Description: This workshop will examine the implications of the science of love and bonding as they apply to couple therapy. One of the best validated and most effective approaches to changing distressed couple relationships into loving secure bonds is Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). Thirty years of scientific research validates the success rate of this model and shows its relapse rate is low compared to other couple therapies. 70-75% of couples treated with EFT move from distress to recovery and approximately 90% show significant improvements. The core of EFT’s change process is to first help couples recognize and contain the circular patterns that keep them emotionally off balance and in distress, and then help them reshape the relationship bond with specific moments of emotional engagement and vulnerability that pull for attuned and compassionate responses. This process as well as the interventions, steps, and stages of Emotionally Focused Therapy will be explored through video clips. Discussion and video will demonstrate how attachment theory guides couple therapists in working with emotion and in choosing specific moment to moment interventions that transform relational distress into secure bonds of intimacy and love.
Trainer: Lorrie Brubacher, M. Ed., LMFT, RMFT is the Founder and Director of the Greensboro Charlotte Center for EFT. She is certified with the International Centre for Excellence in EFT (ICEEFT) as a therapist, supervisor, and trainer. She practices therapy and provides EFT Training and Supervision in North Carolina and Winnipeg, Canada. For over 20 years she has taught counseling courses in Canada at 3 universities and has worked in private practice in couple and family therapy since 1989. Lorrie is an AAMFT Approved Supervisor, has published in the Journal of Marriage and Family Therapy, has several publications in press and is on the editorial board for the ICEEFT newsletter. Additionally, she teaches Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy and is co-developer of the first EFT interactive video training program, accessible at www.attachmentinjuryrepair.com. For additional information please see www.lbrubacher.com and www.gcceft.com
Objectives:
Participants completing this event will be able to:
- Describe romantic love as an attachment process
- Identify skills to help couples recognize and contain their negative cycles of interaction.
- Identify interventions, which engage clients with emotion and reprocess emotional responses.
- Recognize how to create corrective emotional experiences and bonding events.
Winston-Salem Clinical Lecture Series, a joint program of UNC School of Social Work and Northwest AHEC of Wake Forest School of Medicine