Leslie Greenberg and Emotion-Focused Therapy
Leslie Greenberg is the pioneer of Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT), a therapy that focuses on strengthening the self, regulating affects, and creating new meaning. This therapy is born from the belief that emotions are strongly linked to identity as they guide us in defining preferences and making decisions on a daily basis. EFT is a humanistic approach to treatment, it is designed to help people better accept, regulate, understand, and express their emotions. Greenberg did not set out to develop the approach intentionally – rather, he studied how people change. The process of the treatment’s development encompassed nearly three decades.
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What is Emotion-Focused Therapy?
Emotion-Focused Therapy’s theory is based on a scientific inquiry into the human emotional experience, therefore is claimed to be a therapeutic approach based on the premises that emotions are the key to identity. This type of therapy assumes that lacking emotional awareness or avoiding unpleasant emotions can cause harm. EFT allows people to become better aware of their emotions and enables them to use information provided by adaptive emotions. The method is empirically supported as an evidence-based treatment.
Benefits of EFT
EFT has been proven to be 100% effective and its benefits enable a person to take charge of their emotional state and regulate their emotions and mood to experience less negative emotions such as sadness, anxiety, depression and stress. Moreover, EFT helps with greater emotional awareness, management and well-being, greater ability to cope with unhelpful emotions (e.g. eating disorder, bipolar disorder, borderline personality etc.), greater impulse control, self-control and understanding of one’s emotions.
Dialogues between different parts of self
In Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), Leslie Greenberg uses chair work therapy which holds a fundamental role. This technique involves a psycho-dramatic approach where clients engage in dialogue with an empty chair, symbolizing different aspects of themselves or imaging others on the opposite chair. The use of two chairs is a type of dramatization that facilitates expression, helping clients evoking deeply held experiences and emotions. Chair work proves particularly beneficial for addressing self-criticism, allowing clients to confront and explore inner conflicts.
Encouraging clients to dialogue between two aspects of themselves, represented by each chair, facilitates a dynamic exploration of their internal landscape. As they switch between chairs, clients express both their vulnerable emotions and self-protective tendencies. For instance, a client might assert their needs to their critical inner voice, stating, “I need you to understand and support me. I need you to stop putting me down like this.”
Self-criticism often emerges from a discord between a client’s behavior and his/her underlying feelings, manifesting as “an expression of hostility and derogation toward the self.” Within the context of chair work in EFT, there are four primary dialogues that unfold: Conflict splits, Self-interruptive splits, unfinished business, and anguish and emotional suffering.
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