Short-Term and Long-Term Effects of Training in Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy: Professional and Personal Aspects

Abstract

This study investigated the immediate and long-term personal and professional effects of a 4-day externship training in emotionally focused couple therapy (EFT). EFT externship training uses lecture, discussion, video vignettes, live demonstrations, and role-plays to convey an attachment-based approach to working with couples. The two samples included clinicians (N = 76) who completed surveys immediately before and after training, and a subset of these clinicians (N = 29) who completed measures an average of 8 months later. Results indicate that following training, participants increased in their EFT knowledge and competence, became more open to their feelings, were more self-compassionate, were less likely to use avoidant attachment behaviors, and improved their own personal relationships.

The Role of Therapist Attachment in Alliance and Outcome: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Assessing the effects of therapist attachment style on alliance and outcome is further complicated by the fact that most therapists were rated as more securely attached than the clients and the majority were classified as ‘secure’ (Bruck et al ., ; Dinger et al ., ; Ligiero & Gelso, ; Schauenburg et al ., ; Tyrell et al ., ). This is in line with previous research (Montagno, Svatovic, & Levenson, ) showing that the majority of therapists have lower than national norms on self‐reports of attachment avoidance or anxiety. Although this is expected in a study of healthy therapists, future research would benefit from using larger samples of therapists with variations in the degree of attachment measured on continuous dimensions to overcome problems with floor effects in attachment measures.…”

“…Research on couples therapy suggests that therapist insecure attachment style can change following emotion‐focused training (EFT; Montagno et al ., ). EFT (Palmer‐Olsen, Gold, & Woolley, ) teaches therapists to pay attention to their emotion and attachment processes during therapy.…”

Guided Respiration Mindfulness Therapy: Development and Evaluation of a Brief Therapist Training Program

“…There has been little attention given to the evaluation of training effects on therapists personal experience in the research literature. One study which has (Montagno et al 2011) examined the impact of a 3-day experiential training in emotion-focused therapy on therapists intervention competence and personal lives through both quantitative and qualitative methods. Their results showed experiential training increased therapists ability to process emotions and levels of self-compassion consistent with the treatment model.…”

Thematic review of family therapy journals 2011

“…In the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy (vol. 37 no 4 ) there was a special section on learning EFCT that contained articles on the effects of training in EFCT (Montagno et al ., ), the experience of learning EFCT (Sandberg and Knestel, ), supervision in EFCT (Palmer‐Olsen, ) and a commentary by the originator of EFCT – Susan Johnson (). This set of articles contains evidence that training in EFCT is demanding but has a positive impact on therapist competence and personal development.…”