Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy
Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT) is Sue Johnson's attachment-based extension to individual work of Emotionally Focused Therapy, which she originally developed with Leslie Greenberg in the 1980s; it was formalized in her 2019 text. Its 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. This catalogue links it to depression, anxiety and attachment and relational patterns, typically in individual format, short-medium.
Related condition topics
These links support exploration. They do not establish that Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy is effective or recommended for each condition.
How Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy works
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
"Can we slow down right here? You said it so fast. 'Nobody was coming.' What happens in your chest when you say that to me now?"
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
Epistemology
Evidence
Assessment not yet completed
An overall effectiveness assessment has not been completed. This describes the state of our review, not whether the approach works.
Recorded material under review
The existing notes below are retained separately from assessment records. These recorded claims await source checking, including study design, recommendations and numerical estimates.
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.
Training and certification
EFIT builds on EFT. EFT Externship recommended prerequisite
ICEEFT offers EFIT-specific training
2-4 days; prerequisite: EFT Externship
$1.5K-3K
Clinical cautions and blind spots
Assessment and precautions
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
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
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)
Compared with other approaches
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.