Contrasts between EFT Training and Transformative Couples Therapy® Training
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) training and theory and practice has been developed independently by Sue Johnson and Les Greenberg for more than thirty years.
In my experience, the EFT training in the Externship with Sue Johnson was destinctive in that it offered a far more structured approach to couples therapy than Transformative Couples Therapy (TCT). Also, the focus on the negative cycle as the entry point for treatment presents a vivid contrast with TCT, which is focused on positivity and the felt experience of love. As couples therapists, we all have our preferences and ideally lean in the direction that feels right to us.
The majority of those receiving TCT training have been exposed to EFT training and have expressed a desire for the emphasis on spontaneity, authenticity and somatic orientation in the TCT model.
FAQ
What is valuable about the combination of EFT training and TCT training?
In my experience of giving TCT training, those who have had EFT training expressed valuing for the methodical structure of EFT, but found that the freedom to be with the self-at-best aspects of couples as they emerged to be more productive, liberating and refreshing of their sense of naturalness as a therapist. The guidance for the therapist in TCT is more about the couple members expressing and receiving for the felt experience of love as their therapist helps the process of unfolding by actually evoking that love experience. This process of blowing off the grey ash from atop of the coals of caring allows couples to discover that the warmth in the relationship was just dormant and not missing. From this place we begin, often from the first session to co-construct new patterns of the couple members communing directly to each other, supported by their TCT therapist to engage in new ways that bring forward the self-at-best of each couple member thus co-constructing the beginnings of a more a secure base.
How does a therapist evoke the felt experience of love in a couple that is not yet in a stable condition?
By closely tracking micro-expressions facially, in body language and in voices softening and opening, the therapist witnesses these changes and selectively reflects to the couple the signs of emerging compassion, kindness, admiration, support and affection. By structuring the couple speaking to each other eye-to-eye beginning in the first session, emphasizing the positivity and the encouraging dopamine that brings on the pleasure of being loving and loved, the couple learns in session to let in the love feelings that had been buried by time, stresses and disappointments and unrepaired emotional injuries. Then, when issues come up within or between sessions, the safe base of love between the couple serves as a cushion against shame, hurt feelings, that have in the past weakened confidence in the relationship.
In EFT training for therapists, the negative cycle is fully explored from the start of treatment. In TCT do negative cycles ever get dealt with…or do you just stay positive all the time?
In TCT training, we find that fears and anger around loving and being loved come up naturally. Resentments come up as well, as do long-repeated themes of arguing. In TCT we embrace these emerging conflict conditions, slow them down and regulate the couple members, so we can dig in to discover where the patterns originate. Often, like in EFT sessions, the sources of triggering of unresolved trauma are found embedded in the family of origin of each couple member. In TCT, we use healing portrayals to treat the unresolved trauma at its source by “sliding back in time” within couple sessions to the earliest moments of memory about that theme. Many couple members in treatment find opportunities for how to focus on what is true in what their partner feels during conflict, so this gives us opportunities for the couple to establish new common ground together in the spirit of compassion. The deepening of the couple members’ self-knowing and knowing each other brings new neuroplasticity into high gear for changing the minds of each couple member for the better.