The Leading Edge in Emotionally Focused Therapy

14. Trust the Process

I (James) asked our colleague Elana Katz for the pivotal moment when the EFT process clicked for her. She thought for a moment and then leaned in with a question that really resonated with me, "James, do you trust the process"? I thought about the times when I was following the EFT map, and I allowed my client's reactivity and defenses to shift my focus from the present moment distress. I also thought about the times I stayed with the live emotional process and hit pay dirt. 
The path to change in EFT requires the therapist to work towards places where clients are the most fortified in relational pain and distrust. Along the road, there are blockades and reactivity that can make therapists want to reverse course and find a path that is not as treacherous. However, the years of EFT research and process study have proven that is the path towards transformative change in emotional and relational distress. To stay the treatment course therapist must truly trust the process. In this episode, Ryan and I talk about trusting the process. 

13. Breaking Down Enactments

Breaking Down Enactments 
The focus of this episode is to help...
Participants learn how to utilize enactments in counseling.
Identify the critical points in using enactments as an experiential tool in counseling.
Participants will be able to evaluate their own clinical use of this intervention.
Pre-Enactment
Is it organized and alive in the client?
Assess their experience of reaching/sharing.
Bring the therapist fully into the moment.
Load it with clear simple language that conveys the attachment-related emotions, longings, vulnerability.
During Enactment
Be ready for blocks.
CPR
Catch it
Permission for protection/hesitance
Return to enactment
Reset it
You may have to slice it thinner.
Do it!
After the Enactment
Read the traffic lights. (partner's ability to respond)Red: Stop-Something completely blocking the partner from being able to respond
Yellow: Caution-There is a slight bit of mistrust or confusion. May not be able to respond fully.
Green: Go for Bonding Moment-They see it, feel it, and want to bring comfort to it.
Check for a shift in body markers.
 
 

12. The 5 Most Predictable Places Where Your Session Could Go Bad

In this episode, we take time to talk about the five most likely places where your next session could go bad. We all do them from time to time, but we want to help you improve in each of these areas.
Starting poorly.
In the sessions after you have completed your assessment, start with the last leading-edge point from the last session.
Example: Last time we met this is what the cycle looked like. Here is what you did well, and here is where you got stuck. Is your relationship in the same place or is it different?
Going for protection when they need you to organize their protection.
It’s a mistake to go for longings when a couple is reactive. Attune with them where they are in their protection to help them open up their attachment channel.
You need to resonate with the reactive energy and protection to meet its function, so it won’t be needed as much.
Going for longing is right­—just don’t get ahead of them.
Allowing the reactivity and blocks to change your focus.
We are always focused on titrated amounts of corrective emotional experiences.
Don’t throw your map out of the window when the storm of the reactive cycle comes.
Meet them in reactivity with your map. Don’t let the cycle drive the session to the same painful places they always experience.
Hoping tracking the cycle will change things.
“Cognitive work sets the table, but new experiences are the food.”
Tracking the cycle is a massive reframe of the attachment view of the reactivity in their relationship.
What part of the pain never gets talked about in a way that is clear, and/or gets responded to with empathy and comfort?
Multiple misses around enactments.
Not doing enough of them.
Not getting them clear.

11. Five Exits on the Tango Highway

The EFT tango is the process that guides the therapist through a proven path of helping clients and couples have repeated moments of corrective emotional experiences. In this episode, we talk about the 5 most common exits that therapists make in doing this tango in session.
Missing the vein
Mediating content (solution trap)
Leaving pain too early (passing it before you get it hot)
Not enacting or not enacting enough 
Getting there and fumbling 
 

10. Celebration & Certification

In this episode, we take time to celebrate James becoming an EFT Trainer-in-Training and we take time to talk about the EFT certification process. We talk about how the process of certification and how the process really does help you push the leading edge of your clinical work with couples and families. 
Thank you for listening. We hope this experience helps you push the leading edge in your work to help people connect with themselves and with each other. 
You can contact us at pushtheleadingedge@gmail.com
And you can follow us on our Facebook page @pushtheleadingedge
You can follow Ryan on Facebook @ryanranaprofessionaltraining and on his website ryanranatraining.com.
You can follow James on Facebook and Instagram @dochawklpc. You can also check out his website dochawklpc.com.
You can follow George @ https://www.georgefaller.com/.

