Learning Emotion-Focused Therapy

Updates a classic EFT reference with over 20 years of research and theory. The key to helping clients transform their old, bad, stuck feelings is a process of emotional deepening. Clients must move from global distress to core pain, then to useful adaptive emotions. In emotion-focused therapy (EFT), therapists facilitate this process by first adopting a deeply empathic, caring presence and second offering therapeutic work ("tasks") that follows the client's content while providing gentle, flexible guidance of the client's process. The highly successful first edition of this book became the standard reference work for a generation of EFT therapists. This second edition promises to inspire the next generation of EFT therapists, updating the first edition's solid coverage of EFT theory and practice, while also describing EFT's most exciting theoretical, practical, and organizational developments of the past 20 years. Some updates in the new edition include: A new integrated emotional deepening model and EFT case formulation. New questions and activities for self-reflection. Clearer formulations of the nature and functions of specific emotions (e.g., anger, shame). Twice as many references as in the first edition. A supplemental website with course materials to enhance teaching of EFT. The resulting authoritative volume offers much for beginners and established EFT practitioners alike.