NJAMFT Northern Chapter Fall 2017 Workshop 

 Breaking Through the Armor: Reframing and Working with Couples’ Defenses in Emotionally Focused Therapy  

 “He’s unbelievable! Do you see? This is what I get at home, he’s absolutely useless! Even now, he’s not listening! He could care less about me! I want a partner!” 

The wife of the couple in front of you is sitting up tall on the couch and yelling, waving her arms around for emphasis. Her husband is sitting in the corner of the couch with his arms crossed over his chest, looking out the window. The wife looks furiously at you, the therapist. “See what I mean? He doesn’t care. What’s the point of even being here? She shrinks down and wells up with tears. 

As couples therapists, we’ve all dealt with some version of this scenario in our offices and most of us have felt our own mounting anxiety in the process. We’ve tried to provide communication skills, interpretations, psychoeducation, and even deep breathing exercises to our couples, all to find these scenes repeating over and over. When the argument explodes in the room, each partner suddenly appears to be impossible to reach and returns to brandishing weapons and wearing armor. And as for us? We slowly begin to sink into feelings of  frustration, incompetence, and perhaps even worse... hopelessness. 

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy - an empirically validated model of treatment created by Dr. Sue Johnson - helps provide a framework in which we can understand and work with the behavior of these warring partners. It gives us, as therapists, a map that guides us through the process of disarming and de-escalating these couples in conflict.   

Participants will emerge from this workshop with a better understanding of their couples’ distress and more confidence in how to work with it in a productive way in session. Specifically participants will learn: 

• · An overview of John Bowlby’s Theory of Attachment, the foundation of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), and how it applies to couples and couples therapy
• · An overview of EFT and how the model reframes a couple’s defenses from a view of resistance to that of much needed protection
• · How to track a couple’s negative cycle - as prescribed through EFT - and how to view the cycle as a road map for understanding and working with a couple’s distress
• · How to utilize RISSSC - an EFT acronym representing the stance and presence of the therapist when working with distressed couples
• · Effective interventions that help partners gradually bring down their defenses so that they may access and begin to express their more vulnerable emotions

Karyn Bristol, LCSW, ICEEFT Certified EFT Therapist and Supervisor, and Maria Lorditch, LCSW, ICEEFT Certified EFT Therapist and Approved Supervisor Candidate, are both Co-founders of EFTCNJ, the EFT Center of New Jersey, and both work closely with the Center’s President and Director, ICEEFT Certified EFT Trainer Debi Scimeca-Diaz. They are engaging presenters, who are passionate about spreading EFT and the model’s effectiveness in healing the strained and fractured bonds of couples in the NJ area. They will provide participants with the opportunity to learn in a lively, engaging environment by presenting in a “teach, show, do” method that allows for different participant learning styles, including teaching didactically through PowerPoint, showing and discussing video clips of actual EFT therapy sessions, and engaging participants in experiential exercises in a safe and respectful manner.

This workshop serves as a great introduction to the practice of Emotionally Focused Therapy, giving the practitioner some practical tools to help them intervene with their couples, while also serving as precursor for those interested in pursuing more extensive EFT training by attending an ICEEFT endorsed EFT Externship Training. For more information on the next EFT Externship in NJ, please visit www.eftcnj.com 

Maria M. Lorditch, LCSW began her career in finance working for an investment bank in NYC after graduating with her B.S. in Economics in 1987 from St. John’s University in Queens, NY. She decided after having children to return to school for a career change and graduated from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ, with her MSW from the School of Social Work in 2005. Since then, Maria has worked predominantly with couples and families, completing a two-year, post-graduate, couples training program with the Center for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis of New Jersey (CPPNJ), where she was also a member of faculty from 2013-2017.

Maria completed her EFT Externship in the spring of 2013 and found the model transformative to her work with couples. She has since completed her certification in EFT through the International Centre for Excellence in EFT (ICEEFT) and is an approved ICEEFT Supervisor Candidate, supervising colleagues who are training and/or seeking certification in the EFT model. She is a co-founder of the Emotionally Focused Therapy Center of NJ (EFTCNJ) and is also acting Vice President of Communications and Membership, working closely with NJ’s ICEEFT Certified EFT Trainer Debi Scimeca- Diaz, as well as other EFT colleagues, offering support to EFT practitioners in the greater NJ area and helping couples secure their attachment to one another.