In psychotherapy, as in life, all significant emotions are embedded in important stories, and all significant stories revolve around important emotional themes. Yet, despite the interaction between emotion and narrative processes, emotion-focused therapy (EFT) and narrative-informed therapies have evolved as separate clinical approaches. In this book, Lynne Angus and Leslie Greenberg address this gap and present a groundbreaking, empirically based model that integrates working with narrative and emotion processes in EFT. According to Angus and Greenberg's narrative-informed approach to EFT, all successful psychotherapy entails the articulation, revision, and deconstruction of clients' maladaptive life stories in favor of more life-enhancing alternatives. Because emotions and narratives interact to form meaning and sense of self, the evocation and articulation of emotions is critical to changing life narratives. Individual chapters describe how the interaction between emotion and narrative creates a constantly evolving sense of self; how clinicians can address both narrative and emotion processes to help clients create more adaptive, empowering meanings and sense of self; and the importance of a strong therapeutic alliance. Engaging, in-depth case studies at the end of the book illustrate how the model can be applied to treatment of depression and emotional trauma.

This book describes an evidence-based, short-term individual therapy that is highly effective in treating clients with trauma, through its emphasis on both narrative and emotion processes. Because dropout rates and noncompliance with exposure-based procedures are notoriously high in trauma therapies, effective treatment options are essential. Emotion-Focused Therapy for Trauma (EFTT) is an evidence-based, short-term individual therapy that has proven highly effective in treating clients with trauma through its emphasis on both narrative and emotion processes. A fundamental assumption underlying most trauma therapies, including EFTT, is that recovery requires the client to engage emotionally with trauma memories to achieve better affect regulation and self-understanding. EFTT draws upon storytelling as a fundamental aspect of the human experience that permits this kind of engagement with trauma memories, promoting a sense of continuity and self-coherence, and bringing meaning to the client's emotional responses. Richly illustrated with clinical examples and excerpts from therapy sessions, this book fully integrates theory, research, practice, and training.

How to use this book with APA psychotherapy videos -- Introduction -- History -- Theory -- The therapy process -- Evaluation -- Future developments.

Through Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT), clients learn to rule their emotions, instead of letting their emotions rule them. With guidance from a skilled EFT therapist to help them identify, experience, accept, and tolerate difficult emotions, people can learn to regulate, explore, make sense of, transform, and flexibly manage their emotions. As a result, they become more skilled in responding adaptively to situations as they arise. EFT therapists help individuals and couples engage in productive emotional processing. They also offer methods to help clients become aware of their emotional needs. In this book readers will learn to: conceptualize clients' core emotions in order to form a focus of therapy guide clients through the process of emotional change, and structure therapy in an ongoing fashion, recognize key emotional markers, and facilitate the tasks needed to move to the next phase. This handbook offers a comprehensive tour of EFT research and applications for all common mental health issues including depression, anxiety, interpersonal trauma, personality disorders, and eating disorders.

This influential volume provides a comprehensive introduction to emotionally focused therapy (EFT): its theoretical foundations, techniques, and clinical practice. EFT is a structured approach to couple therapy that integrates intrapsychic and interpersonal perspectives to help couples create new, more satisfying interactional patterns. Since the original publication of this book, EFT has been implemented and tested with growing numbers of couples in a wide range of settings. The authors, who codeveloped the approach, illuminate the power of emotional experience in relationships and in the process of therapeutic change. The book is richly illustrated with case examples and session transcripts.

Emotion-focused therapy (EFT) views clinical disorders as, at base, emotional disorders. Case formulation in EFT represents an organizing framework and a map to help therapists specifically address these emotional problems. This book presents a detailed, concrete, step-by-step process for constructing an emotion-focused case formulation, ready for use with clients. EFT case formulation focuses on the client's narrative content (the stories they tell) as well as emotional processing (how the client feels). By attending to the interaction between these two things and paying particular attention to the painful emotion underlying the presenting problem, therapists can make moment-to-moment decisions about how to proceed in therapy. As a result, clients change maladaptive emotions and create more adaptive meaning of events and feelings. The chapters present each stage of case formulation in depth, followed by case examples that apply the case formulation method to a cross-section of clinical disorders, including depression, anxiety, trauma, and eating disorders.

Solution-focused therapy is often misunderstood to be no more than the techniques it is famous for—pragmatic, future-oriented questions that encourage clients to reconceptualize their problems and build on their strengths. Yet when applied in a "one-size-fits-all" manner, these techniques may produce disappointing results and leave clinicians wondering where they have gone wrong. This volume adds a vital dimension to the SFT literature, providing a rich theoretical framework to facilitate nonformulaic clinical decision making. The focus is on how attention to emotional issues, traditionally not emphasized in brief, strengths-based interventions, can help "unstick" difficult situations and pave the way to successful solutions.