EFIT Level 1
Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT) Level 1:
Hosted by Carolina Center for EFT
Information: rebecca@carolinaeft.com
REGISTRATION is CLOSED FOR EFIT LEVEL 1
Trainer: Lorrie Brubacher, M.Ed
Check out some clips from past EFIT trainings with Lorrie
Lorrie Brubacher is a registered marriage and family therapist, with 30 years of experience as an individual, couple and family therapist. She is an ICEEFT certified trainer with expertise in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) which is one of the most researched and highly effective relationship counselling approaches. As an educator, Lorrie taught in Canada at the University of Winnipeg, the University of Manitoba and the University of British Columbia, and in the United States at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. She provides consultation, supervision and training to individual, couple, and family therapists. Lorrie has authored numerous peer reviewed journal articles, made contributions to professional textbooks, and wrote the popular book, Stepping into Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy: Key Ingredients of Change (Routledge, 2018).
Date/Time
February 26 and 27, 2021
9:30 AM – 4:30 PM U.S. Eastern Time each day
LIVE ONLINE VIA ZOOM
Workshop Description
Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT) is an attachment-based approach that extends Dr. Sue Johnson’s model of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFCT) to work with individuals. EFIT offers an integration of humanistic experiential interventions focused on reshaping intrapsychic experience and systemic interventions focused on reshaping patterns of engagement with significant others. Emotion is given precedence because of its powerful role in structuring both inner experience and motivation and in shaping key patterns in relationships. Emotion links and organizes core experience and interaction. EFIT helps you to create corrective emotional experiences in individual therapy to shape safety and security with others and within self.
Dr. Sue Johnson argues that psychotherapy is most effective when it focuses on the healing power of emotional connection. Attachment theory provides proven techniques for treating the two common presenting problems in individual therapy: anxiety and depression. It provides a practical map for shaping love or secure attachment that positively impacts emotion regulation, social adjustment and mental health (Johnson, 2019). “But love is not only an end for therapy; it is also the means by which every end is reached” (Lewis, Amini, & Lannon, 2002).
In EFIT, the therapeutic alliance is the heart from which emotion regulation and secure bonds with others and within self are shaped. Core attachment emotions are reprocessed to fuel corrective emotional experiences of love, between and within. Clients are helped to discover and validate inner emotional experience that can then be used as a guide for living. Confidence flows from secure connection with others, creating a safe haven and a secure base in the dynamic flow between interpersonal and internal worlds.
EFCT is best known as a potent couple intervention but has always, from its inception, been used in clinical practice with individuals, especially with clients dealing with depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. The most obvious way that EFIT differs from EFCT is that emotionally transformative dialogues focus on a client’s interaction with the therapist, with representations of attachment figures, or between aspects of self. It is important to note that, from an attachment perspective and an experiential perspective, the self is a process of constant construction which takes place in and is shaped by interactions with others. In all modalities EFT addresses self and relational system.
This workshop will outline the theory and practice of EFIT, focusing on the primacy of emotion and the creation of a safe haven and a secure base alliance, core models of health and dysfunction from an attachment perspective including how within and between cycles interact and block growth and adaptation, a systematic sequence of interventions -the EFT Tango, as well as more micro-interventions, and how to stay with present processes in session to shape key change events. Didactic presentations will be accompanied by the viewing of EFIT sessions and experiential exercises.
Program Objectives
- Apply an attachment humanistic perspective on clients, problems and interventions.
- Create and revise core emotional experiences and promote emotional balance.
- Identify protective, self-defining and interactional iatrogenic patterns and the core components of emotional disorders.
- Utilize the 5 moves of the EFT Tango to shape corrective emotional experiences.
- Describe the micro-interventions of the EFT/EFIT model, e.g. reflection, heightening, conjecture.
- Create dramas that expand the self and open engagement with others.
- Design corrective emotional experiences that shift working models of self and other.
- Utilize and identify the client’s sense of competence and worth in session.
- Utilize corrective emotional experiences to resolve impacts of trauma.
Target Audience
Mental Health Professionals, Social Workers, Psychologists, Students in these professions
Level
Beginning, Intermediate
Recommended Reading
Chapters 1 – 5 in (Johnson, 2019) Attachment Theory in Practice: Emotionally Focused Therapy with Individuals, Couples and Families.
Chapter 12 on EFIT in (Brubacher, 2018) Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy: Key ingredients of change.
Upon registration you will also receive a link to relevant articles you may read in advance of the training.
Schedule
Day 1
9:30 AM – 10:45 AM ET – Individual Therapy in the EFT Model
9:30 Opening & review of learning objectives
9:50 Introduction – The basics of EFT Model – Attachment-based, experiential, systemic
The attachment perspective and map – EFIT is relational
Central tasks a
cross modalities of EFT
The goals of EFIT/ View of “health”
Break 10:45 – 11:00
11:00 – 12:30
Attachment Strategies for Engagement / Emotion Regulation – The Problem as the Pattern
Empathic Attuning and Reflecting Present Process Role-play
Lunch 12:30 – 1:30
1:30 PM – 3:00
The EFT Tango – how EFIT is done
Clinical example video with exercises in breakout rooms
Break 3:00 – 3:15
3:15 – 4:30
Review of Tasks, Factors Central to Success: Task alliance, Emotional depth, Affiliative encounters
EFT Interventions
Personal Exercise on Stage 1 in dyads
The EFT Model of Change – EFT Stages – Stabilization – Restructuring – Consolidation
Summary of the Day / Discussion – Q & A – Closure by 4:30
Day 2
9:30 AM – 10:45 AM ET
Stages and Interventions in more depth with Clinical Examples and Exercises
Stage 1 Stabilization:
EFT Tango Moves in Stage 1 video and exercises
Process of Emotion – Video of Travis – Emotion Hand-Dance
Assessment – Alliance – Things to watch for in early sessions (Tango 1)
Emotion Assembly and Deepening (Tango 2)
Shaping and Processing Encounters (Tango 3 and 4)
Integrating (Tango 5)
Break 10:45 – 11:00
11:00 – 12:30
Stage 2 Restructuring:
Change Events – Deepening Emotion – Reshaping Defining Inner Dramas – video
Lunch 12:30 – 1:30
1:30 – 3:00
Overview of Stages of Change, Impasses, Next steps
Stabilization – end of Stage 1, Stage 2 distinguished from Stage 1, Markers end of Stage 2, Stage 3 Consolidation
Break 3:00 – 3:15
3:15 – 4:30
Impasses
Therapist Strategies for Learning EFIT – Personal Goals – Level 2 EFIT training
Wrap-up
EFIT Level 2
Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT) Level 2:
Online, hosted by Carolina Center for EFT
July 16, 17, 2021
Trainer: Lorrie Brubacher
Information: rebecca@carolinaeft.com
Extend your abilities to practice Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT).
