Working with Identity and Self‐soothing in Emotion‐Focused Therapy for Couples

Abstract

This paper will outline new developments in Emotion-Focused Therapy for Couples (EFT-C) (Greenberg & Goldman, Emotion-focused couples therapy: The dynamics of emotion, love, and power, Washington, DC, American Psychological Association, 2008). People are seen as primarily motivated by their affective goals and the regulation of emotional states. The three motivational systems of attachment, identity, and attraction/liking, viewed as reflective of the core concerns people bring to therapy, are briefly outlined and elaborated. The five-stage model of EFT-C is briefly described. The paper will then provide two illustrations, one that demonstrates how EFT-C therapists work with core issues related to identity, and the other that shows how therapy can promote self-soothing. In the first example, annotated transcripts taken from therapy sessions illustrate how an EFT therapist addresses issues of identity in a highly distressed couple. The second example demonstrates how to facilitate work with individuals within the couples' context to engender and develop capacities for self-soothing, seen as fundamental for the promotion of healthy emotion regulation and couples' overall health.

Editorial: Integration in Couple and Family Therapy

“…Some models are more 1 Most practice models do highlight one key theoretical focus and set of intervention strategies that give that approach its core sense. For example, emotion-focused therapies focus on emotion and attachment (Goldman & Greenberg, 2013); object relations therapies on levels of relationship out of awareness (Gerson, 2019); cognitive-behavioral therapies on cognitions, skill development, and behavioral exchanges (Fischer, Baucom, & Cohen, 2016); narrative therapies on the stories people carry within themselves (Combs & Freedman, 2016); and therapies centered on gender (ChenFeng, Kim, Wu, & Knudson-Martin, 2017) and culture (Parra-Cardona et al, 2018) on those aspects in the lives of individuals and families. Most such approaches also do now include other elements beyond their key focus; thus, for example, emotion-focused therapy is often labeled as integrative.…”

Editorial: Whither Family Therapy: Alive and Flowering Amidst the Challenges

“…In particular, those intrinsic biopsychosocial aspects of humans which separate them from inanimate systems have presented a quandary for systemic therapies from the beginning (Fishbane, 2007;Goldman & Greenberg, 2013;Patterson & Vakili, 2014;Weingarten, 2013). This core systemic vision has provided an overarching framework, but also presented somewhat of a problem for the field.…”

Editorial: Overselling Our Findings

“…We also publish articles that assess treatments, such as a recent study of multiple family groups in medical illness (López‐Larrosa, ) and reviews of family therapy on externalizing and internalizing disorders in children (Retzlaff, von Sydow, Beher, Haun, & Schweitzer, ; von Sydow, Retzlaff, Beher, Haun, & Schweitzer, ). And, we publish articles describing treatment approaches (Cleek, Wofsy, Boyd‐Franklin, Mundy, & Howell, ; Dickerson, ; Goldman & Greenberg, ; Knudson‐Martin, ; Wile, ). For each kind of article, we look for authors to clearly state their conclusions, but to frame those conclusions in a way that precisely speaks to what has been discovered or described, highlighting the bounds and limits of what is being proposed, staying within the confines of the “data”, and curbing exaggeration.…”