9. TEMP: Intentionality of Focus Based on Reactivity Assessment

In this episode, we discuss the importance of always assessing reactivity through the therapeutic process to help you intentionally focus on whether you need to work with blocks and secondary emotions or go for work in more vulnerability. We want to make sure you don’t get caught in one of these three error zones. 
Getting caught in no man’s land trying to do both (deepening vulnerability or missing openness by over organizing) at the same time.  
Going for vulnerability when the couple/client is too reactive.
Over organizing when the client is open to vulnerability and needs you to follow the juice (live emotion) and guide them toward success in corrective emotional experiences.  
Key Point: When people are in reactivity, please stop what you are doing and lean into their secondary emotions and blocks. When people are emotionally open, go with our theory of change, and guide them in having success in their vulnerability via corrective emotional experiences.

8. Block School 101

Block School 101
Blocks occur along the road to helping people have success in vulnerability; having moves to work with those blocks will increase your effectiveness. Blocks are a way of telling you are on the right track. How good you are as a therapist is determined by how effective you are at working with people’s blocks. Pro’s know how to work with their client’s mistrust and defenses. Success with blocks is a combo of how distressed the relationship is and how good the therapist is at working with distrust.  In this episode, we discuss the who, what, when, where, why, and how of blocks.
 Who experiences blocks? – Any attachment oriented human. All people hesitate and hold back.  
 What is a “block”? – blocks are a break in the natural attachment process.
Their reach is blocked.
It’s not safe to reach.
Blocks are mistrust in action.
We are helping people unlearn their rigid dependence on their protection.
 When do blocks come up in the process? – Blocks can happen at any point in the process, and they tend to look different in each stage.
Stage 1- more reactive blocks. Don’t allow vulnerability or needs to be accessed. (blame, view of other)
Stage 2- depth block. Blocking access to model of self, or disowned parts of self ( view of self, can tell you I’m sad but don’t want to show or see how I feel about me)
 Where do blocks tend to happen in session? – right before a breakthrough. Right when you are on track and right before the person is about to go to the place they are supposed to go. For experienced therapist the blocks actually indicate the right whole to fish in.
 Why do these blocks occur? -  the natural function of the body to protect us from danger so the body sends up energy. body saying this is familiar. It's about to happen again. You are about to get hurt.
 What Not To Do.
Be surprised: Expect blocks to occur when you are trying to open up people’s attachment channels. The blocks are what they are needing you to help them with.
Be Disappointed: Don’t treat their blocks like a hindrance to your work. See blocks as indicators of where the work needs to occur.
Teach/Try Harder: You can’t psycho-ed clients out of blocks. They have been trying aspects of this before they came to see you. Before they came to you, they have hundreds of thousands of disappointing attempts of trying to outwork these blocks.
Shame: Blaming them or showing them how they are at fault. “The reason you are in this situation is because you…”
Let blocks win/lose focus: The block disorients the therapist and the therapist aborts the mission of working with emotion in the attachment channel and this moves to some more 1st order type of work.
What To Do:
See them coming they are telling you you’re on track.
2-part response
Give it permission (honor it and validate it with attachment function)
“That makes sense to me”
“Of course”
“How would you do anything else?”
3 forms of validation then push into the leading edge.
And yet this anger communicates something else in this cycle
Push into the leading edge
Thank you for listening. We hope this experience helps you push the leading edge in your work to help people connect with themselves and with each other. 
 
You can contact us at pushtheleadingedge@gmail.com
And you can follow us on our Facebook page @pushtheleadingedge
You can follow Ryan on Facebook @ryanranaprofessionaltraining and on his website ryanranatraining.com.
You can follow James on Facebook and Instagram @dochawklpc. You can also check out his website dochawklpc.com.
You can follow George @ https://www.georgefaller.com/.

7. The Stuck Client: Repetitively Reflecting the Attachment Dilemma

The Stuck Client: Repetitively Reflecting the Attachment Dilemma
Ever have a client or moment in therapy that where the process comes to a halt or you can’t get traction? Many times, it is because the client is stuck in a dilemma. They are in a hold repeat pattern. The client is holding the dilemma and hoping someone sees their dilemma. They keep repeating the same pattern trying to get out of their dilemma. EFT Trainer, Rebecca Jorgenson stated, “Until your clients see that you have their dilemma they aren’t going to change” https://academy.psychotherapy.net/a/3858/TPH9DeF6
Attachment tells us that when there is too much distance things are not safe, and the first thing that happens is rigidity. That initial rigidity is the natural human response to fear. What we are concerned with is when people lose their ability to be flexible and adjust and try new moves or shift energy. In this episode, we want to help you understand these dilemmas and how you can attune to the client’s dilemma to help them be able to shift out of their limbic panic place.
Pursuer Dilemma: Try to explain myself, but it sends my partner away. I try to be quiet hoping they will come around and nothing happens.
Withdrawer Dilemma: I try to step forward, but when I try it leads to more conflict, but then I move away to let the storm pass and I get told I don’t care. 
For Both: Both of you have 2-3 moves and all of them feel like they suck at helping you connect with your partner. Neither of you feels like you have a good move here.
 Takeaways
The more stuck they are the more repetition they need of their dilemma to get them out of their pit.
You address stuckness by going to the stuckness
Repetition is key. (the more stuck the more reps you will have to till they show you that they believe you have gotten it.
Stay until you get resonance.
You want resonance on both sides.
Be prepared for how awkward repetition is.
 
