2 Module 1 | Part 1: The EFT Model: An Attachment-Based Humanistic Experiential Therapy

Tuning In and Finding Focus in EFIT

• Roadmap for Trauma Through Attachment Lens:

  • Creating a safe haven alliance as temporary attachment figures—offering a secure base from which clients can explore their experiences.

  • Conducting a process-based, attachment-based experiential assessment to understand core relational patterns and emotional needs.

• Goal:

  • Join with clients in discovery and exploration rather than going through a checklist—emphasizing collaboration and understanding.

• Key Principles:

  • Video demonstration to illustrate techniques and concepts.

CARE Model

• Four Key Dimensions:

  • Context: Socio-cultural and personal background influences.

  • Attachment: Early relational experiences shaping expectations and behaviors.

  • Relationship/Therapeutic Alliance: The quality of the therapist-client connection.

  • Emotion (Emotion Focused Therapy): Addressing and processing underlying emotions.

Pacing and Charting the Course

• Tuning into and joining clients who have experienced trauma—establishing rapport and trust.

• Making sense of their experience through the lens of attachment—understanding how past relationships impact current functioning.

What is Trauma?

• Definition:

  • A traumatic event is any event that exceeds our capacity to manage alone—highlighting individual differences in response to events.

  • Examples: Car accidents, war, first responders, developmental trauma, complex trauma.

• Focus on Impacts:

  • Emphasis is on how clients manage emotionally and relationally, not the events themselves.

  • Are they stuck, or were they able to share and move through the emotion? Assessing emotional processing.

Secure Attachment vs. Traumatic Experiences

• Traumatic Experiences:

  • Flood us with physical fear and helplessness (opposite of safe haven).

  • Colors the world as dangerous and unpredictable.

  • Leads to vigilance and caution—hyper-awareness of potential threats.

• Secure Attachment:

  • Promotes affect regulation and integration—fostering emotional stability and coherence.

• Trauma creates chaos, leading to scattered stories, especially for clients with a history of trauma.

• Threatens a cohesive sense of self—undermining identity and self-understanding.

Goal of EFIT

• Move clients toward a felt sense of security with themselves and others—enhancing relational confidence and trust.

• Reclaim disowned aspects of self—integrating previously rejected or hidden parts of the self.

Protections as Prisons

• When protections become prisons, clients often feel lost and say, "I don't know who I am."

• Finite attachment strategies (shutting down, numbing out, intensifying affect) impact personality and self-development.

• Moving into emotional experience helps clients find themselves again—facilitating self-discovery and emotional healing.

Promoting Engagement

• Goals:

  • Promote engagement in the here and now and resonance with others—fostering presence and connection.

  • Promote openness to experience, risk-taking, and new learning—encouraging curiosity and exploration.

  • Help people move into existential living—embracing authenticity and meaning.

Factors Influencing Impact of Trauma

• Non-interpersonal vs. interpersonal (nature of the trauma).

• Multiple exposures (cumulative impact).

• Proximity to the event (direct vs. indirect exposure).

• Duration (length of exposure).

• Age (developmental stage at the time of trauma).

Examples

• First responder with a secure attachment history vs. colleague with multiple exposures and no support—illustrating resilience factors.

• Paying attention to key variables when joining with clients—tailoring interventions to individual needs.

Key Variables of Importance

• Model of self (how they describe themselves)—self-perception.

• Model of others (how they relate to others)—relational patterns.

• Affect regulation (how they move with and through emotion)—emotional management skills.

• Prototypical strategy for managing threat, distress, or trauma—coping mechanisms.

• Window of tolerance/capacity (flexibility vs. rigidity)—ability to handle emotional arousal.

• These observations can be made even in a brief interaction—demonstrating immediate assessment skills.

Creating Safety

• Voice and way of joining impact the sense of safety clients feel—nonverbal communication cues.

• Mirroring and moving one of the tango help clients feel seen, heard, and understood—building rapport through attunement.

• For individuals with trauma history, shame is often embedded in their sense of self.

• Reflecting, tracking, and validating through the lens of attachment makes sense of everything—promoting understanding and acceptance.

