Advanced Marital Therapies: EFT and Hope-focused Counseling
Advanced Marital Therapies: EFT and Hope-focused Counseling
 Sharon May, Ph.D. |
 Everett Worthington, Jr., Ph.D. |
Training Modules
- Session 1: The Hope-Focused Couple Approach: Helping Couples Form, Strengthen, Maintain, and Repair Emotional Bonds
- Session 2: Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy: Getting to the Heart of What It Is, Why It Works and How Faith Fits In
- Session 3: What’s New and What’s Classic in the New Hope-Focused Couple Approach
- Session 4: The Two Main Shifts that Bring Lasting Change in EFT: Withdrawer Engagement and Pursuer Softening
- Session 5: Twenty Practical Interventions in the Hope-Focused Couple Approach
- Session 6: How Knowing EFT Can Change the Way You Work With Couples in Crisis
Summary
Drs. Sharon May and Ev Worthington team up for a unique learning experience, blending the best of two therapeutic approaches. Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) has swept the field as one of the most effective marital therapy modalities. Based on attachment theory, EFT aims to make sense of negative cycles, heal hurts, and foster a close emotional attachment bond between a couple. This Intensive will cover the foundations of EFT, including the nine steps of therapy, key change movements, withdrawer engagement, pursuer softening, and specific interventions/case examples for all levels of counselors. The Hope-Focused Couple Approach (HFCA) is an evidence-based couples’ enrichment and therapy intervention. In a survey of 600+ AACC members, the HFCA was the most frequently used explicitly Christian couple’s therapy approach. It has two parts: HOPE (Handling Our Problems Effectively), which uses communication and conflict resolution methods, and FREE (Forgiveness and Reconciliation through Experiencing Empathy), which trains couples in REACH Forgiveness. This Intensive will also highlight the new HFCA, including strategies for building love and repairing damaged emotional bonds. EFT and HFCA models will provide counselors with two evidence-based and compatible treatments adaptable to both Christian and secular clients. Ethical and multicultural considerations will also be discussed.
Learning Objectives
Participants will:
- Investigate the key tenants of attachment theory as they apply to the marriage relationship (used in both Emotionally Focused Therapy and Hope Focused Couples’ Therapy)
- Use the Hope Focused Couples’ Therapy strategy (i.e., faith, work, and love) to structure marital interventions
- Name and describe the nine steps and associated interventions that undergird Emotionally Focused Therapy, and understand the key shifts that bring lasting change for each
- Distinguish between the internal working model of a withdrawer and pursuer and use the classic Hope Focused Couples’ Therapy spacing-in-the-room intervention to promote better functioning when distance-pursuer dynamics are uncovered
- Apply Emotionally Focused Therapy’s nine steps and interventions to couples in crisis, including infidelity and attachment injuries
- Distinguish between Emotionally Focused Therapy and Hope Focused Couples’ Therapy and draw methods from each approach to enrich conceptualization, assessment, and treatment of couples
Intensive Trainers
Sharon May, Ph.D., is a Marriage and Family Therapist and the originator of the Safe Haven Model, an integration of EFT, neurobiology of love, cutting edge marriage research and God’s heart for loving well. She is known for her highly successful Safe Haven Marriage Intensives, is an approved EFT Supervisor, and the author of the popular book, Safe Haven Marriage. Her practice in Carlsbad, CA, is aimed at helping people grow personally, and transform their marriages and relationships so they can live the full life Christ offers. The Safe Haven Relationship Center offers couples, men, women and pastors three-day ‘marriage’ and ‘personal life’ intensives, seminars and counseling. Teaming with her father, Dr. Archibald Hart, she also offers ‘the personal life of the leader’ two-day seminars. Dr. May offers training in EFT for counselors and instruction in the Safe Haven Marriage model for churches. When not travelling around the world teaching and training, she and her husband, Mike, live in Carlsbad, and together, they have four sons and two daughter-in-laws.
Everett Worthington, Jr., Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he is Director of Training in Counseling Psychology (APA-accredited), and is also a Licensed Clinical Psychologist in Virginia. He has published over 350 articles and chapters and over 30 books. Dr. Jennifer Ripley and he have a new book (due in July 2014; IVP), Couple Therapy: A New Hope-Focused Approach, in which they build on the classic HFCA approach and introduce more than 100 new interventions, many new assessments, homework tasks, and work on forgiveness, humility, patience and other virtues. In 2013, he published Moving Forward: Six Steps to Forgiving Yourself and Breaking Free from the Past and co-edited (with Eric Johnson, Joshua Hook, & Jamie Aten) Evidence-based Practices for Christian Counseling and Psychotherapy. His life mission is to do all he can to promote forgiveness in every willing heart, home and homeland (see www.EvWorthington-forgiveness.com).
