Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy
Core Mechanism
The therapist serves as temporary secure base while the client accesses and restructures core attachment emotions — moving from insecure strategies (anxiety, avoidance) toward earned security through corrective emotional experience
Ontology
Individual distress reflects insecure attachment strategies developed in response to early relational failures — the person is stuck in reactive emotional patterns that block connection and self-regulation
Therapeutic Voice
"Underneath all that self-criticism, there's a younger part of you that just wanted someone to say 'you're enough.'"
View of the Person
An attachment-seeking being whose individual distress reflects insecure relational strategies — healing requires a corrective attachment experience within the therapeutic relationship
Evidence
Not in major guidelines
Emerging; pilot studies
None yet as standalone
Extension of EFT (originally for couples) to individual therapy. Johnson's 2019 book formalized the model. Growing training community. Draws heavily on attachment theory and emotion science. Less researched than EFT for couples but theoretically coherent.
Conditions
Epistemology
Blind Spots
Very limited research as standalone individual model; theoretical extension from couples work not yet empirically validated; risk of dependency on therapist as attachment figure
Contraindications
Active psychosis, severe dissociation where emotional deepening risks fragmentation, situations requiring immediate behavioral stabilization, clients whose attachment systems are so disorganized that deepening accelerates destabilization
Training
EFIT builds on EFT. EFT Externship recommended prerequisite
ICEEFT offers EFIT-specific training
2-4 days; prerequisite: EFT Externship
$1.5K-3K
Philosophical Roots
Bowlby (attachment theory); Ainsworth (attachment patterns); Johnson (extending EFT from couples to individual); Greenberg (emotion-focused therapy — common root); affective neuroscience (Panksepp, Damasio)
Related Modalities
Test Yourself
How does EFIT differ from EFT for couples?
Show answer
EFIT applies the same attachment framework to individual therapy — the therapist becomes the temporary attachment figure, and the work focuses on accessing and restructuring core emotional responses rooted in attachment history.