Emotion-Focused Therapy

Abstract

Emotion-focused therapy (EFT) is a psychological treatment that posits that exploring and understanding one’s painful emotions is necessary for adaptive functioning. EFT enhances clients’ awareness and ability to access, understand, interpret, regulate, and potentially transform their maladaptive emotional responses. This chapter describes the principles, intervention approaches, and empirical evidence evaluating EFT in both nononcology and oncology populations. There is extensive empirical evidence supporting EFT for the treatment of depression, anxiety, and traumatic life events and relationship distress among the general population. Although components of EFT, such as inner awareness and self-compassion, can be found in other psychological interventions provided to cancer patients and survivors, EFT has received little empirical attention in the psycho-oncology literature. There are only two studies that have evaluated EFT for cancer patients, and one of these studies did not support its efficacy. It may be premature to conclude whether EFT has clinical utility. Future work may benefit from a more formal test of EFT, where therapists are carefully trained and monitored to deliver EFT using the phases, steps, and approaches described in this chapter, both in the individual and couples’ context.