Leaning Into EFT (Season 3)

S3E1 | “Shaping Secure Bonds with Families and EFFT" with Gail Palmer
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 06 2024, 10:00AM-12:00PM PST

Gail says: “In this session you will observe me working with a single father, Ari and his adult son, Andrew. This father came to therapy following the loss of one of his sons to suicide. I worked with various members of this family and this session is with the son who was closest to his brother that he lost. The focus is on the relationship between father and son and moving towards reconnection following estrangement. The challenge in this dynamic was father’s reactivity, including defensiveness, story telling and humour and Andrew’s tendency to avoid contact through caretaking and intellectualization. I felt privileged to be welcomed into this family and to be with them through the trauma of their loss.”

Gail Palmer, RMFT, MSW is one of the Founding Members of the Ottawa Couple and Family Institute and Co-Director of the International Center of Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy.  She holds a Masters degree in Social Work and is a Registered Marriage and Family Therapist in Canada. Over the past 30 years, Gail has worked closely with Dr Sue Johnson, creator of Emotionally Focused Therapy, and is an experienced supervisor and trainer in EFT. She currently offers workshops, externships and core skills trainings to mental health professionals in a variety of different settings across the world. She chairs the ICEEFT Education Committee and is responsible for mentoring and training EFT trainers internationally. Gail is an adjunct faculty member at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada and a sessional lecturer at Oxford University, Oxford, England.

Gail has a particular interest in applying the model with work with families. For the past decade, Gail has been one of the lead EFT trainers who have developed and expanded on Sue Johnson’s EFFT method and is co-author on the seminal 2019 text, Emotionally Focused Family Therapy: Restoring Connection and Promoting Resislence. Her work has included EFFT trainings across North America, Europe and Australia/New Zealand, presentations at EFT summits, workshops at the Networker and AAMFT, publications in the EFFT workbook and casebook, articles in professional journals and the ICEEFT newsletter. Professionally, Gail’s primary passion is to help therapists who are both new to EFT and trained in EFT, to bring the powerful interventions and skills of this model to the family therapy room. 

S3E2 | “Facing Fear Together:  Behind the Scenes of a Pursuer Softening,” with Jim Furrow
FRIDAY OCTOBER 11 2024, 10:00AM-12:00PM PST

The softening event in Emotionally Focused Therapy is critical to a couple’s success in EFT. It is also the most challenging change event in the EFT process.  Research findings point to the importance of working effectively with deepened emotional experience, which requires a therapist’s focused presence to walk partners through their most vulnerable fears. In this session we go behind the scenes of one of those moments and explore the heart of the matter in facing fear within a softening event. 

James L Furrow, Ph.D., is a recognized leader and contributor to the practice of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) with couples and families. Jim is editor and contributing author 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 Certified Family Life Educator with the National Council on Family Relations. Jim is an ICEEFT certified EFT therapist, supervisor, and trainer and current director of the Center for EFT in Seattle, WA. 

S3E3 | "The Power of EFIT to Heal Trauma” with Virginia Walls
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 08 2024, 10:00AM-12:00PM PST

Competency in working with trauma is necessary, and how we tailor the EFT model to work most effectively and sensitively with clients who are healing from trauma is a much needed discussion. In this episode of Leaning Into EFT, Supervisor Virginia Walls takes us through her process in working with a client healing from trauma, while taking into consideration her clients window of tolerance for emotional experiencing.

Virginia Walls, LMHC (she/her) is an ICEEFT Certified EFT Therapist and Supervisor in the state of Florida. She has extensive training and experience in working with attachment and trauma recovery, and has a particular interest and advanced learning in indigenous science.  In addition to providing EFT supervision, Virginia is a partner in her clinical practice where she sees individuals, couples and families.  She graduated from the University of West Florida with her Masters of Arts in Psychology with a concentration in Counseling in 2009, and is a Qualified Clinical Mental Health Counselor Supervisor as well as Qualified Marriage and Family Therapy Supervisor in Florida.  

