Differences Between EFFT And EFT - EFT Couple Therapy Switzerland

Emotionally focused family therapy:

Focuses on attachment fears and needs, which have been found to be crucial in understanding family relationships and problems.

Focuses on what happens between individuals but not their emotions.

Focuses on conversational metaphor.

Focuses on triangles in families and the detriangulization of the identified client.

The basic goal of EFFT is:

Treat the identified client and alleviate his/her symptoms.

Teach communication skills to family members.

Modify family relationships in the direction of increased accessibility and responsiveness to create a secure base for children to grow and leave from.

Develop individual differentiation and autonomy within the family system.

The format for EFFT sessions is:

All family members are seen together for all the sessions.

All family members are seen for the beginning and ending of therapy. The remaining of the sessions are composed of various dyads and triads within the family group

Family members plus all significant members of the family’s system are included.

The therapist helps the family by treating the symptomatic individual family member

EFFT therapist skills include:

Building a therapeutic alliance with all family members.

Identify the negative interactional cycle and focus on the underlying attachment emotions and fears.

Foster new interactions through expressing of needs and wants and creating emotional engagement.

All of the above

List three examples of when attachments may compete in families:

The positions of pursue/withdraw are different in families than in couples primarily because:

Of the parenting functions, which include caretaking, nurturing, and guidance.

There is an absence of negative interactional cycles

There is a lack of differentiation in family systems.

There is parental neglect.

List three comments you could make that would validate these parents without invalidating the children.

List three comments you could make that would validate these children without invalidating the parents.

How would you formulate the negative interactional cycle?

10.

What interventions would you use in the beginning session with this family? (more than one correct answer)

“This family has strengths in your ability to have fun and be close during vacations and at holiday times.”

“The negative cycle has a powerful effect on everyone because it gets in the way of you feeling close as a unit and also feeling good about yourself.”

“Mom and Dad, you are both are trying very hard in your roles as leaders to try and bring this family together and work as a team, to which you get resistance and a lack of cooperation from the kids. This upsets you as you want the family to work together and then you try harder. Dad, you may become louder and more forceful whereas you, Mom, find yourself saying the same things over and over again. The kids react by either fighting back or fleeing; they get into fights with each other or they leave the house or make lots of funny remarks. Everybody ends up feeling bad and not good about each other.”

“I want you, Dad, to have a conversation with Dennis about how to fight more effectively and win at his fights.”

“I want the family to go home tonight and make a list of chores and have a family meeting to decide who does what chore and set up a work schedule.”

“I think that this family needs to have some individual work to sort out what is happening and allow you to function better as a family unit. I would suggest that Dennis see our child and adolescent therapist.”

11.

How would you intervene to begin to access this father’s primary emotion and how would you frame the emotions in attachment terms?

12.

How would you begin to access this son’s underlying emotions and how would you frame the emotions in attachment terms?

13.

List three comments you could make that would validate this mom without invalidating the other family members.

14.

List three comments you could make that would validate this dad without invalidating other family members.

15.

List three comments you could make that would validate this teenager without invalidating other family members.

16.

How would you formulate the negative cycle in this family and begin to access the underlying emotions?

17.

Pick which would be EFFT interventions with this family in this session? (more than one correct answer)

“I would like to set our next meeting at lunchtime and all of us will bring our lunch, and we will eat together.”

“Dad, I would like you to teach Melissa about how to stand up for herself and give her some lessons on assertiveness.”

“An eating disorder can take over a family and become the ruler in how family members interact. It seems like the eating disorder has taken siege of your family.”

“I wonder what it is like for you, Mom, when Melissa doesn’t listen to your efforts to mother her?

“Are there times in this family when everyone does feel connected and close?”

“What happens to you, Dad, when there is an explosion? What is it that you do?”

“Do you know what you do, Melissa, when you don’t feel that you are measuring up and are disappointing your mom?”

18.

How would you intervene to begin to access this mother’s primary emotions, and how would you frame the emotions in attachment terms?

19.

How would you intervene to begin to access this daughter’s primary emotions and how would you frame the emotions in attachment terms?