Co-Director Los Angeles Center for Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) Los Angeles Centers for Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) Pasadena, California
Session Description: The intersection of couple’s distress and addictive processes overwhelms even the most seasoned therapists. In the presence of emotional volatility, rigid disengagement, and damaged trust associated with addictions, the traditional skills and tools most commonly prescribed tend to fall apart. Without effective means of directly accessing the neural networks that hold traumatic distress responsible for these upheavals, this population remains enormously susceptible to relapse and backslides. Emotionally Focused Therapy provides systematic, empirically validated interventions that directly access the limbic system. In this way, EFT accesses the deeply internalized emotional distress that addictive processes unsuccessfully attempt to self-medicate. This presentation will demonstrate how EFT deliberately activates, and harnesses potent attachment processes that reside within significant-other relationships to metabolize the unprocessed trauma that drives addiction. EFT offers the replacement substitute for addiction: secure attachment.
Learning Objectives:
After this activity participants should be able to
Discuss addiction through the attachment lens.
Describe the relationship between trauma, unprocessed shame, and addiction.
Demonstrate how EFT is an effective psychotherapy for working with addiction.
Describe how EFT heals internalized emotional distress that drives addiction.
Demonstrate how EFT accesses neural networks that hold traumatic distress.
Describe the impact of shame on trauma and the addictive process.