Promote Emotional Fitness: Robust, Resourceful & Prepared to Face Existential Dilemma.
This training will build on and elaborate Level 1 EFIT training and is the final requirement for ICEEFT recognition of special training in EFIT.
Preparation for training:
- Reading and exercises in the EFIT draft chapter made available upon registration.
- Identify your challenges – in practicing EFIT, specifically in the moves of the EFT Tango.
12 NBCC approved CE hours
Prerequisite: Level 1 EFIT, Pre-reading and exercises will be sent upon registration.
Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT) extends Dr. Sue Johnson’s model of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy to work with individuals. EFIT helps you to create corrective emotional experiences in individual therapy to shape safety and security with others and within self.
Johnson argues that psychotherapy is most effective when it focuses on the healing power of emotional connection. Attachment theory provides proven techniques for treating the two common presenting problems in individual therapy: anxiety and depression. It provides a practical map for shaping love or secure attachment that positively impacts emotion regulation, social adjustment and mental health (Johnson, 2019).
“But love is not only an end for therapy; it is also the means by which every end is reached” (Lewis, Amini, & Lannon, 2002). In EFIT, the therapeutic alliance is the heart from which emotion regulation and secure bonds with others and within self are shaped. Core attachment emotions are reprocessed to fuel corrective emotional experiences of love, between and within. Clients are helped to discover and validate inner emotional experience that can then be used as a guide for living. Confidence flows from secure connection with others, creating a safe haven and a secure base in the dynamic flow between interpersonal and internal worlds.
Learning Objectives:
Following the training participants will be able to:
- Adopt an attachment humanistic perspective on clients, problems, and interventions
- Discover and distill core emotional experiences and promote emotional balance
- Outline protective, self-defining and interactional iatrogenic patterns
- Implement the 5 moves of the EFT Tango to shape corrective emotional experiences
- Choreograph dramas that expand the self and open engagement with others
- Integrate corrective emotional experiences into models of self and other
- Validate the client’s sense of competence and worth in every session.
Lorrie Brubacher is the Founding Director of the Carolina Center for EFT (Emotionally Focused Therapy). A certified trainer with the International Centre for Excellence in EFT (ICEEFT), she has been an individual, couple and family therapist since 1989. She is an adjunct faculty at University of North Carolina, Greensboro. She trains internationally and publishes frequently on the topic of EFT, often with its originator, Dr. Sue Johnson. She co-developed EFT’s first interactive video training program, has several training videos, available at https://steppingintoeft.com and published Stepping into Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy: Key Ingredients of Change (2018).
What Past Participants Have Said About This Workshop….
“The community from Romania is grateful for the opportunity that Lorrie gave us. We all feel enriched by the information and experiences. Lorrie impressed all the therapists by her warmth, genuine attitude and openness. By varying live demonstration with role plays and videotaped sessions, the course has a highly practical style, that has helps trainees to know how to use the attachment lens… to determine emotional regulations patterns… to track negative cycles that maintain the client’s presenting problem, and use the incredible power of emotion to revise the internal working models of self and other and choreograph corrective emotional experiences that can in turn transform the negative models into safe internal and interpersonal bonds.” – from Romania, 2017
“Lorrie is an incredible gift to the EFT Community. This training greatly increased my confidence and decreased my anxiety. Very enjoyable mix of didactic and experiential. Very genuine and positively vulnerable instructor.” – from Phoenix, AZ, 2017
“Excellent training. The live session/debrief was especially helpful. Good blend of theory and application.”
“So grateful for this training. I learned so much about the process of EFIT experientially from Lorrie and with my fellow participants. I loved how the training, organization, live session, videos and role plays helped me learn the materials. I love Lorrie’s kind, caring way of interacting with participants.” – from Greensboro, NC, 2017
Sue Johnson after Lorrie’s Live Session in Ottawa, November 2017:
“I’ll tell you what you just saw! You just saw perfect, constant, relentless attunement. And you saw it keep going. The central difference with EFT is that you stay in the emotion channel. You follow. You follow. And then you have to know where to go and Lorrie showed that beautifully. Beautifully. What you just saw was amazing attunement and a lot of what happened there was that Lorrie stayed with her. Lorrie stayed with her and validated and ordered her experience. As she stayed in the experience she directed her back. She ordered it. She kept the emotion going. … And because Lorrie was safe – holding her hand – focused the reflections – kept keeping her attuned – it’s like you pick up on the momentum of the emotion and the emotion keeps going. So you just saw a brilliant session!”