
and work to deescalate the cycle
Engage the withdrawer
Soften the pursuer/blamer

20. Stage 1 Assessment and Cycle De-escalation
Step 1: Identify the relational conflict issues between the
partners.
Step 2: Identify the negative interaction cycle where these
issues are expressed.
Step 3: Access the unacknowledged, attachment oriented
emotions underlying the interactional position each partner
takes in this cycle.
Step 4: Reframe the problem in terms of the cycle, underlying
emotions that accompany it, and attachment needs.

21. Stage 1 is the hard part.
 You have to seek out vulnerable emotions, and very slowly build the
awareness of them.
 Johnson gives the example of moving from “uncomfortable” to “upset” to
“hurt” eventually.
 Feminists argue we are surrounded by social and cultural messages that
tell men to not express emotions of dependency and fear for risk of being
seen as needy and weak.
 These messages tell women to not express assertiveness and anger, or risk
being seen as dominating and bitchy.
 Thus, you can explain to the couple that some emotions may be especially
uncomfortable for them to uncover because society’s gender roles have
encouraged them to avoid doing so all their lives.
 This takes some of the blame off of them, and provides another example
of how they can be victims of something larger, but not slaves to it.

22. Step 1: Identify the relational conflict issues
between the partners.
Alliance & assessment: Creating an alliance
and delineating conflict issues in the core
attachment struggle.
What are they fighting about and how are
they related to core attachment issues.

23. Establishing AN ALLIANCE
• Reflection
• Validation
• Empathic Attunement

24. Step 1: Identify the relational conflict issues
between the partners.
 Johnson advocates an assessment phase to guide all this, seeing them
together and separate.
 However, this kind of is Step 1, rather than being a separate assessment
phase followed by an official beginning to therapy.
 Background is important only as it impacts the current life dynamics; this is
not an insight into the family history kind of therapy.
 Ask them what they hope to gain from therapy to focus them.
 Weave their separate complaints into one, and tie this to a plan for
treatment and a contract for therapy.
 Sometimes you may see them together, but sometimes apart to help
them be together when you do the next conjoint session

25. Step 2: Identify the negative interaction
cycle where these issues are expressed.
Identify the negative interaction cycle
 EFT Cycle levels include
• Action tendencies (behaviors)
• Perceptions
• Secondary Emotions
• Primary Emotions
• Unmet Attachment Needs
 The goal is for the therapist to see the cycle in action and
identify and describe it to the couple and work toward
stopping it.

26. Identifying & Delineating
Negative Interactive Cycle
Basic Negative Cycles & Interactive Positions
Pursue/Withdraw
Withdraw/Withdraw
Attack/Attack
Complex cycles
Reactive pursue/Withdraw

27. EFT Emotions and Reactivity
Emotions occur at two levels: Primary and Secondary (or
reactive).
Primary Emotions are the deeper, more vulnerable and
tender emotions such as sadness, hurt, fear, shame,
and loneliness.
Secondary Emotions are the more reactive emotions such
as anger, jealousy, resentment, and frustration. They
occur as a reaction to the primary emotions. Anger,
Blame,
Primary emotions generally draw partners closer.
Secondary emotions tend to push partners away.

28. EFT Emotions and Reactivity
 When uncovering the “primary” or underlying emotions,
notice the language the partners use.
 You’ll hear partner’s say things like “I feel like I’m drowning”
or “I’m dying and you can’t hear me screaming for help.” It
seems dramatic, but it captures an intense, painful, and
powerful emotional experience and use these words and
analogies to weave together a story that both members could
accept.
 The “secondary” emotions of anger and resentment are far
easier to show and talk about when you think about it this
way.

29. STEP 2 – IDENTIFYING THE NEGATIVE
CYCLE
• Who is the Pursuer?
• Who is the Withdrawer?
• Describe the Negative Cycle
• What are the Secondary Emotions?
• What are the Primary Emotions?
E

30. Pursuer/Withdrawer : primary and secondary emotions

31. Step 3: Access the unacknowledged, attachment
oriented emotions underlying the interactional
position each partner takes in this cycle.
 The goal is to help each member of the
couple to access and accept their
unacknowledged feelings that are
influencing their behavior in the
relationship.
 Both partners are to "reprocess and
crystallize their own experience in the
relationship" so that they can become
emotionally open to the other person.

