Several times in any given week of eft couples sessions, couples leave the sessions with benefit, but still in distress and negative cycle conflict. My intuitive feeling has long been a sense that a portion of the continued conflict derived from an insufficient amount of therapeutic support. In this last year I have experimented with “focusing interventions” wherein I have called one or both partners a few days after the eft session; in a 10 or 15 minute phone call, sometimes longer, I would then inquire about where things went following the session, bring forward once again my understanding of the cycle, empathically engage each partners sense of threat underneath the cycle, and lay in more deeply the underlying reality of continued attachment and caring in the marriage.
What I am trying to address here is situations where couples leave the sessions with the negative cycle still predominant. The particular eft session may have, in fact, been quite good, but not sufficient to yet calm down the negative cycle. The therapy is not yet organizing of safe connection. The couple is still in the world without sufficient resources and support to interact differently, metaphorically blowing in the wind like an untethered flag.
It is my hope that a second, briefer contact in the week, one designed to emphasize the core therapeutic message, could serve as a kind of booster shot to therapeutic interventions delivered in the primary eft session.
