Growing Together: Emotionally Focused Family Therapy with Adult Children
Course Description
Families balance the need to belong with the need to become. As children become youth, and youth become adults, families are living between the stories of their past and the hopes they hold for the future. Sometimes the challenges of growing together while growing apart become more challenging for families with adult children. Along the way past injuries and disappointments can leave adult children caught in patterns of entanglement and estrangement with their parents and siblings. Emotionally Focused Therapy provides family therapist with map for navigating these relationship blocks and resources for repair and renewal of family bonds.
Through focusing on the poignant power of underlying attachment needs, Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) offers a predictable process for transformational change. This workshop will explore how EFFT can lead family members through past distress, disappointments, and injuries to create new relational patterns, stronger family bonds, and greater felt security.
Learning Goals:
Whether you work with individuals, couples, or families, discover how to:
- Use EFFT as a guide to a family’s emotional dynamics and key attachment issues
- Identify protective patterns that block individuals from vulnerability and growth
- Implement a three-stage process for achieving deeper family connections through creating new alliances, accessing vulnerabilities, and engaging new patterns of positive interaction
- Create new patterns of emotional healing that engage a family’s natural ability to repair
Outline:
- Understanding patterns of estrangement and entanglement in families with adult children
- Exploring the EFFT process of working through relationship blocks
- Unlocking resources for parental availability in Stage 1 EFFT
- Risking vulnerability and asserting needs in Stage 2 EFFT
- Promoting family growth and resilience through reconnection.
Emotionally Focused Family Therapy:
Restoring Connection and Promoting Resilience
with Individuals, Couples, and Families.
New York, NY: Guilford Press. Johnson, S. M. (2019).
By James L. Furrow, Gail Palmer, Susan M. Johnson, George Faller,
Lisa Palmer-Olsen. (2019).
Attachment Theory in Practice:
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
with Individuals, Couples, and Families.
New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Johnson, S. M. (2019).
Speakers
-
Gail PalmerICEEFT Certified TrainerGail Palmer, RMFT, MSW is one of the founding members of the Ottawa Couple and Family Institute and Vice President of the International Centre of Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy. She holds a Masters degree in Social Work and is a Registered Marriage and Family Therapist in Canada. For over 30 years, Gail has worked closely with Dr. Sue Johnson, creator of Emotionally Focused Therapy, and is an experienced trainer and supervisor in EFT. She currently offers workshops, externships and core skills trainings to mental health professionals in a variety of different settings across the world.
-
James FurrowICEEFT Certified TrainerJames L Furrow, Ph.D., is a recognized leader and contributor to the practice of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) with couples and families. He is contributing author and editor to five EFT texts including Emotionally Focus Family Therapy: Restoring Connection and Promoting Resilience and Becoming an Emotionally Focused Therapist: The Workbook. His research on couple therapy, positive youth development and spirituality are featured in leading professional journals. He is a clinical fellow and an approved supervisor with the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy and a Certified Family Life Educator. Jim is an ICEEFT certified EFT therapist, supervisor, and trainer. He resides in Seattle Washington.