Please check these other places Ryan has covered this material! 
The Couples Therapist Couch(Episode116): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-couples-therapist-couch/id1281853816?i=1000465911536
 Annabelle Bugatti-We Heart Therapy (Episode link for Ryan’s Interview)(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXnh0M7iZWY&t=1106s
Thank you for listening. We hope this experience helps you push the leading edge in your work to help people connect with themselves and with each other. 
You can contact us at pushtheleadingedge@gmail.com
And you can follow us on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pushtheleadingedge/
You can follow Ryan on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ryanranaprofessionaltraining/ and on his website https://ryanranatraining.com/.
You can follow James on Facebook and Instagram @dochawklpc. You can also check out his website https://www.dochawklpc.com/.
You can follow George @https://www.georgefaller.com/ or https://www.facebook.com/GeorgeFallerLMFT/,

6. The Hardest Part of EFT: Focus

The 3 Parts of Focus
Getting the mission started.
Resetting focus when you lose it (this will happen because of reactivity).
Trusting the process to the mission.
 Show Nuggets:
YouTube link to Sue Discussing the EFT Tango. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ7ELF8mE3Q
Knowing the EFT map (steps and stages)
An understanding of the role of emotion in an attachment framework. A great resource on adult attachment (https://www.amazon.com/Attachment-Adulthood-Second-Structure Dynamics/dp/1462533817/ref=sr_1_4?crid=8N3E1AZ3W9L5&dchild=1&keywords=adult+attachment&qid=1586193336&sprefix=adult+attachment%2Caps%2C172&sr=8-4)
It is hard for our couples to keep focus because they lose sight of connection when they get hurt.
We are asking our clients to get into a process that has been a source of pain for them in the past so it makes sense why it is hard for them to maintain focus when we get into vulnerability in session. Skilled therapists have to be able to hold focus when the client’s protection tries to get them out of their fear.
A very focused therapist has clients who are nervous because the therapist does a good job of holding a focus on emotion and attachment.
We can’t be completely responsible for the outcome, but we (therapists) are responsible for the process in the session.
When you are focused on the target (bond/attachment) your client’s attachment will throw your blocks. The blocks are actually a good sign that you are on target.
“It’s not that you can’t talk about content at all. What we want to do is to not get stuck in content. In content is so much emotion, but you have to learn to do is to use the content as opposed to restricting it out of the room.” Dr. Alison Lee, Vice President and co-founder of ICEEFT.

5. Three Points of Attunement

Episode: 3 Points of Attunement
1. Attunement with Client. (Common way of thinking about attunement)
The client decides when you are in attunement, not the therapist. Therapists tend to overate the level of attunement.
Practical suggestion: Ask your client at times in the session, “Am I understanding you? Do you feel like I am with you in your experience?” As a part of wrapping up the session, you can ask, “Do you feel like I was attuned/with you in your experience?”
2. Attunement with self
Energy-matching
Tolerance-Therapist has to have a full range of expression. If we think of emotional attunement as a high powered V8 engine, are there more times you are operating on 3 cylinders.
Soul-The ability to meet people in really deep places. 
3. Attunement to target
Once you are on a mission to get a response back to vulnerability, you sometimes have to intentionally mis-attune with some spontaneous cues that present in order to stay on target to honor the vulnerability that was shared.
Thank you for listening. We hope this experience helps you push the leading edge in your work to help people connect with themselves and with each other. 
 You can contact us at pushtheleadingedge@gmail.com
And you can follow us on our Facebook page @pushtheleadingedge
 You can follow Ryan on Facebook @ryanranaprofessionaltraining and on his website ryanranatraining.com.
 You can follow James on Facebook and Instagram @dochawklpc. You can also check out his website dochawklpc.com.