Bowlby

• Clients can begin to feel self-compassion.

• Be predictable, accessible, responsive, and engaged—essential qualities for a secure base.

• Everything Makes Exquisite Sense

Functionality of Shame in Trauma (Bowlby)

• For a small, dependent child with abusive/neglectful parents, it's functional to think, "It must be me, I'm a bad little boy."

  • Otherwise, the child would realize they depend on dangerous people, leading to implosion.

• This adaptive strategy helps one get through the night when they are five years old.

• However, carrying this belief forward becomes a prison, leading to "I think there's something wrong with me"—internalized shame.

Curiosity, Not Assumption

• Join clients from a place of curiosity, not assumption—maintaining openness and non-judgment.

• Assessment and treatment merge—integrating evaluation and intervention.

• Look for the rationality, not the pathology—understanding adaptive responses.

• Look past diagnosis, at the individual in context—holistic perspective.

• Track, reflect, validate, and help make sense of experiences.

  • "Of course you shut down as a little boy because that made sense when your father was angry"—contextualizing behavior.

• Shutting down can create predictability for children in unsafe environments—survival strategy.

Barlow's UP Model

• Looking at basic processes is more useful than focusing on numerous diagnoses—transdiagnostic approach.

• Consider: Vigilance, ability to touch and get clear about emotion, suppression of emotion.

• Avoidance doesn't work in the long term—addressing core issues.

• Sensitivity to threat becomes a significant issue—hypervigilance and anxiety.

• These processes fit beautifully with attachment and EFT—integrative framework.

Attachment Theory

• Attachment Theory is a theory of development and personality. Tune into clients with this in mind.

• Pay attention to pivotal experiences and developmental transitions that have shaped the model of self and other—developmental history matters.

• Consider resources, not just traumatic events and difficult relationships—strengths-based approach.

• Use resources in therapy to help clients move through emotions—utilizing internal and external supports.

• Remind them of moments of competence and success—building self-efficacy.

Homework

• Instead of providing homework, help clients become emotionally flexible to spontaneously use this new perspective in a relevant situation—promoting generalization.

Generalization

• The ability to access the balance beam generalizes—transfer of skills.

• "I may be hurting, but I'm not defeated"—resilience and empowerment.

• Tuning into poignant phrases and images helps understand client's felt experience—capturing core emotions.

• Emotional handles: images and phrases you can keep at hand to keep the client in the experience—anchoring tools.

CARE Model Dimensions

• Context: Identity, environmental factors, experiences.

  • Temporary attachment figures create a safe haven alliance.

  • Walk with clients into their neighborhoods, schools, and family homes—contextual understanding.

  • Consider intergenerational context—family history.

  • Assess client's window of tolerance/opportunity capacity—emotional regulation.

• Attachment: Pivotal experiences that have shaped model of self and other.

  • Pay attention to the coherence of the narrative—assessing integration.

  • Provide a safe haven for exploration—secure base provision.

  • Use voice more and explicitly state what you would do if you were online—enhancing connection.

• Emotion: Self-criticism, numbing, detachment, process elements.

  • Paying attention to facial cues.

  • Are they able to touch some of that frightening and unacceptable emotion?

  • Tune into the client's words to validate the client's experience—empathic attunement.

Context Considerations

• Family history:

  • What did they teach one about the dangers of the world and safety?

  • Could include discrimination, racism, prejudice—cultural context.

• Narrowed interactions

• Gender Roles

Attachment: the Process

• Injuries, disappointments, hurts what did the client draw from those about his sense of self, relationship With others, What to do with emotions? Key incidents client remembers?

The Therapeutic Alliance

• Whether Client feels safe with therapists: clients can talk to you and there is shared attention to their feelings.

The Self Is Process

The self is constructed in an emotional context. Colored and organized by emotion. Constructed interpersonally. Constructing and interpreting and Perpetuating with inner and interpersonal processes with each present action. Clients are actively and likely without awareness constructed perpetuating their negative feelings.

Ethical considerations:

Self is constructed ongoingly.

The therapist should be able to get to the core issue the client is facing