Emotion-Focused Therapy

Our emotions are central to the way we operate in our lives. Whether we are aware or unaware of the emotions that we are experiencing, they play a vital role in the way we feel, what we perceive and how we interact with the people around us.

Have you ever said something out of anger that you later regretted? Do you let fear talk you out of taking risks that could benefit you? Does ‘waking up on the wrong side of the bed’ put you in a mood that lasts all day? If so, you are not alone. Emotions are powerful.

Our emotions help guide our decision-making and our behaviour and are key to our identity. Becoming more aware of our emotions and understanding how to respond instead of react to them are important ways to bring peace, fulfillment and stability into our lives and relationships. How does that sound? If you would like to feel more at peace, more fulfilled and more stable, let us help you with Emotion-Focused Therapy.

Illustration of a person - Emotion-focused therapy — Your feelings are welcome here.

If you’re having difficulty navigating your emotions, maybe it’s time to talk about it. Please don’t hesitate to reach out. When you’re ready we can help.

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What is Emotion-Focused Therapy?

Emotion-Focused Therapy or EFT, is a unique therapeutic approach designed to help people accept, express, regulate, make sense of and transform emotion.

Recent years have seen a growth of EFT in individual and couples therapy, because the EFT approach focuses on the development of emotional intelligence and on the importance of secure relationships.

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Why consider Emotion-Focused Therapy?

Gaining control over your emotions will help you become more emotionally agile.

Fortunately, anyone can become better at regulating their emotions. Just like any other skill, managing your emotions requires practice and dedication.

But, managing your emotions isn’t the same as suppressing them. Ignoring your sadness or pretending you don’t feel pain won’t make those emotions go away.

Most of us have developed some unhelpful strategies (whether we know it or not) to cope with difficult emotions.

For example, we may suppress uncomfortable emotion by shutting down our vulnerability and avoiding the emotion or the things associated with that emotion. Or we may seek to ‘soothe’ stressful emotions by over-relying on strategies that make us feel in control. We may also project blame and scrutiny on to people in our lives as a way of sheltering ourselves from directly feeling pain.

In fact, unaddressed emotional wounds are likely to get worse over time. And there’s a good chance that suppressing your feelings will cause you to turn to unhealthy coping skills - like food or alcohol.

5 reasons you might want to work with a therapist

1. You’ve been trying to heal an issue on your own, but you can’t seem to get at the root of it, and you feel like you have a blind spot.

Sometimes the hardest thing for us to see is our own stuff. It’s too close to us, and too tangled up with our identity, fears, and conditioning for us to get a clear view. There’s no shame in that.

2. The issue you want to heal feels too big or too painful to dive into, unpack, and work out on your own, and you feel like you need the support and guidance of an experienced professional.

It can be really scary and overwhelming to dive into our traumatic memories, experiences of loss, and fears by ourselves.

3. You know that an issue, be it grief, a trauma, a fear, etc. is holding you back and causing you to suffer, but you keep avoiding it, putting it off, etc.

Sometimes all you need is a shift in perspective, and sometimes what you need is the help of a therapist who will go with you into the issue and help you identify and release the aspects of your loss that are still causing you to suffer.

4. You feel mostly at peace about an upsetting event, but you’re still angry or resentful toward the other person or people involved, and you can’t seem to let it go.

This is very common, and it usually means that there are what we call hidden aspects that you haven’t been able to identify and work out on your own. This is what therapists are trained to do. They will be able to help you uncover, identify, and release the hidden aspects that are keeping you stuck in anger/resentment.

5. You have goals you want to achieve, but you feel stuck and can’t figure out how to identify and release your inner blocks so you can live your best life.

Using Emotion-Focused Therapy to achieve goals is an incredible healing tool, but it can also be one of the trickiest. Not only do you need to identify whatever limiting beliefs and fears you may have about achieving your goals, you also need to find and release the traumatic experiences that gave rise to them. That can be challenging but with the aid of a therapist, very rewarding.

Benefits of Emotion-Focused Therapy

Emotion-focused therapy can help to shine a light on previous emotional experiences that were painful and that are continuing to have a negative impact on your life.

Emotion-focused therapy is used to help individuals as well as couples.

Emotion-focused therapy helps people identify which of their emotions they can trust and rely on and which of their emotions are residues of painful memories that need to be changed. With the help of a therapist, you can learn how to make healthy contact with feelings, memories, thoughts, and physical sensations that have been ignored or feared and avoided. This ability is particularly important in terms of relationships. Interactions change when partners are able to express their underlying vulnerable emotions. Saying what we really feel and need helps change the ‘emotion-based’ (fear, sadness, abandonment, shame, inadequacy) relationship issues we get stuck in.

Emotion-focused therapy can help you if you are:

experiencing feelings of depression or anxiety
have difficulty regulating your emotions in your relationships
getting stuck in patterns with your partner that are difficult to navigate
aware of previous experiences you have not yet processed and are currently causing you trouble
struggling to truly be present in the joy of every day moments
seeking a deeper connection to yourself and people in your life

How we can help

Instead of reacting to your emotions we will help you mindfully respond to them in order to break old patterns and create new ones that will help you to flourish in your life.

Let’s talk about it!

Emotion regulation helps us to mindfully respond to emotions in ways that will help us instead of hinder us.

In therapy, you will be helped to carefully and safely process emotional pain so that you can learn new ways of experiencing those emotions – we call this emotion regulation. Emotion regulation is helpful when we are experiencing ‘triggers’ based on previous experiences as well as when issues arise in your life in the present time that elicit strong emotions. Together we can build a tool-box of emotion regulation strategies that you can draw on in your every day life.

Using emotion-focused therapy, we will help guide you towards an understanding and acceptance of your emotions in order for you to live your best, most meaningful life.

It is important that you know that you are in the best position to interpret your emotional experience. As therapists, we won’t tell you how you are feeling or how you should feel. We will help you to understand the impact of your emotions on your physical body, your thoughts, your actions and your beliefs about the world. Most importantly, we will help you to identify ways in which your reactions to your emotions have created patterns of thinking, coping and relating to others that may not be having a positive impact on your life.

It's important to acknowledge your feelings while also recognizing that your emotions don't have to control you.

If you wake up on the wrong side of the bed, you can take control of your mood and turn your day around. If you are angry, you can choose to calm yourself down. Using emotion-focused techniques, we can help you untangle yourself from unhelpful strategies - bringing about awareness of the core emotion and healthy tools to cope.

Average Cost

$130.00 - $160.00 ( per session )*

*Lower rates are available through our Affordable Counselling program