32. Blamer softening: Access the
unacknowledged, attachment needs
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaHms5z-yuM

33. Step 4: Reframe the problem in terms of the
cycle, underlying emotions that accompany
it, and attachment needs.
 The cycle is framed as the common enemy and the
source of the partners’ emotional deprivation and
distress.
 The goal, by the end of Step 4, is for the partners to have
a meta-perspective on their interactions.
 They are framed as unwittingly creating, but also being
victimized by, the cycle of interaction that characterizes
their relationship
J

34. EFT Reframes Step 4
For example:
Angry Criticism is viewed in EFT as:
an attempt to modify the other partner’s
inaccessibility or manage the disconnect
a protest response to emotional isolation and
abandonment not being “crazy or irrational”.
Avoidance is seen as:
an attempt to contain the interaction and regulate
fears of rejection or not burden the other partner
an attempt to avoid confrontation or working
models that define the self as unlovable .
J

35. Softening
Pre-requisites:
De-escalation of negative cycle (Stage 1)
Withdrawer re-engagement (Stage 2 change
event)
A previously hostile, critical partner accesses
“softer” emotions and risks reaching out to
his/her partner who is engaged and
responsive.
In this vulnerable state, the previously hostile
partner asks for attachment needs to be met.

36. Softening
At this point, both partners are attuned,
engaged and responsive (accessibility &
responsiveness)
A bonding event then occurs which redefines
the relationship as a safe haven and a secure
base.

37. Furrow; Edwards; Choi and Bradley (2012) Therapist Presence in Emotionally Focused
Couple Therapy Blamer Softening Events: Promoting Change Through Emotional
Experience
Journal of Marital and Family Therapy Volume 38, Issue Supplement s1, pages 39–
49, June 2012
 The blamer softening event has been associated with successful treatment
outcomes in emotionally focused couple therapy.
 Previous research has highlighted the critical role of softening events and
heightened emotional experience in best sessions of emotionally focused couple
therapy (EFT).
 This study examined the effects of a therapist’s emotional presence in predicting
heightened levels of client emotional experience in blamer softening events.
 Findings from a detailed analysis of successful and unsuccessful EFT softening
attempts demonstrated that a therapist’s emotional presence and
corresponding evocative vocal quality were more likely to
predict heightened levels of client emotional experience in
successful softening attempts.

39. ANALYZING THE WITHDRAWER RE-ENGAGEMENT CHANGE EVENT
IN EMOTIONALLY FOCUSED COUPLE THERAPY:
A PRELIMINARY TASK ANALYSIS
Rheem (2011)
 The process of successful withdrawer re-engagement was mapped in order to describe
the change process for the EFT clinician. This change process closely paralleled the
Idealized Model already put forth in the literature by Johnson (2004). A facet of
describing this change process was measuring and naming the most commonly used
EFT interventions throughout the change process which this study did. The Stage Two
interventions already named by Johnson (2004) and Bradley and Furrow (2004) were
found to be the most commonly used interventions in the withdrawer re-engagement
change event.
 two important process variables already named in the EFT literature: the depth of
emotional experiencing and the quality of affiliative interactions between partners and
see if these variables are related to successful treatment outcomes.
 these two process variables showed to be significant for successful treatment outcomes
in EFT.

40. You know a couple has de-escalated
when…
Couple views cycle as the problem
Couple can look beyond their own
Partner sees role in cycle and impact on other
Couple can begin to exit their cycle

41. Andrea K. Wittenborn
Exploring the Influence of the Attachment Organizations of Novice Therapists
on their Delivery of Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples
Journal of Marital and Family Therapy Volume 38, Issue Supplement s1, pages
50–62, June 2012
 Clinicians’ own attachment organizations—have been found to influence the
process and outcome of treatment.
 Findings indicated that secure therapists, when compared to their insecure peers,
were more competent at working with attachment needs, as well as the overt and
underlying emotions of their clients.
 Secure therapists perceived themselves as being more skilled in emotion
regulation, which may have contributed to their abilities to remain attuned to their
clients’ attachment needs and emotional expression, even in the face of emotional
arousal in session.
 Couples of insecure therapists also reported greater alliance splits.

42. Readings
 1. Johnson (2004)
 chapter 4 the basics of EFT: tasks and interventions
 chapter 5 assessment: defining the dance and listening to music: EF key steps one and two
 chapter 6. Changing the music: towards the escalation. EFT steps three and four
 Advanced reading:
 2.Greenman et al (2009) EFT intercultural couple therapy
 3. Bradley & Furrow (2007) Inside blamer softening maps and missteps
 4. Rheem (2011) ANALYZING THE WITHDRAWER RE-ENGAGEMENT CHANGE EVENT IN
EMOTIONALLY FOCUSED COUPLE THERAPY: A PRELIMINARY TASK ANALYSIS . Found here
http://www.rebeccajorgensen.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/DISS-Rheem_Kathryn-Final.pdf