Summit Counselling Services — Modality
Emotion Focused TherapyEmotions aren't the problem. Getting stuck in them — or cut off from them — is.
Emotion Focused Therapy works with your emotional experience directly — not to manage or suppress it, but to understand it, move through it, and let it transform. Available for individuals and couples at Summit.
What Is EFT?
Emotions as information — not obstacles to overcome.
Emotion Focused Therapy is built on a deceptively simple idea: emotions are not the enemy. They are the body and mind's primary signalling system — carrying information about what matters, what's been lost, what needs attention, and what we need from the people around us. The problem isn't that we feel things. The problem is when emotions get stuck, when we've learned to cut ourselves off from them, or when they flood us in ways we can't manage.
EFT works with emotional experience directly — helping clients access emotions that have been avoided or suppressed, process emotions that have become overwhelming or stuck, and transform the deeper emotional patterns driving distress. It works from the inside out rather than the top down. Instead of changing thoughts in order to change feelings, EFT works with the feelings themselves — treating emotional experience as the primary target of change rather than a byproduct of it.
The approach is used for individuals dealing with depression, anxiety, grief, trauma, and low self-worth — and for couples navigating disconnection, conflict, and the emotional cycles that keep them stuck. The framework is the same in both contexts; the application differs.
"The goal of EFT is not to feel less — it's to feel more freely. To let emotion move through you rather than live inside you unchanged."
Two Applications, One Framework
EFT for individuals — and EFT for couples
EFT is used in two distinct ways at Summit. Both are rooted in the same emotional processing framework, but they address different contexts and were developed by different researchers. Here's how to know which applies to you.
EFT — IndividualEmotion Focused Therapy
Developed by Dr. Les Greenberg, individual EFT treats emotion as the primary target of therapeutic change. Rather than working around difficult feelings, it works through them — helping clients access emotions that have been avoided, process those that have become stuck, and transform the core emotional patterns driving their distress.
The focus is on what's happening in the emotional body: the grief beneath the depression, the fear beneath the anger, the shame beneath the avoidance. EFT helps make those deeper emotions accessible, so they can be felt, expressed, and ultimately transformed.
- Accessing avoided or suppressed primary emotions
- Processing grief, shame, and fear at depth
- Transforming self-critical and self-interrupting patterns
- Working through unfinished emotional business from the past
- Depression, anxiety, trauma, grief, and low self-worth
- Building a more compassionate relationship with yourself
EFT-C — CouplesEmotionally Focused Couples Therapy
Developed by Dr. Sue Johnson and rooted in attachment theory, Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT-C) addresses the negative emotional cycles that keep couples stuck — the pursue-withdraw, attack-defend, and distance-distance patterns that can persist for years without resolution.
EFT-C holds that most relationship conflict is really attachment protest — one or both partners signalling that the emotional bond feels unsafe or unreliable. The therapy works to identify those negative cycles, de-escalate them, and create new interactional patterns where both partners can express their deeper needs and respond to each other's vulnerability.
- Identifying and breaking negative interaction cycles
- Accessing the attachment fears and needs beneath surface conflict
- Creating moments of emotional accessibility and responsiveness
- Rebuilding emotional safety and secure bonding
- Disconnection, conflict, infidelity recovery, and emotional distance
- One of the most researched couples therapies available
What EFT Helps With
EFT has strong evidence across a wide range of concerns
EFT is effective wherever emotional experience is central to the presenting concern — which is most of the time.
Depression
Depression often involves emotional numbness, self-criticism, and unprocessed grief. EFT accesses the primary sadness and loss beneath the surface shutdown — allowing the emotional experience to move rather than stay stuck. Particularly effective for depression that hasn't responded fully to CBT-based approaches.
Anxiety
Anxiety frequently involves the suppression of other primary emotions — particularly anger and sadness — that get converted into fear and hypervigilance. EFT helps access and process the emotions beneath the anxiety, reducing its charge from the inside rather than managing it from the outside.
Trauma & Complex Trauma
Trauma leaves emotional experience incomplete — frozen in the nervous system rather than processed and integrated. EFT provides a framework for accessing and completing the emotional processing that the trauma interrupted, often in combination with body-based approaches like EMDR or Somatic Experiencing.
Grief & Loss
EFT is particularly powerful for complicated grief — where the loss has not been fully experienced or expressed, often because it was too overwhelming, came too fast, or was complicated by the nature of the relationship. Accessing the full emotional experience of grief, in a safe space, allows it to move.
Couples & Relationships
EFT-C is one of the most extensively researched couples therapies available — with strong evidence for reducing relationship distress, breaking negative cycles, and rebuilding emotional connection and secure attachment. Effective even for couples in significant distress.
