[[Marriage & Family Therapy]] [[Sue Johnson]] Four categories of emotions: Adaptive primary emotions: - Biologically based - They help with problem solving, going back to our primal survival instincts - The root emotion - Examples: sadness, fear, grief, anger, joy, surprise, hurt, and shame - Are often outside of one's awareness and are ofen unacknowledged and not validated Secondary emotions: - Culturally based, based on context - Defensive coping strategies - A response, not the primary emotion - These re more readily available on a conscious level and often mask primary emotions Instrumental emotions: - Culturally based - Serve a function of manipulating feelings - Help us achieve a result we are looking for, expressing helplessness in order to gain empathy - Discovered through a learned process Maladaptive primary emotions - Biologically and culturally based - Primary emotional responses as an immediate reaction to situations - Ex. fear (primary emotion) of intimacy (learned from past experiences) Role of EFT therapist - Process consultant - Choreographer - In session: collaborator (not post-modern) Goals of EFT therapy - To expand and re-organize key emotional processes (helping the couple recognize what is happening in their emotional process/interactional pattern and create a willingness to expand what happens) - To create a shift in partners interactional positions/cycle (help the couple put their problems in the words of their attachment needs) - To foster the creation of a secure bond between partners Therapy process (9 steps of EFT) 1. Create an alliance, delineate the issues presented by the couple, and assess how these issues express core conflicts 2. Identify the negative interaction cycle 3. Access unacknowledged feelings underlying interactional positions ^Goal 1 ^ 4. Reframe the problem(s) in terms of the underlying feelings 5. Promote identification with disowned needs and aspects of self 6. Promote acceptance by each partner of the other partner's experience ^ Goal 2 ^ 7. Facilitate the expression of needs and wants to restructure the interaction 8. Establish the emergence of new patterns 9. Consolidate new positions Techniques Task 1: Accessing Emotional Experience Responding: - empathetic reflection - Feedback on nonverbal cues - Evocative responding Directing - Process directions and inquires (clear and straight forward answers/psychoeducation) - Experiments in awareness/heightening - Enactments - Empathtic interpretation of current emotional experience Task 2: Changing interactional patterns Reframing - Placing behavior in the context of the cycle (externalizing the cycle) - framing difficulties in terms of underling vulneabilities - Giving a meta-perspective Restructuring - Instructing the paternet to interact in a particular way - Choreographing a new pattern of interaction Treatment Plan Stage 1 - Attending - Refocusing - Immediacy - Expression analysis - Intensification - Symbolization - Establishing intents Stage 2 - Tracking interactions - Refocusing interactions - Reframing - Directing and choreographing Stage 3 - Practicing new patterns & avoiding falling back to old cycles