Emotion Focused Couple Therapy (EFT)

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) is an evidence-based approach to couples therapy developed by Dr. Sue Johnson and Dr. Les Greenberg in the 1980s. Grounded in John Bowlby's attachment theory, EFT is now one of the most extensively researched and effective approaches to helping couples strengthen their relationships. 

At its heart, EFT helps couples rediscover and deepen their emotional connection. By understanding the patterns that keep them feeling disconnected and creating new experiences of safety and closeness, partners can build a more secure, trusting, and fulfilling relationship.

When relationships become strained, couples often find them-selves caught in the same painful patterns over and over again. One partner may withdraw, become quiet, or avoid conflict, while the other reaches for closeness, becomes critical, or fights to be heard. Although these responses are often driven by fear, hurt, or a longing for connection, they can unintentionally create even more distance between partners.

In Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT), we do not see either partner as the problem. Instead, we focus on the negative cycle that has developed between you.

Once this cycle becomes visible, you can begin to understand it together and, as a team rather than as opponents, create new ways of reaching and responding to one another.

Many conflicts may appear to be about everyday issues.
Yet beneath these struggles, there are often deeper questions:

Do I matter to you?
Are you there for me when I need you?
Can I rely on you?

These questions reflect our fundamental human need for emotional closeness, safety, and connection. When we no longer feel secure in our relationship or cannot reach our partner emotionally, we often respond with withdrawal, criticism, or protest.

EFT helps couples bring these deeper emotions and attachment needs into awareness, creating opportunities to reconnect and experience each other in new ways.

At the heart of many relationship conflicts lies a longing to feel connected again.

In therapy, couples often experience a new way of being with each other: The possibility to share their fears, needs, and vulnerabilities and to feel met, understood, and accepted by their partner. Through these new emotional experiences, trust, closeness, and a sense of connection can gradually be restored.

EFT is not about communicating perfectly or avoiding conflict.
It is about emotionally reach each other again.

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy can support couples who long for greater closeness, trust, and emotional connection – whether they have been together for a few years or for many years.

Taking the first step does not have to feel overwhelming. That is why I offer a free 20-minute introductory video consultation.

This conversation gives you the opportunity to briefly share what brings you to therapy, get to know me and my way of working, and ask any questions you may have. Together, we will explore whether Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) feels like the right approach for your relationship and discuss practical details such as the process, fees, and framework of therapy.

If we decide to work together, the first sessions will focus on getting to know your relationship history and understanding the patterns that have developed between you. The aim is not to find someone to blame or to solve individual conflicts. Instead, we will work together to understand the painful cycle that has developed between you.

Building on this understanding, we will gradually explore the emotions and attachment needs beneath these patterns. As you begin to emotionally reach one another again and create new experiences of safety and connection, a different way of relating can emerge – one based on greater trust, closeness, and mutual understanding.

You do not need to already know what the solution looks like.
We begin exactly where you are.