If you don't address
your childhood
trauma, your romantic
relationships will.

Cognitive  Behaviour  Therapy  (CBT)

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy is a well-established psychotherapy "treatment" approach based on the idea that how we think (cognition), how we feel (emotion) and how we act (behaviour) all interact together.  Specifically, our thoughts determine our behaviour. 

We begin to develop unhealthy, inaccurate core beliefs/ideas during childhood as we interact with people and experience life.  Left unchecked, these negative thoughts/beliefs/interpretations can cause recurring emotional distress, low self-worth, chronic relationship difficulties and mental health challenges. 

After all, we feel and react/behave based on how we think.  

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Cognitive Behaviour Therapy skills can help:

1.   identify​

2.   question/challenge  

          AND 

3.     change​

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unhealthy patterns of thinking and behaving.

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     CBT is structured, goal-oriented and practical.  Its strategies and skills, when practiced during and between sessions, can yield satisfying results.

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Academy of Cognitive Therapy   

Association for Behavioural & Cognitive Therapies   

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🌿          🌿.         🌿

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Emotionally  Focused  Therapy  (EFT)

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Emotionally Focused Therapy is a short-term (8-20 sessions), structured approach to couple and family therapy developed by psychologist Dr. Sue Johnson in the 1980's. 

EFT is based on Attachment Theory, developed by British psychoanalyst John Bowlby (1907-1990) and expanded upon by American-Canadian developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth (1913-1999).  Bowlby and Ainsworth identified that children's early experiences with their parents (or primary caregivers) had a profound and lasting impact on their relationship skills as adults.

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Secure attachment begins in childhood when there is at least one emotionally available, empathic and nurturing parent (or primary caregiver) on a consistent basis.  When this isn't the case, however, a child becomes insecure, anxious and mistrustful and learns that he/she can't rely on others for help. 

Instead, he/she will, by default, develop damaging ways of coping with their sadness, hurt, fear and stress on their own:  usually by either shutting down or escalating in anger.    ➡️    These distorted coping habits will negatively impact their future love relationships and friendships.

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Even as fully grown adults, any distress, conflict, distance or separation in our important relationships (partner, relative, friend) is interpreted by our brains as danger/a threat to our security.  Losing our emotional connection to a loved one (as a child and as an adult) threatens our sense of security and triggers a primal fear of abandonment in the amygdala (the fear centre of our brain).

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Fight, flight or freeze.  When incoming information from our partner/loved one is positive, reassuring and familiar, our amygdala is calm.  However, when it perceives threatening or unfamiliar information, it increases our brain's anxiety level.  When our brain's anxiety level is elevated, we go into self-preservation mode, often resorting to what we did to survive/cope in childhood when we felt afraid, anxious, panicked, sad, insecure, threatened, etc. and our parents/primary caregivers weren't available (were unable or unwilling) to comfort us and help us manage these frightening feelings.

When we are triggered as adults in our romantic/close relationships, we tend to repeat unhealthy coping/self-protection patterns from our formative years. 

Emotionally Focused Therapy can help change counterproductive, automatic, ingrained reaction patterns that stress and sabotage ourselves and our most important relationships.

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International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy (ICEEFT)

iceeft.com

drsuejohnson.com

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Attachment Theory:  simplypsychology.org

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Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find and Keep Love. - A. Levine & R. Heller, 2010  

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Attachment Styles test (free):   dianepooleheller.com