EFFT Level 2 Training: Core Competencies of EFFT

Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) is an attachment-based approach that combines both systemic and experiential interventions to restore family relationships and strengthen their resilience. A primary goal of EFFT is to reduce problematic behavior by creating new patterns of emotional accessibility and responsiveness that offer a secure base for children to develop and families to thrive. EFFT provides a practical approach to engaging families at an emotional level. Accessing, processing, and connecting family members through the power of emotional experience promotes healing and fosters a family’s resilience to the everyday and unexpected challenges of life. 

This advanced training builds on previous EFFT training providing further training on the six core competencies of EFFT practice. Participants focus on key change events in EFFT and therapist practices used to promote parental openness and child vulnerability. The training provides direction in transforming parental intention into more effective engagement of caregiving and engaging attachment responses within the family system. Specific strategies are reviewed for working through relational blocks and re-engaging attachment related-needs across the family. This training follows an intensive focus on key elements in the EFT process applied to family relationships. Demonstration and practice exercises provide participants opportunities to deepen their EFT skills in intervening with family relationships broadening their understanding of emotion and attachment in family life and strengthening the bonds they share. 

Course Goals and Objectives

Participants will be able to:

• Conceptualize family distress and formulate a treatment plan guided by EFFT goals.
• Explore alliance practices that promote family engagement in treatment.
• Assess safety and contraindications for EFFT practice and conjoint practice.
• Identify EFFT change events and related therapist interventions.
• Practice interventions skills that promote parental buy-in to systemic intervention.
• Order family patterns and reframe family patterns using an attachment frame.
• Engage practices to process relational blocks to parental openness and child vulnerability.
• Gain skill in accessing and assembling emotion associated with family distress.
• Increase effectiveness in use of enactments to engage and process attachment related emotions and needs.
• Facilitate impact of corrective experiences throughout family relationships.
• Identify treatment practices guiding use of EFFT with divorced and remarried families.