Quiz 3 EFT

• Process consultant: Helps partners understand and process their emotions.

• Choreographer: Guides interactions between partners to create new, positive experiences.

• Collaborative/processing partner: Helps clients make sense of confusing emotions.

• Safe base/safe haven: Creates a safe, accepting environment for emotional vulnerability.

Roles of the EFT therapist

process consultant

Helps partners understand and process their emotions

choreographer

Guides interactions between partners to create new, positive experiences.

collaborative/processing partner

Helps clients make sense of confusing emotions.

safe base/ safe haven

Creates a safe, accepting environment for emotional vulnerability.

Microskills

reflection

validation

evocative responding

heightening

empathic conjecture

reframing

Reflection

Mirrors what the client is feeling or saying.

Example of reflection

What you are saying to Peter is, 'I don't see that you want me and miss me. What I see and hear is that I am never enough. I feel put down and defeated.' Is that it?"

validation

Explains why the client's feelings make sense.

validation example

“You felt overwhelmed, so you pushed him away.”

When he would say how depressed he was, you felt overwhelmed... it was natural to push back at the weight, so you could breathe, and to get angry.

evocative responding (reflections and questions)

Uses questions or imagery to explore unclear feelings.

(Probes the tentative, unclear, or emerging edges of emotional experience using process questions ("what/how") or evocative imagery to call forth unformulated affect.")

evocative responding example

“What happens inside when she speaks that way?”

"So what is it about Mary's tone of voice right now that seems to trigger the sense of the floor dropping away?"

Heightening

Makes an emotion more vivid or intense.

Intensifies and brings specific emotional responses or interactional moves into sharp focus using repetition, vocal tone, images, or directed enactments. Guided by the RISSSC acronym (Repeat, Image, Simple, Slow, Soft, Client's words)

Heightening example

The therapist lowers their voice and slows down: "Can you say that again, Jim: 'I just can't open up and let myself commit to her'?".

RISSC for Heightening

Repeat, Image, Simple, Slow, Soft, Client's words

empathic conjecture /interpretation

Guesses an underlying fear or longing.

empathic conjecture example

"So, the sense I get, Sam, is that you're caught between telling Marie to go to hell... and desperately fearing her anger and rejection."

reframing

Connects behavior to the negative cycle and attachment needs.

reframing example

 "You freeze 'cause it's like you've lost her already... if you stay completely still the danger might pass?"

5 EFT tango moves

1. Mirror present process

2. Deepen emotion

3. Choreograph an encounter

4. Process the encounter

5. Integrate and validate

(Move 1 Tango) Mirror Present Process

Identify the negative cycle.

Tracking and reflecting present interactional cycles (between partners) and affect-regulation patterns (within an individual).

(Move 2 Tango) Affect Assembly and Deepening

Explore triggers, thoughts, body sensations, and meanings.

Piecing together the core elements of emotion (trigger, initial appraisal, body response, meaning making, action tendency) to deepen engagement with primary attachment affect

(Move 3 Tango) Choreographing Engaged Encounters

Help partners express vulnerable feelings to each other.

• Guiding a partner to express their newly assembled, vulnerable inner reality directly to their partner in a structured enactment.

(Move 4 Tango) Processing the encounter

Explore how each partner received the message.

exploring how the partner received the enactment, mining it for meaning, and working through any blocks to responsiveness.

(Move 5 tango) Integrate and Validate

 Highlight progress and reinforce positive changes

Reflecting the shift from a meta-perspective, highlighting growth, and validating both partners' courage to reinforce new positive cycles

Two common couple dynamics

1. pursue-withdraw

2. withdraw-withdraw

pursue-withdraw

One partner criticizes or demands; the other withdraws or shuts down.

• The most common dynamic where an anxiously attached partner hyperactivates and pursues (criticizes, demands) out of attachment panic, while an avoidantly attached partner deactivates and withdraws (numbs, stonewalls) to protect against overwhelm and perceived failure.

withdraw-withdraw

Both partners become distant and disengaged, sometimes after pursuing has led to burnout.

• A dynamic where both partners have become distant, quiet, and disengaged. This pattern frequently develops after prolonged pursue-withdraw cycles when the pursuing partner eventually burns out, despairs, and detaches

Stages of EFT

Stage 1: Cycle De-Escalation & Stabilization (Steps 1–4)

Stage 2: Changing Interactional Positions / Restructuring the Bond (Steps 5–7)

Stage 3: Consolidation and Integration (Steps 8–9)

Stage 1 of EFT - de-escalation and stabilization

Identify the negative cycle and underlying attachment fears.

When is Stage 1 complete

The couple sees the cycle as the problem, rather than blaming each other, and conflict decreases.

stage 2 of eft- Restructuring the bond / changing positions

Create new, vulnerable emotional interactions.

• Deepen attachment vulnerabilities and facilitate key change events—Withdrawer Re-engagement and Blamer Softening—leading to bonding conversations.

stage 2 complete when …

BOTH MUST OCCUR

• Withdrawer re-engagement: The withdrawn partner expresses needs and becomes emotionally involved.

• Blamer softening: The critical partner shares underlying fears and asks for comfort without blaming.

stage 3 of eft- consolidation and integration

Maintain new patterns and solve practical problems together.

• Facilitate new solutions to old practical problems and consolidate new stories/positions of secure attachment

Stage 3 complete when…

The couple handles conflict collaboratively, maintains A.R.E., develops a new relationship story, and repairs disconnections independently.

(accessibility, responsiveness, engagement)

Catch the Bullet

Intervene when one partner responds harshly to the other partner's vulnerable disclosure.

How the therapist knows which emotion to focus on

1. Poignancy/vividness

2. Attachment significance

3. organzing role in the cycle

Poignancy/vividness

Focus on the most emotionally powerful moment or cue.

(a tear, a shift in voice, a nonverbal gesture, or a vivid visceral image (e.g., "blindsided" or "dark fog").)

Attachment Significance

Focus on deeper emotions (fear, sadness, shame) rather than surface reactions (anger, numbing).

Organizing Role in the Cycle

Focus on the emotion driving the negative pattern.

• (e.g., the panic that fuels pursuit or the fear of failure that drives withdrawal)

Microskills vs. macro-interventions

• Microskills: Small, moment-to-moment therapist techniques.

• EFT Tango: The larger five-move intervention sequence.

Disquistions

A story about other couples or relationships that indirectly reflects the client's experience.

•  an elaborate, non-threatening narrative or story told by the therapist about "other couples" or general relationship dynamics that mirrors the exact hidden experience of the client.

Purpose of disqusitions

Helps guarded clients recognize hidden emotions without feeling directly confronted.

• It is used during difficult therapeutic impasses or with highly guarded, resistant clients to probe underlying emotions indirectly. It allows a closed partner to recognize and own their experience without feeling directly confronted or exposed

Self-disclosure in EFT

Therapist self-disclosure is limited, deliberate, and used sparingly.

Purpose of self-disclosure

Build trust, normalize feelings, or help clients access emotion—without shifting attention away from the couple.