04-10-2025 – Trailblazing New Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) Ground: Beyond Context & Cultural Humility

Dates and Times:  

Thursday & Friday, April 10-11, 2025
9:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. EST (both days)

Format: Hybrid

• Livestream via Zoom, or
• In person: UNC School of Social Work, 325 Pittsboro Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516

CE Credit: 12 CEs, read for full information on credit types awarded.
Fees: $180 (scholarships available)

Description: 

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) helps couples build strong, lasting emotional bonds by reshaping unhelpful patterns and fostering deeper emotional connection and understanding. and it serves as a foundation of this training.

This workshop simultaneously draws from the emerging clinical focus that integrates cultural issues into therapy to dismantle the harmful legacies of racism and promote cultural flourishing. Despite scholars of color highlighting the importance of cultural diversity and multicultural stress, their insights have often been overlooked. Most major psychotherapy models still treat race as a demographic category, failing to incorporate internalized racism and the cultural deficit model into clinical practice. Moreover, the new era of psychological liberation emphasizes that the development of cultural identity is crucial for both individual well-being and the health of romantic relationships.

This training seeks to enhance participants’ EFT skills by integrating culture into the core of the EFT process. Understanding that navigating multicultural clinical dynamics is an ongoing journey, the training encourages participants to develop their internal cultural identity and grow personally. It also covers multicultural coping, emotional stress, and social wellness for both couples and therapists.

Dr. Paul Guillory, in his book Emotionally Focused Therapy with African American Couples: Love Heals, emphasizes that therapists can work most effectively with Couples of Color by having a conceptual framework for cultural issues, including racism, racial identity, race-based events, and racial trauma. Incorporating these concepts into clinical practice supports both individual wellness and the strengthening of the love bond in Persons of Color. This workshop will explore key clinical concepts–such as discussing culture, internalized racism, cultural stress, and cultural identity as internal dynamic processes–and demonstrate how they can be applied in therapy. Participants will engage with case studies, vignettes, and video clips of clinical interventions, and will have opportunities to practice specific clinical techniques in breakout groups.

This workshop is suitable for both new and advanced EFT learners.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of the training participants will be able to:

1. Explain at least two reasons why failure to broach culture in therapy can be harmful.
2. List and compare different types of adverse culture-based events that impact People of Color.
3. Describe three ways to help Couples of Color process adverse cultural-based events.
4. List Tango Moves where cultural dynamics might be include.
5. Identify at least three ways that therapists might reframe cultural stress to promote relationship bonds.
6. Critique the goals of EFT couples therapy that are likely relevant for Couples of Color beyond the enhancement of a safe-haven & secure-base.

Trainer: Paul Guillory, PhD., is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley in the Clinical Science Program, Psychology Department, where he has taught courses on Emotionally Focused Therapies. He has been in private practice in Oakland California for over 30 years, and has served as Director of the Center for Family Counseling in Oakland California for ten years and as chairperson of the Northern California Community of Emotionally Focused Therapy. He is also a certified trainer, supervisor, and EFT therapist and author of Emotionally Focused Therapy with African American Couples: Love Heals..He has created several clinical online training video that amplify integrating attachment & culture (www.paultguilloryphd.com).

Some of his recent workshop include “Emotionally Focused Therapy in a time of Racial Reckoning” (for the Couple & Family Institute of New England); “Race and Couples Therapy,” (for the Eikenberg Academy for Social Justice), “Deep Roots: Attachment & Culture,” (for the LA Center of EFT); “Attachment & Culture: Deep Roots,” (for the NCCEFT Annual Workshop); and “Deep Roots: Attachment & Culture” (for the APA  Annual Convention). He also has taught specialize EFT Externships & Core Skills repeatedly over several years to therapists who work with clients of color, and has taught the first ever EFT Externships in Uganda & Kenya and EFT Core Skills in Uganda.

Dr. Guillory has also served as the psychological consultant to the Oakland Raiders professional football team and the National Football League for 14 years. He has also served as consultant for the Sacramento Kings professional basketball team and is a selected provider for the National Basketball Players Association. He is a life-time member of the Association of Black Psychologist and the USA Masters Track & Field Association.

References:

• Allan, R., Wiebe, S. A., Johnson, S. M., Piaseckyj, O., & Campbell, T. L. (2021). Practicing emotionally focused therapy online: Calling all relationships. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 47(2), 424-439. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmft.12507
• Bloch, L., & Guillory, P. T. (2011). The attachment frame is the thing: Emotion-focused family therapy in adolescence. Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy, 10(3), 229-245. https://doi.org/10.1080/15332691.2011.588090
• Brigance, C. A., Brown, E. C., & Cottone, R. R. (2021). Therapeutic intervention for couples experiencing infertility: An emotionally focused couples therapy approach. The Family Journal, 29(1), 72-79.  https://doi.org/10.1177/1066480720973420
• Burgess Moser, M., Johnson, S. M., Dalgleish, T. L., Lafontaine, M., Wiebe, S. A., & Tasca, G. A. (2016). Changes in relationship-specific attachment in emotionally focused couple therapy. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 42(2), 231-245. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmft.12139
• Jenks, A., Adams, G., Young, B., & Seedall, R. (2024). Addressing power in couples therapy: Integrating socio‐emotional relationship therapy and emotionally focused therapy. Family Process, 63(1), 48-63. https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12961
• Greenman, P. S., & Johnson, S. M. (2022). Emotionally focused therapy: Attachment, connection, and health. Current Opinion in Psychology, 43, 146-150.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.06.015
• Guillory, P.T. (2021). Emotionally focused therapy with African American couples. New York: Routledge Press.
• Johnson, S. M., Moser, M. B., Beckes, L., Smith, A., Dalgleish, T., Halchuk, R., Hasselmo, K., Greenman, P. S., Merali, Z., & Coan, J. A. (2013). Soothing the threatened brain: Leveraging contact comfort with emotionally focused therapy. PloS One, 8(11), e79314-e79314. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0079314
• Sandberg, J. G., Calatrava, M., Andrade, D., Lybbert, R., Mazo, S., & Rodríguez‐González, M. (2024). Toward a culturally sensitive application of emotionally focused couples therapy: A qualitative study of therapists’ experience using EFT in Spanish‐speaking countries/cultures. Family Process, 63(2), 648-666. https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12982
• Wiebe, S. A., & Johnson, S. M. (2016). A review of the research in emotionally focused therapy for couples. Family Process, 55(3), 390-407. https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.1222

UNC School of Social Work – Clinical Institute