Approach
An attachment-based approach to understanding and changing the emotional patterns that keep people stuck.
Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy, or EFIT, is an individual adaptation of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), which was developed by Sue Johnson and Leslie Greenberg in the 1980s. EFIT uses attachment theory as a way of understanding adult love and emotion regulation, and it aims to help people experience a better relationship with themselves and with others through repeated, emotionally corrective experiences of attachment security.
I am trained in EFIT, and it is the foundation of how I work with adults who feel stuck in patterns of self-doubt, anxiety, emotional reactivity, or difficulty in their relationships. I offer EFIT to individual adults and I do not currently offer couples therapy.
Understanding Emotional Struggles
EFIT is grounded in attachment theory and systems theory, and it understands psychological distress as coming from difficulty with emotion regulation and from the ways a person tries to feel secure in relationship to themselves and to other people. Within a painful pattern, there are usually more vulnerable emotions, such as sadness, hurt, and fear, as well as secondary, more reactive emotions, such as anger, anxiety, guilt, and numbness, which often show up first and tend to cover the more tender feelings underneath.
In therapy, we slow down and stay with the reactive emotions long enough for the more vulnerable emotions and the needs inside them to become clearer. Experiencing those feelings in a new way, in the presence of a steady and attuned therapist, creates a corrective emotional experience, which gives you a more secure way of relating to, interpreting, and responding to your own feelings.
Many of these patterns are described in terms of attachment strategies, which are the ways we learned to protect ourselves and stay connected when closeness felt uncertain. You can read more about anxious attachment strategies and avoidant attachment strategies, along with what it can look like to develop a more secure sense of self.
The Process
Stage 1
The first stage focuses on providing a secure base that helps you gain more awareness and understanding of your emotions and feel safer experiencing them. We map the patterns that show up when you feel threatened or disconnected, and we organize and normalize your emotional experiences so that they begin to make more sense.
Stage 2
In the second stage, you access a deeper and more vulnerable side of yourself and begin identifying the attachment needs underneath your fears. Through experiential exercises, such as a dialogue with an imagined other or between two parts of yourself, you can express and reprocess vulnerable emotions in a new context of security.
Stage 3
The third stage strengthens your expanded view of yourself and others. You may find it easier to turn toward your primary emotions and to recognize the needs within them, and we notice and reinforce the ways you have changed so that greater security carries into your everyday relationships.
In Session
Many forms of therapy help people identify emotion intellectually, and EFIT also aims to deepen emotional experience so that you can feel and make sense of your emotions in session. I use emotionally evocative language, I invite you to notice what is happening in your body, and I stay attuned to your pacing, since deepening emotion can sometimes feel like too much too quickly. When that happens, we slow down, and I may teach grounding or breathing practices that help you stay within a range that feels manageable.
EFIT is also a non-pathologizing approach. It assumes that every emotion regulation strategy and every way of relating developed for a reason and can be understood by looking at a person's life experiences, which can bring a great deal of relief to anyone who struggles with shame, self-blame, or the sense that something is wrong with them.
Research
EFIT has a growing base of research. In a 2025 randomized controlled trial, adults who received approximately 15 sessions of EFIT showed significant reductions in psychological distress, depression, and anxiety compared with an untreated control group (Wiebe et al., 2025). Individual results vary, and I am glad to talk through what to expect during a consultation call.
Wiebe, S. A., Johnson, S. M., Allan, R., Campbell, T. L., Greenman, P. S., Fairweather, D. R., Ismail, M., & Tasca, G. A. (2025). A randomized controlled trial of emotionally focused individual therapy (EFIT) for depression and anxiety. Psychotherapy, 62(3), 414–423.
Brubacher, L. (2017). Emotionally focused individual therapy: An attachment-based experiential/systemic perspective. Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, 16(1), 50–67.
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