Extending an Attachment-Based Model to Therapy with Individuals

Location: Greensboro, NC
Date: January 17 & 18, 2020

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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:

After this workshop, participants will be able to follow the attachment map to:

1. Describe an individual’s presenting problem in an attachment frame.
2. Describe the EFT model of change with individuals.
3. Apply interventions in the EFT Tango with individuals.
4. Identify coping strategies for engagement / emotion regulation that maintain individual’s presenting problems and assemble emotion in those patterns.
5. Reprocess emotion and shape new, positive patterns of engagement.
6. Create corrective emotional experiences to shape safety & security

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, 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!”