Couples Counseling & Family Therapy

Emotionally Focused Therapy

Marissa Mundy, LPC, CPCS, is our Clinical Director as well as an experienced couples and family therapist. She utilizes a form of counseling called Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). This approach helps couples and families exit painful relational cycles, create new healing patterns of interaction, navigate conflict successfully, and most importantly, experience deeper intimacy and connection with the people they love. EFT is best known as a tested and proven couples therapy, but it is also used to repair broken family bonds. Other Restorative therapists have also been trained in and utilize EFT with couples and families, including Kat Kassman, LPC; Victoria Fahy, LCSW; Jahna Shiovitz, LPC; and Alexis Navarro, APC.

EFT for Couples

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples is a form of therapy that has been validated as the gold standard for couples counseling by over 30 years of research. EFT helps couples stop fighting and eliminate emotional distance by helping couples express important feelings and needs in a way that increases their attachment bond. If you imagine conflict between you and your partner as an iceberg, the content of the argument is the tip of the iceberg, and it’s often all that we see. But underneath the surface lies the real issue, the deeper unmet needs and desires. “Am I safe to be vulnerable with you?” “Am I good enough for you?” “Will you still be here if we disagree?” 

In EFT couples counseling, our therapists help couples move beyond the tip of the iceberg and into the deeper parts of the relationship in a healing and restorative manner. They help couples understand how daily interactions can trigger deeper needs, fears, and desires in one another, and how a predictable, albeit painful, pattern can develop. Couples are often caught in the same painful cycle, but the content changes. Arguments may occur around finances, parenting, sex, and much more. But it is not just the content that is important – there is something more, something deeper driving these interactions. And we can feel the gap between us and the people we love. As we understand the cycle underneath the surface we can begin to heal patterns that are painful and create new ways of interacting that bring healing, security, and satisfaction. 

EFT for couples begins with a session where one of our EFT-trained therapists meets with the couple together. During this session you will share your relationship history, including pain points and why you are seeking couples counseling at this time. After this initial session, your therapist meets with each partner individually to learn more about their family of origin. How was love and commitment modeled for you? How was conflict handled in your family? In what ways did you feel safe and secure? How did you experience disconnection? These individual sessions provide a deeper understanding about the blueprint for romantic relationships that you received early on in life and are incredibly valuable to the couples counseling process. After each partner has an individual session, we begin meeting all together again for the remaining sessions. 

Most couples want to know how long they can expect to be in therapy before they feel a difference in their relationship. The research shows that when couples engage in EFT, they can experience a deep and lasting change in their relationship in as little as 8 to 20 sessions. Each couple is unique though, and the length of therapy varies from couple to couple based on their history and presenting concerns. A realistic assessment of the best way to move forward with therapy will be presented after the initial couple and individual sessions.

EFT for Families

We help families navigate the changing seasons of life, increasing connection so each family member thrives inside the context of deep, meaningful family relationships. When a family is healthy, each member of the family can launch into the world with bravery and confidence, knowing there is a safe, loving place to land at the end of the day. A healthy family can provide security and connection, while also allowing each person to grow individually. But when a family system is gripped by negative cycles or unhealthy generational patterns, that sense of security can be lost. We help families create new relational patterns and repair emotional bonds. 

Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) is a form of counseling that helps family members restore connection and promote healthy relationships. Based on the couples form of Emotionally Focused Therapy, EFFT works to deconstruct a family’s negative interaction patterns, restructure interactions between family members in way that bonds them together and increase the sense of security in familial relationships. 

In EFFT sessions, families explore three components of relationship attachment and connection: needs, fears, and desires. We help families unpack how seemingly simple interactions can trigger these needs, fears, and desires, and how all family members contribute to the existing patterns. As family members exit the negative, painful cycles that cause disconnection, new healing patterns form, and family relationships become a place of deep security and connection in a way that no other relationship can. 

EFFT begins with a session with all family members present. During this session, each family member will take part in sharing the family history and concerns that bring the family into therapy. Next, each family member will meet with their therapist in an individual session to explore your experience of the family in depth, and for those family members for whom it is relevant, what your family of origin experiences were like as a child and how you experience these relationships today. This is an essential part of the family therapy process, as this insight helps the therapist see each relationship in an appropriate context. After all individual sessions are complete, the family sessions resume for the remainder of therapy. 

Restorative therapists work with families as a whole, as well as specific relationship pairs, such as parent-child relationships. They frequently work with families with adult children to navigate the next season of life now that all family members are independent adults.