Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFCT)
At the heart of my work with couples is Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT), an approach with a strong and well-established evidence base. Developed in the 1980s by Dr Sue Johnson, it has been extensively researched over the decades, with outcomes consistently showing that 70–75% of couples move from significant relational distress to meaningful recovery. Importantly, these gains are sustained; research demonstrates that improvements hold for months and often years after treatment ends.
​
What makes it effective?
​
EFCT draws on emotion theory and attachment theory to understand what happens when couples get stuck. It is grounded in the understanding that emotions are not simply reactions to be managed but carry important information about our deepest needs, and when accessed and understood, they have real adaptive potential. In other words, emotions can be the very thing that helps couples change.
​
Central to this is attachment, our fundamental human need to feel safe, known, and emotionally responded to by those closest to us. When that sense of security feels threatened or uncertain, partners don't simply feel unhappy. They become dysregulated. They protest, cling, withdraw, or shut down; not out of hostility, but out of fear. This is why distressed couples so often find themselves locked in familiar, painful cycles: one partner pursuing connection, the other pulling away, both feeling increasingly misunderstood and alone.
My role is to help couples identify the emotions beneath those patterns; the hurt, the fear, the unspoken longing that are quietly sustaining the cycle. Within a therapeutically attuned, compassionate space, I support each partner in exploring and expressing those deeper feelings in ways that invite connection rather than defensiveness. As those underlying attachment needs become visible and voiced, something genuinely shifts: partners begin to respond to one another differently, and a more secure, emotionally engaged bond begins to form.
​
Meaningful change happens gradually and gently, through growing awareness, emotional regulation, and the experience of being truly heard by the person who matters most.
​
​
* For further information about EFT and its effectiveness please visit https://iceeft.com/what-is-eft-public/