Dr. Leslie Greenberg is a co-founder of emotion-focused therapy (EFT), He is also the director for the Emotion-Focused Therapy Clinic housed at York University. Greenberg is a founding member of the Society of the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration (SEPI) and the Society for Constructivism in Psychotherapy (SCP). He is the author of several books, including Emotion-Focused Couples Therapy: The Dynamics of Emotion, Love and Power and Emotion-Focused Therapy for Depression and Emotion Focused Therapy. Theory and Practice.
Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT) is based on the notion that emotions act as our internal compass, guiding our actions, informing our desires, and helping us to grow and develop healthy attachments. The focus of therapy is on the awareness, regulation and transformation of emotions in order to facilitate behavioral change. EFT helps people gain awareness of and experience their emotions safely within a therapy session and change them when they are maladaptive.
EFT therapists are trained to identify primary and secondary emotions as well as adaptive and maladaptive emotions. For example, sometimes anger is displayed as a secondary emotion, because it masks the primary emotion of fear or sadness at other times shame or fear are maladaptive emotions. People then learn to understand, manage, and transform maladaptive emotions through EFT, so that they can access and utilize healthy, adaptive emotions, such as compassion, empowering anger or grief. Greenberg refers to his approach to couples as partners being each other’s “affective regulators” and he aims to help people in relationships express their attachment and identity emotions more fully.
Length: 60 Minutes
