In Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT), therapists work to help clients deepen emotional experience so that painful emotions can be accessed, processed, and transformed. However, clients often interrupt this process just as important emotions begin to emerge. They may hold back tears, tighten their body, change the subject, move into their head, make a joke, minimize what they are feeling, or otherwise stop themselves from experiencing or expressing emotion.
In EFT, these processes are understood as self-interruptions, which are longstanding and originally protective ways of blocking emotional experience that, over time, become automatic. These processes interfere with healthy relationships and keep people stuck and unable to experience, express, and process their emotions. Working effectively with self-interruption requires therapists to recognize the interruption, provide clients with a meaningful rationale for working with it, and guide them into a two-chair enactment that activates both the interrupting process and the painful experience of being interrupted.
This work involves a number of complex clinical decisions. Therapists need to recognize that the client is interrupting their emotional experience, determine when to shift from the current therapeutic process to work directly with the block, navigate challenges that arise during the two-chair enactment, and recognize when sufficient unblocking has occurred to return to the underlying emotion.
This focused 3-hour workshop provides an in-depth exploration of the EFT two-chair intervention for resolving self-interruption. Participants will refine their ability to recognize subtle markers of self-interruption as they unfold moment by moment and deepen their skills in guiding clients through the enactment of the interrupting process. Particular attention will be given to helping clients become aware of how they stop themselves, access and express the painful impact of the interruption, and move toward greater access to previously blocked emotional experience.
Through detailed review of real psychotherapy sessions, the therapeutic process will be slowed down to examine the clinical decision-making, micro-skills, and moment-to-moment interventions involved in working with blocks to emotional experience.
For therapists who are newer to EFT
With the purchase of this workshop, participants will automatically receive 2-month access to a 3-hour recorded workshop with Dr. Leslie Greenberg introducing Emotion Focused Therapy. We recommend watching this recorded workshop before attending as it reviews foundational knowledge and skills to work with emotion in psychotherapy.
Learning Objectives
In this workshop, participants will learn how to:
- Identify the various ways clients block, avoid, and interrupt emotion.
- Recognize markers of self-interruption and determine when to shift from the current therapeutic process to working directly with the block.
- Provide clients with a clear rationale for working with self-interruption and facilitate engagement in the two-chair task.
- Refine their use of the EFT two-chair enactment for self-interruption.
- Work with challenges that arise during the two-chair enactment.
- Use moment-to-moment interventions to heighten clients’ awareness of how they interrupt emotional experience and the painful impact of the interruption.
- Recognize when sufficient unblocking has occurred and how to transition back to the interrupted emotion and therapeutic process.
- Facilitate greater access to and expression of underlying emotional experience.
CONTINUING EDUCATION CREDITS (CECs)
Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association (CCPA)
- Pending Approval
Ontario Association of Mental Health Professionals (OAMHP)
- Pending Approval
Canadian Psychological Association (CPA)
- Pending Approval
Ontario Psychological Association (OPA)
- Pending Approval
Please note that live attendance is required in order to receive CE credits
REFUND & CANCELLATION POLICY
Cancelling 7 days or more prior to the start of a live one or two day workshop, or webinar series:
Refund: Full refund will be processed, minus a $50 administrative fee
or
Transfer: Full payment can be transferred to another upcoming workshop or training that we provide. Please email our training and workshop team at training@greenbergiseft.ca to request a transfer.
Cancelling after 7 days prior to the start of a live one or two day workshop, or webinar series:
Refund: No refund
Transfers: Full payment can be transferred to another upcoming workshop or training that we provide. Please email our training and workshop team at training@greenbergiseft.ca to request a transfer.