Self-Criticism & Shame
A central focus of individual EFT is the internal critic — the part of self that attacks, judges, and shames. EFT works directly with this internal dynamic, helping the criticized part access and express its pain and the critical part develop compassion. Profound work for low self-worth and chronic shame.
How EFT Works
Emotions don't need to be managed. They need to be met.
Most approaches to therapy treat emotion as something to regulate, reframe, or reduce. EFT takes a different position: emotion is adaptive. It carries information. And when it's been avoided, suppressed, or interrupted — which happens for very understandable reasons — the information it carries doesn't go away. It stays in the system, shaping behaviour and experience from below the surface.
Meeting emotion means turning toward it rather than away from it — approaching it with curiosity rather than fear, in the context of a safe therapeutic relationship. It means making the implicit explicit: helping clients feel what they feel more fully, and discover what the emotion is actually telling them.
This process is not about wallowing or becoming overwhelmed. A skilled EFT therapist holds the work at the edge of what's tolerable — close enough to the emotional experience to access it, careful enough not to retraumatize. The goal is movement: emotion that can be felt, understood, expressed, and ultimately transformed into something new.
What to Expect
What EFT sessions actually look like
EFT sessions are warm, relational, and present-focused. Your therapist will pay close attention to what's happening emotionally in the room — not just the content of what you're saying, but the felt quality of how you're saying it. They'll gently draw attention to emotional experience as it emerges, creating space to go deeper into what's there rather than moving past it.
In individual EFT, common techniques include two-chair dialogues — where different parts of self (the critic and the criticized, for example) speak to each other directly, often unlocking emotional experience that gets bypassed in ordinary conversation. Empty chair work addresses unfinished business with significant others.
In EFT-C for couples, sessions focus on slowing down the negative cycle — helping partners see the pattern they're caught in, access what's driving their reactivity, and express the softer, more vulnerable emotions beneath. Therapists track both partners' emotional experience simultaneously, ensuring each feels heard and held.
EFT tends to be a longer-term approach than CBT — it moves at the pace of emotional change, which is slower than cognitive change. But its effects are typically deeper and more lasting, particularly for concerns rooted in emotional experience rather than thinking patterns.
Signs EFT might be right for you
- You feel stuck in emotional pain that doesn't shift no matter how much you understand it intellectually
- You find yourself cut off from your emotions — numb, flat, or disconnected from your own experience
- You've tried CBT or other approaches without lasting relief
- Your emotions feel overwhelming or out of proportion — flooding rather than informing
- You carry grief, shame, or hurt that has never fully been felt or expressed
- You have a strong inner critic that you can't seem to quiet through insight alone
- Your relationships follow the same painful patterns regardless of who you're with
- You and your partner are caught in negative cycles that logic and good intentions haven't been able to break
- You want to work at a depth that addresses the emotional roots of your difficulties — not just the surface symptoms
Book a Session
EFT therapists in Edmonton, St. Albert & Windermere
EFT for individuals and couples is available in person at all three Summit locations, and virtually for clients anywhere in Alberta.
Wîhkwêntôwin ᐄᐧᐦᑫᐧᐣᑑᐃᐧᐣ (Oliver)
Grandin Plaza, 2nd Floor
Edmonton, AB
Common Questions
Emotion Focused Therapy — your questions answered
Our Therapists
Summit therapists who use Emotion Focused Therapy
The clinicians below use EFT — for individuals and/or couples. Start with a free 15-minute consultation to find the right fit for your specific situation and goals.
Related Approaches
Other modalities we work with
Your emotions have something to tell you. Let's listen.
Your first consultation is free — no commitment, no pressure. Just a conversation about where you are and whether EFT is the right fit for you.
We acknowledge that our practice is located in Treaty 6 territory, on the traditional lands of the Cree, Saulteaux, Niitsitapi (Blackfoot), Métis, and Nakota Sioux Peoples, including our Brewery District office in Wîhkwêntôwin ᐄᐧᐦᑫᐧᐣᑑᐃᐧᐣ (Oliver). We recognize that healing and reconciliation is a responsibility shared by all.
Summit Counselling Services is a counselling practice operating our of Edmonton and St. Albert. We provide clinical services to children, adolescents, adults, seniors, couples, and families. We have a talented team of Edmonton psychologists, therapists and counsellors with a wide range of specializations and trainings at Summit Counselling Services who would be honoured to walk beside you on your journey. At Summit, we believe in therapy your way. Our goal is to customize your psychotherapy and counselling sessions to best suit your needs. We believe in the differences and unique perspectives each person brings to therapy and incorporate these into our work with you.