Emotion Focused Counselling

Our feelings play such an important and vital part in all of our lives.  Each and every day and all throughout our lives, we will experience a range of feelings, sometimes these feelings are light and uplifting, sometimes they are vague and fleeting, and at times they may feel painful and intense.  Joy, love, sadness, anger, fear and even shame, they are all part of the human experience.  We will all encounter these feelings at some point in our lives. 

Emotion Focused Counselling focuses on engaging clients in emotional experiencing in a moment by moment process.  We can have many different types of responses to a situation or experience.  These responses can be what is known as an “adaptive response” like when we will feel sadness at loss, anger at violation and fear when our safety is threatened.  It makes sense to feel these things, it is helpful to feel these things.  Feelings are powerful …. They motivate, protect and also heal us. 

Sometimes based on earlier experiences, (especially traumatic experiences), we may have what is known as a “maladaptive response”, this means that how we feel now doesn’t really fit with our current experience ….... it is somehow linked to the past.  For example, feeling fearful when there is nothing to be feared or feelings of insecurity or guilt when we should feel good about ourselves or feeling angry when we really just feel sad. 

Some people have difficulty expressing their feelings or may try to avoid painful or difficult feelings altogether.  They may engage in distracting or numbing behaviour, such as using alcohol or other substances, over eating, gambling, emotionally cutting off or distancing themselves from others such as family and friends.  Other people worry that their feelings may actually overwhelm them and that they may not cope if they allow themselves to feel too vulnerable.   However, it is natural and normal to have feelings and we are all entitled to our own emotional experience.

Emotion Focused Counselling can be defined as a type of therapy that aims to help clients gain a greater awareness of their emotions and provide strategies to effectively cope with, regulate and transform their emotions.  Working with an EFT practitioner in a safe and nurturing environment can help clients to make better sense of what is happening for themselves, gain a much greater and deeper understanding of their own experience past and present, access, process and express how they are feeling. 

Emotional processing helps clients to move from a place of feeling stuck, depressed or overwhelmed and ultimately assists them to move forward with greater clarity and positivity in their lives.

We must first arrive at a place ….… before we can actually leave it!