S3E4 | “Integrating Ketamine Assisted Therapy with EFCT” with Kathryn Rheem
FRIDAY DECEMBER 06 2024, 10:00AM-12:00PM PST

Psychedelic assisted therapy is our field's leading edge. While not technically a psychedelic, Ketamine -- a dissociative anesthetic with psychedelic features -- is a legal and safe drug used around the world every day. Ketamine is called the "benevolent disruptor" for how it helps our nervous systems get breaks (dissociate) from our regular, typical, habitual defenses. In these breaks from our regular defenses, new possibilities emerge which Ketamine assisted therapy amplifies. Ketamine opens new therapeutic windows which assists both us clinicians and our clients who have often worked so hard in therapy (sometimes for years) to befriend their inner-worlds.

Over the last two years, Kathryn has received 150+ hours of specialized Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) training and has been providing Ketamine Assisted EFT for her couples, families and individual clients. Her clients report less anxiety and depression, more emotional flexibility, and more ease in finding primary emotions and sharing them among many other positive comments. Defenses get dissolved temporarily (Ketamine stays alive in our nervous systems for 24 - 48 hours.) which gives us enough time and openness using Ketamine Assisted EFT to find and work with what was below those defenses! Join us for this introduction of this revelatory intervention that may change your practice and your client's day-to-day life experience. Powerpoint slides and video of real clients on Ketamine will be used for teaching. Questions are welcome and we will make time for Q+A!

Kathryn Rheem, Ed.D, LMFT is a Certified EFCT supervisor and therapist, and was an ICEEFT Certified Trainer for 16 years. She has trained hundreds of mental health clinicians in Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFCT) nationally and internationally over the last 18 years. She’s a co-owner of Rheem, Clark & Associates, LLC (an EFCT-based clinical practice in Fairfax, VA), a consultant to the Washington Baltimore Center for EFT and a co-founder of the EFT Café, an online, monthly EFT class. Kathryn works extensively with couples where one or both partners have endured trauma and has written and presented on the application of EFCT with trauma numerous times. In addition to the application of EFCT with trauma, Kathryn has a special passion for working with and teaching the Withdrawer Re-engagement process. Kathryn teaches and presents EFCT regularly online to audiences in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand and has published 16 articles/chapters on the application of EFCT, including as a co-author on the recently released the An Emotionally Focused Workbook: Healing Heartbreak Session by Session (Routledge, 2023) and co-author of the second edition of Becoming an Emotionally Focused Therapist: The Workbook (Routledge, 2022).

S3E5 | “EFCT with couples impacted by ADHD” with Alexine Thompson-de Benoit
FRIDAY JANUARY 10 2025, 10:00AM-12:00PM PST

When one of the partners has ADHD, the cycle can be exacerbated by it, making it more difficult to de-escalate as symptoms keep triggering it, and emotions run high. In this episode, we will watch a couple impacted by ADHD and see how the therapist uses her knowledge of ADHD and takes it into account as she tracks the cycle and accesses and deepens emotions related to ADHD's impact on the relationship, leading the partners to a softer, more vulnerable and empathic place of attunement to each other.

Alexine Thompson-de Benoit is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and the trainer for French-speaking Switzerland. Over the last few years, she has seen an influx of ADHD impacted couples in her practice and, with her colleague and ADHD specialist Ben Kneubühler, has developed a Master Class on how to work with such couples within the EFT model. She has contributed to different podcasts on the topic and keeps exploring creative ways to better help these couples team up and manage together the impact ADHD has on their relationship.

S3E6 | "Navigating the Rapids: Embedding Power, Culture, and Difference in EFT” with Jau Seiff-Haron and Nalini Calamur
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 14 2025, 10:00AM-12:00PM PST

Additional information coming soon.

S3E7 | “Broken Bonds: Working with Betrayals in EFCT” with Lisa Palmer-Olsen
FRIDAY MARCH 14 2025, 10:00AM-12:00PM PST

Additional information coming soon.