Homeward Bound: A Journey to Safe Connection and Healing with EFFT/EFIT
A Journey to Safe Connection and Healing with EFFT and EFIT
Homeward Bound is a two-day, 12-hour training designed for clinicians who want to deepen their understanding and application of Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) and Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT). This training invites you to see how individual and family work are part of the same story—the story of attachment. You’ll learn how to support families by offering individual sessions when a family member feels stuck, creating space to process emotional blocks, deepen self-awareness, and promote emotional accessibility and responsiveness in family sessions.
You’ll also explore how bringing family members into individual therapy can amplify the client’s growth, allowing them to repair and strengthen important bonds. Together, we’ll discuss how to navigate seamlessly between these modalities—without “switching hats” or diluting the model—by staying grounded in the core principles of Emotionally Focused Therapy.
You’ll leave this training equipped to:
- Know when and how to incorporate individual work into family therapy—and vice versa
- Use EFIT interventions like emotion processing to unlock movement in family systems
- Apply EFFT techniques, such as enactments and family sessions, to enrich individual therapy
- Maintain clarity about treatment goals while shifting between contexts
- Understand the boundaries and cautions of integrating EFIT and EFFT, including key contraindications
We’ll also introduce the C.A.R.E. model of assessment (Context, Attachment, Relationship, and Emotion Regulation) to deepen your understanding of clients’ relational and cultural worlds—ensuring your work is attuned, ethical, and effective.
Ultimately, Homeward Bound is about helping clients reconnect—to themselves, to their families, and to the love and safety they long for.
Whether you work primarily with families or individuals, this training will help you bridge these two modalities to deepen client change and relational repair.
Prerequisites are ONE of the following: EFT Fundamentals, EFFT Essentials, or EFIT Essentials.
CEs will be available for purchase
Refund and Cancellation: Cancellations made more than 30 days before training receive an 80% refund with 20% retained for admin work. No refund within 30 days.
The training begins at 9:00 AM (EST) and ends at 5:00 PM (EST) on both days
Speakers
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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.
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Robin Williams BlakeICEEFT Certified TrainerRobin is a certified Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) trainer, supervisor and therapist. Presently, Robin is a faculty member in the graduate program for Sir Wilfrid Laurier University (Waterloo, Ont.), as well as a guest speaker in their continued education program. This past January he designed and taught the first EFT Core Skills equivalency course to be offered at a Canadian University with his colleague, ICEEFT supervisor Debbie Wang at WLU. In the last few years, Robin has taught EFT at York University in their social work program and was invited by Mount Sinai Hospital to speak at their level two trauma clinic. He is a former adjunct faculty member at the Living Institute of Existential-Integrative Psychotherapy, where he taught EFT for 5 years. Robin trains EFT for local centres and communities in Fredericton, Cambridge, Toronto, York Region and Edmonton and he co-trained at the Toronto Externship with Sue Johnson in October 2020-2021. For the past 3 years, he has been a regular consultant for Hold Me Tight retreats organized by Toronto Beyond the Blue, a not-for-profit organization providing therapeutic services for the Toronto police force and their families. Robin is a co-founder of the Toronto Centre for Emotionally Focused Therapy and has been a director for the Centre since 2005. He recently joined ICEEFT’s certification team and enjoys helping in the EFT certification process. Robin is a registered psychotherapist and has been in private practice in Toronto for 20 years where he sees individuals, couples and families and provides supervision for therapists working towards certification in EFT.
