Emotionally Focused Couple and Family Therapy Flashcards

Humans need secure attachment relationships across the life span, not just in infancy and early childhood.

1. Attachment is an innate motivating force
2. Secure dependence complements dependency
3. Attachment offers an essential safe haven
4. Attachment offers a secure base
5. Emotional accessibility and responsiveness build bonds
6. Fear and uncertainly activate attachment needs
7. The process of separation distress is predictable
8. There are a finite number of insecure attachment styles
9. Attachment involves working models of self and other
10. Isolation and loss are inherently traumatizing

When attachment needs are not met, the person becomes anxiously clingy and relentlessly pursues connection and may become aggressive, blaming, and critical. Also called “hyperactive” style.

When needs are not met, the person suppresses attachment needs and instead focuses on tasks or other distractions.

Combination anxious and avoidant: In this style, the person pursues closeness and then avoids it once offered. Often the result of childhood trauma.

A pattern of healthy relationships characterized by comfort with both intimacy and independence, trust, and open communication.

The initial reactions to a given situation that typically represent attachment fears and needs.

Emotions about the primary emotions, not about the actual situation. Secondary emotions often take the form of anger, frustration, or withdrawal; these emotions often allow the person to avoid the sense of vulnerability associated with primary emotions. They must be explored so that the underlying primary emotion can be identified.

Typically conceptualized in EFT as a pursue/withdraw pattern. The pursuer is protesting the separation and distance he or she is experiencing in the relationship; other negative interaction cycles include: attack/attack, withdraw/withdraw, and complex cycles.

The most common cycle, this cycle involves a readily identifiable partner who pursues connection and one who withdraws. The pursuer is protesting the separation and distance he or she is experiencing in the relationship; this is indicative of an anxious attachment style.

In contrast, the withdrawer creates distance to protect himself or herself from the perceived lack of safety in the relationship, often in the form of criticism or rejection; this is typical of an avoidant attachment style.

Pursuers typically express emotions such as feeling hurt, alone, and unwanted, whereas withdrawers typically report feeling rejected, inadequate, or judged.

A specific type of betrayal, abandonment, or violation of trust in a couple’s relationship. Attachment injury occurs when one partner is in a moment of high need and vulnerability (e.g., pregnancy, loss, crisis, affairs, etc.) and the other partner fails to offer the needed support and nurturance.

• Step 1: Create an alliance and delineate conflict in the attachment struggle.
• Step 2: Identify the negative interaction cycle.
• Step 3: Access unacknowledged emotions and underlying interactional positions.
• Step 4: Reframe the problem in terms of the negative cycle and attachment needs, with the cycle being the common enemy.

• Step 5: Promote identification of disowned attachment needs and aspects of self, integrating these into relational interactions.
• Step 6: Promote acceptance of the partner’s experience along with new interaction sequences.
• Step 7: Encourage direct expression of needs and wants while strengthening emotional engagement and attachment bonds.

• Step 8: Facilitate new solutions to old problems.
• Step 9: Consolidate new positions and new cycles of attachment.

In EFT, expression of empathy is used during critical points where an EFT therapist will slow down significantly, repeat themselves, and clearly highlight words or images.

The techniques (RISSSC) are also used to understand a client’s affective reality.