USING EMOTIONS AS A PATHWAY TO CHANGE （使用情感作为路径改变）.pdf

EMOTION-FOCUSED COUPLE THERAPY: USING EMOTIONS AS A PATHWAY TO CHANGE By Jamie Levin-Edwards, Psy.D. and Charles Edwards, Ph.D. Emotion-focused couple therapy (EFT-C) was introduced in the l980’s by Leslie Greenberg and Susan Johnson as an alternative to behavioral approaches which often viewed emotions, especially negative emotions, as part of the problem rather than as a powerful and necessary agent of change. The emphasis of EFT-C (Greenberg and Johnson, l988) was on creating a more secure attachment by helping the partners access and express their deeper feelings and adult needs for closeness as well as increasing the partners’ empathic responsiveness to these feelings. This restructures the emotional bond and creates stable, positive interaction cycles. Overview EFT-C is a short term, focused treatment that blends experiential and systemic interactional approaches to help partners reprocess their experiences and reorganize interactions to create a secure bond between the partners. When a secure bond is threatened, partners constrict their experiencing and become locked into rigid, repetitive, maladaptive emotions, meanings and interactional cycles. An observer watching an EFT session with a couple would see the therapist focusing on the here and now emotional responses of the partners, helping to articulate and expand how each constructs their inner emotional experiences. The therapist would help each partner generate new meanings in their experiences of both self and other that will then empower them and facilitate growth. The observer would also see the therapist tracking and exploring interactional moves and countermoves to help the couple create new interactional events that redefine the relationship as a source of security, protection, and comfort for each of the partners. What does this change process look like? A husband’s stonewalling withdr