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Whether you are a couple looking to improve your relationship or a therapist training other therapists to work with couples, Dr. Johnson’s message and techniques will provide valuable tools for change. And her message is very clear and direct: everything we need to know about relationships, we learned in childhood. Drawing upon research into the sciences of attachment and bonding and in very clear language, she provides concrete strategies to help strengthen relationships by enhancing safety, security and connection.Instead of focusing on fleeting issues that drive problems in relationships, she shows how the principles of EFT can help couples to more effectively express, process and reciprocate emotions. Feeling heard and hearing each other is the key to relationship survival. Dr. Johnson teaches us to build on these simple yet powerful ideas to increase relationship satisfaction and the effectiveness of couples therapy.
For Dr. Johnson, the enemy of love is not conflict, but distance and emotional disconnection. She imparts useful strategies and techniques for safely lessening distance, increasing partner responsiveness and strengthening intimacy. Real-life examples from her work help us to replace old notions about relationship traps. In their place, couples and clinicians will learn about the specific stages and methods for building or rebuilding healthy and rewarding ties.
What therapists are saying…
Historically, couples, and the professionals who have tried to help them, have faltered under the assumption that love is a mysterious mixture of sexuality, friendship, shared values and common interests. Self-help strategies and couples therapy have offered limited solutions. Re-conceptualizing intimacy as an ancient, wired-in survival code, EFT and its Hold Me Tight curriculum will equip viewers with the means for re-wiring the brain and along with it, our relationships.
By watching this interview, you will:
- appreciate that adult love is rooted in the basic biological processes of bonding and attachment
- acquire skills to intervene more effectively with couples by focusing on their shared emotional dance
- identify relationship traps to close emotional distance and strengthen connection and intimacy
Length of video: 1:12:13
English subtitles available
Group ISBN-10 #: 1-60124-549-1
Group ISBN-13 #: 978-1-60124-549-6
Dr. Sue Johnson is one of the originators and the main proponent of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT), now one of the best validated couples interventions in North America. She is Director of the Ottawa (Canada) Couple and Family Institute and the International Center for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy as well as Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Ottawa and Research Professor at Alliant University in San Diego, California.
She has received numerous honors for her work, including the Outstanding Contribution to the Field of Couple and Family Therapy Award from the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy and the Research in Family Therapy Award from the American Family Therapy Academy. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association.
She received her doctorate in Counseling Psychology from the University of British Columbia in 1984. She is a registered psychologist in the province of Ontario, Canada, and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, the Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy and the Journal of Family Psychology. She is a Research Professor in the Marital & Family Therapy Program at Alliant University in San Diego.
Her 2004 book (2nd Ed), The Practice of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy: Creating Connection (Brunner Rouledge) is a foundational text on EFT for couples. She is the senior editor of the 2003 book, Attachment Processes in Couples Therapy (Guilford Press), and the 1994 book, The Heart of the Matter (Guilford Press). She has also written a book on trauma and couples, Focused Couple Therapy with Trauma Survivors (2002).
She trains counselors in EFT worldwide and consults to Veterans Affairs, the U.S. and Canadian military and New York City Fire Department. Sue is an Approved Supervisor for the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy and is internationally known for her workshops and presentations on practice, theory and research in couple therapy, adult attachment and emotion in psychotherapy. She maintains a private practice and lives in Ottawa, Canada, with her husband and two children.
To contact Dr. Johnson and learn more about her work, visit her website and The International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy.
See all Sue Johnson videos.
Sue Johnson was compensated for his/her/their contribution. None of his/her/their books or additional offerings are required for any of the Psychotherapy.net content. Should such materials be references, it is as an additional resource.
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Additionally, there is no commercial support for this activity. None of the planners or any employee at Psychotherapy.net who has worked on this educational activity has relevant financial relationship(s) to disclose with ineligible companies.
CE credits: 1
Learning Objectives:
- Discuss the role of early bonding and attachment in adult love
- Describe the skills comprising effective intervention with couples
- Plan effective intimacy strategies to close emotional distance
Bibliography available upon request
This course is offered for ASWB ACE credit for social workers. See complete list of CE approvals here
© 2018
Course Reviewed January 2025
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