Emotion Focused Therapy
What is Emotion Focused Therapy?
Emotions are usually positive and adaptive — their purpose is to guide us toward experiencing important needs and encourage us to take effective actions. As Greenberg, Rice, and Elliott (1997) put it,
“…emotions are crucial in capturing the wholeness of human functioning in that they are complex, integrative, organism-based reactions to our perception of ourselves and the world.”
Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) employs a set of strategies to help clients develop emotional intelligence: bringing emotions into awareness and learning to use them as a guide for personal growth, to find direction and meaning, and to identify and resolve problems in life. One of the distinctive features of EFT is its therapeutic task analyses, developed by Rice and Greenberg (1984), in which tasks are deeply rooted in the relational and dialogical traditions of person-centred and gestalt psychotherapies.
How can Emotion Focused Therapy Help?
In my person-centred relational style, I actively integrate the ideas of Emotion-Focused Therapy, and I often share a personal metaphor with my clients to explain how I see this work:
“Yourself is your machine — the vehicle you have to survive. Your emotions are the source of information about who you are and how you experience life. When you explore and express your emotions by releasing them, it’s like you’ve changed the battery of your machine, changed the oil, and washed your soul.
Your machine (yourself) is then ready to move forward, fully charged with knowledge of how you feel and what you need, guiding you toward the right direction. However, when you suppress your emotions and make yourself busy with everything else apart from what’s happening inside, your emotions can become like demons that eat you alive, taking away your inner resources — most importantly, your self-esteem.
Without self-esteem, you stop being important to yourself. Your wishes, dreams, your life, and even your suffering become dismissed. Over time, you lose yourself, and life can feel too hard to bear, without a sense of who you truly are.”
My approach
My therapeutic work involves exploring and expressing your suppressed or dismissed emotions and bringing them to life — helping you to become aware of, accept, and make sense of your emotional experience. This process allows you to let your emotions be, releasing those “inner demons” and freeing you to live your life more fully and authentically.
In this light, by staying true to the core principles of the person-centred approach — empathy, congruence, and unconditional positive regard — I am willing, and not afraid, to hold your emotions with you and be fully present in your journey toward self-healing.
It seems to me that at bottom each person is asking, ‘Who am I really? How can I get in touch with this real self, underlying all my surface behaviour? How can I become myself?
– Carl Rogers
Please get in touch
Alternatively, you can call me on 07449 484819
Feel free to text my mobile number with your name and telephone number and I will phone you back as soon as I am available.
– Janaina
