EFCT Externship – February, 2027

Externship in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy® is a training in the EFT for Couples (EFCT) stream.

Immerse yourself in Emotionally Focused Therapy — a model backed by 30 years of empirical research — through our four-day “EFT Externship”. Observe real couples undergoing therapy (live or recorded), practice your EFT skills with experiential exercises, discover which patterns keep clients stuck in distress, and learn how principles of attachment science translate into on-target interventions for individuals, couples and families. Emerge empowered and ready for your clients to grow in every session.

4 DayEvent Schedule

Day 1: February 1, 2026Day 2: February 2, 2026Day 3: February 3, 2026Day 4: February 4, 2026

Event Timeby Time Zone

Eastern: 09:30 am – 5:00 pm

Transform and deepen the way you work with clients to produce real change in every session

The Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy® Externship is an immersive four-day (24 – hour) training designed for therapists seeking specialization in EFCT. Facilitated by certified trainers, it delivers a thorough initiation into the EFCT model, emphasizing the science of attachment and a systematic approach to couple therapy. This training holds paramount importance for therapists, providing essential skills to cultivate secure and resilient relationships in therapy. Serving as the initial training in larger certification process, it paves the way for advanced practice, significantly boosting therapists’ effectiveness and confidence in their clinical work with couples.

Our four-day Externship provides an overview of the entire EFCT model, including stages of treatment and the moves of the EFT Tango. Gain the tools to see which patterns keep clients stuck in distress, and learn how principles of attachment theory translate to organic, on-target interventions. Backed by 30 years of empirical research, guide your individual, couple, and family clients to see change in every session.

EFCT

Externship in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy® is a training in theEFT for Couples (EFCT) stream.

Features

recorded therapy sessions demonstrating how to employ the EFT Tango methodology

recorded therapy sessions for discussion

presentations of theory and clinical techniques

skill training exercises

discussion of cases

Course Objectives

Participants will gain a clear understanding of the basic experiential and systemic concepts of an “Emotionally Focused Therapy” approach.

Participants will be able to view clients in their negative interpersonal attachments and conceptualize relationship distress and repair based on theories of attachment and emotion

EFT is a relational therapy. The externship will focus on the general model of EFT as laid out in the 2019 book, Attachment Theory and Practice, and present the model as it is implemented in couple and individual therapy sessions.

Participants will develop skills in sharing, maintaining an engaged, open and collaborative alliance with clients.

Participants will develop skills in the 5 moves of the basic macro-intervention – the EFT tango – in order to change patterns of affect regulation, models of self and other, strategies for engaging with others and interactional patterns.

Participants will develop skills in EFT micro interventions taken from experiential and systemic models of intervention.

Participants will develop skills in overcoming common blocks and impasses in all three therapy modalities and so shaping core corrective emotional experience that lead to constructive dependency and what Rogers termed ‘existential living’.

Whose is this Training For?

All mental health professionals including psychiatrists, psychologists, family physicians, social workers, psychiatric nurses, counsellors (including couples and family therapists), pastors and clergy, and students training in these professions. School counsellors are permitted to attend if they are licensed and belong to a professional body that has standards of practice for psychotherapy/counselling. EFCT works across cultures and sexual orientations.

Life coaches are not permitted to attend unless they also meet one of the mental health professional categories listed above.

Careful attention will be given to the selection of case examples to include minorities cultures. The C.A.R.E framework of EFT assessment will be discussed illustrating, how understanding a client’s cultural context, is important in understanding attachment and affect regulation strategies.

Here are a few testimonials from participants regarding their 2024 Externship training experience.

I appreciated the experiential learning throughout the training which helped to solidify the concepts.

The trainers and team created and modelled a safe space where participants could be vulnerable

I loved that we got to see the theory, tapes and then discuss ourselves in smaller group.

Senem and Robin worked well together – bring their knowledge and their hearts to the training.

Great to see different ethnicities and Queer clients represented in the case material.

Thank you for the special attention and care in all details including printing out the slides.

I appreciated the organization of material and how it was relayed

The printed workbooks, the well presented material, the professionalism of the trainers and the fun graduation in the last hour – thank you for a wonderful experience.

Recommended Reading

“Attachment Theory in Practice: Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) with Individuals, Couples, and Families” by Dr. Susan M. Johnson, 2019.
Save 25% thanks to Guilford Press with promo code ZFEFT. This publication is available in hardcover or eBook.

“Becoming an Emotionally Focused Therapist: The Workbook (2nd Edition)” by James L. Furrow, Susan M. Johnson, Brent Bradley, Lorrie L. Brubacher, T. Leanne Campbell, Veronica Kallos-Lilly, Gail Palmer, Kathryn Rheem, Scott R. Woolley, 2022.
This publication is available on Amazon ( https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Emotionally-Focused-Therapist-Workbook/dp/0367483424/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=becoming+emotionally+focused+therapist&qid=1650929949&sprefix=becoming+emotionally+focused+%2Caps%2C123&sr=8-1 ) in paperback or eBook.

Become the therapist you want to be! Register today.