Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy

Online Across North Carolina, Virginia, and Ohio

How Gottman Informed Couples Therapy and Emotionally Focused Therapy Work Together.

As therapists, we are offered the opportunity to select from many treatment models.  Two of the most renowned and effective models for Couples Therapy are the Gottman Method, developed by Drs. John and Julie Gottman and Emotionally Focused Therapy, developed by Dr. Sue Johnson.  We have chosen these methods because they work well together to aid couples in reaching the most important pain- points and giving them understanding of themselves, their partner, and also the skills to communicate and heal attachment wounds.

The Gottman Method Includes: 

• Skills for expressing needs, wants, and feelings. 

• Skills for achieving compromise.

• Skills for empathy, understanding, and validation of one another’s reality.

• Disarming of defensiveness, improving ability to receive influence.

• Skills for self-soothing, comfort, and to tolerate the stress of conflict. 

• Includes focus on friendship, conflict management, and creating “shared meaning”. 

• Is empirically validated with over 40 years of extensive, longitudinal research.

Emotionally Focused Therapy: 

• Is based on the science of attachment, focusing on the nature of love relationships and family bonds.

• Focuses on Emotion and Emotional Regulation as specific gateways to healing.

• Respects each partner as having a role in the cycle, and never “pathologizes” one partner’s behavior as being “at fault” or “the problem”. 

• Restructures the Emotional Experience of each partner.

• Can enhance feelings of validation for partners in distress, or who feel disconnected.

• Identifies a specific cyle of conflict experienced by couples.

• Respects that each partner behaves the way they do based on their experiences.  The very behavior that may be problematic for your partner has kept them safe in the past. The focus is to develop enough emotional safety to reach the vulnerable part, and it’s need for protection. 

• Is empirically validated over the last 30 years of research. 

Gottman Couples therapy builds relationship skills while Emotionally Focused Therapy enhances your emotional connection!