Emotion Focused Therapy

It's almost never really about the in-laws.

Certified Gottman Therapist · Emotion Focused Couples Therapist

When a couple argues after dinner with the in-laws, both can end up spiraling and feeling alone. Underneath the disagreement is often a much more vulnerable question:

Can I count on you?

Two people sitting at either end of a bench on a hilltop at dusk, both looking out at the view

What Emotion Focused Therapy is

A couple standing in their living room mid-conversation, turned toward each other

Long before we're adults, we learn whether the people we depend on will be there when we need them. Those early lessons don't disappear as we grow up, they shape how we reach for our partner, how we pull away, and how we react when we feel unsure of them.

EFT was developed by Dr. Sue Johnson and has decades of research behind it. Rather than working on communication, it looks at what's happening emotionally underneath the argument: why you reach, why your partner goes quiet, what each of you might be afraid of, and why you both keep returning to the same cycle.

The three cycles couples get caught in

If you know the Gottman work

The most common EFT cycle contains two of Gottman's Four Horsemen, the Protest Polka is criticism and stonewalling, circling each other.

When it starts going wrong, I tend to
And my partner tends to
Answer both and I'll name the cycle you are most likely caught in.
Your cycle is often called

Talk this through with us
Two questions · two minutes

Find your cycle

When a conversation starts going wrong between you, each of you makes a move. The moves are protective, and they set each other off. Answer honestly about the moment things get tense, not your best day or your worst one.

Neither of you is the problem. The cycle is.

How I use it to help couples break the cycle

Once a couple can see the pattern as the shared problem, it stops being you against me and becomes us against the cycle.

In my practice I weave EFT together with the Gottman Method. Gottman gives couples a clear, research-based framework and practical skills; EFT deepens that work, getting underneath the conflict to the emotions and attachment needs driving it. Drawing on both lets me meet a couple where they are and go as deep as the moment calls for.

Two people touching enamel mugs together, a granite valley behind them

If this sounds like you

If you and your partner keep having the same argument and keep ending up disconnected and alone, it doesn't mean something is broken beyond repair. It usually means there's an attachment need that hasn't yet found its way into words.

Uncovering that need together, and supporting each other through it, is what makes couples feel hopeful again.

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