Emotion Focused Couples Therapy

Relationships and encounters are central and formative experiences for every person. Nowhere else do we experience ourselves in comparable closeness and vulnerability. Learning to perceive and appreciate this emotional vulnerability as a strength and resource can be a pivotal moment in many couples' relationships. This allows them to enter a new, deeper phase of their shared journey. In EFT (Emotion-Focused Therapy), mindful engagement with emotions, acquired attachment styles, and the associated cultivation of emotional intelligence are essential for change and development in couple relationships. For working with intense emotions, I offer a clear, systemic, and non-judgmental framework that fosters emotional validation, closeness, and an attitude of strength and self-responsibility in our encounters.

In EFT, we assume that negative behavioral and experiential dynamics often arise in the course of relationships that bring along conflict and alienation, especially when communication is currently based more on impulses or emotions such as anger and fear. After the initial phase of falling in love, couples often learn to suppress, avoid or project/compensate for these feelings or their sensitivity in general. This is usually normalized or covered up as culturally influenced or socially expected coping patterns. In my practice, I often work with international couples who experience various, often conflicting cultural (role) demands in their relationship.

I regularly work in a culturally sensitive manner with international couples who experience various cultural (role) expectations within their relationship.

EFT is very consistently experience-oriented in this regard. This means: We don’t just talk about patterns and dynamics—we work with them in real time as they arise. Typical phases in this process include:

1) Stabilization (Deescalation)
We make patterns and dynamics visible, reduce escalation, and create a framework in which emotional safety can be experienced again. In conflicts, what is often visible on the surface are only the “loud,” distancing emotions: anger, criticism, belittlement, irritation—or, on the other hand, coldness, silence, withdrawal. EFT helps to reveal the underlying primary, more vulnerable feelings that often drive the stress and can primarily (re)activate compassion and attraction:

Insecurity, fear, shame, loneliness, the feeling of “not mattering,” of being hurt, or of losing the other person.

When couples learn to speak from this softer place, the dynamic often shifts noticeably: An attack becomes an attempt to connect. Withdrawal becomes a way to protect against being overwhelmed. “You’re always…” becomes “I’m dealing with this on my own right now…”

This helps defuse the conflict: It is no longer about “right” or “wrong,” but about secure versus insecure contact.

2) Focusing on attachment needs (restructuring)

The second phase involves expressing vulnerable attachment needs—in a way that allows the other person to hear and respond to them. This often gives rise to new “moments of connection”: small but crucial experiences of “You are here,” “I can reach you,” “I am not alone.”

3) Strengthening & integrating into daily life (consolidation)

The new experiences become part of everyday life: conflicts are recognized earlier, resolved more quickly, and the relationship develops new routines of connection.

Key factors for success in this process include a gradual, more mindful approach to attachment emotions and acquired attachment styles, and the associated cultivation of emotional intelligence, which are essential for change and growth in couple relationships.

In many everyday conflicts, partners do more than just express feelings or unmet needs. Here, performative negotiations about gender norms and norms in general (what should be), subjective truths (what is), and identities (who one is in the relationship) are constantly taking place. These levels often merge with one another during interaction, which is why often times even seemingly minor disagreements can quickly escalate: Criticism of behavior is sometimes experienced as a questioning of reality and thus of identity.

Crisis as starting and turning point

Often couples only turn to me as a therapist when conflicts have become acute or escalating. The longing for love and to be loved, for seeing and being seen, is often covered up or disturbed in everyday life. This is completely normal, common and corresponds to the same experience as in individual therapy. Accordingly, I work with understanding, mindfulness and empathy with logical concerns and intense feelings such as shame, guilt or being overwhelmed at the beginning of the therapy process. Phases of crisis, as exhausting and dreary as they may seem, are a (rare) and sometimes wonderful opportunity for couples to develop further in dealing with the unpleasant and to discover a more intense, trusting depth. This makes couples therapy a particularly meaningful occasion and setting for me.

When does couples therapy make sense?

In EFT, emotions are expressed mindfully, meaning this approach is experiential and experience-oriented. The “expressive” represents an antagonist (counterpart) to depression or suppression and overcompensation of feelings, e.g. through rigid/ inflexible or disproportionate expression of sadness, despair or anger and rage.

Dysfunctional interaction patterns can be experienced “live” by the relationship partners and can also be articulated and changed from the experienced moment.

Constructive, conscious and intelligent bonding experiences are the goal here. Together in couples therapy, we take a courageous look at the dynamics, the pattern, the process of change and thereby overcome the often deadlocked, static fixation and discussion on responsibility - to get beyond the blame game.

In my practice I support couples who...

are in a crisis and are looking for support.
want to develop or rediscover more closeness, warmth and passion in their relationship.
want to develop deeper trust or rebuild it after a breach of trust.
seek a common solution to an issue that is important to both partners.