Emotion-Focused Therapy: Coaching Clients to Work Through Their Feelings

by Leslie S. Greenberg

Offers therapists an approach to helping clients live in harmony with head and heart. Proposes clients can learn from their own bodily reactions and begin to act sensibly on them. Includes case illustrations, practical guidance, and clinical wisdom.

Genres: Psychology, Counselling, Nonfiction, Relationships, Mental Health

337 pages, Hardcover

First published January 15, 2002

Reviews

[Tim Tuttle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent resource, especially in helping therapeutic integration of feelings with thinking and behavior. Trying to rationalize away emotions leads to dysfunctional splitting. Conversely, emotions should inform thinking and behavior. The missing piece to CBT.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Integrates gestalt, CBT, psychodynamic, mindfulness, and even a little bit of nonviolent communication (although not named as such) into a cohesive method for working with clients, especially those who go to great pains to avoid the intensity of their feelings.

[Eleanore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent, I try and base my own therapy style on this

[Γιώργος Γεωργόπουλος · Rating 5 out of 5]

Τα κομμάτια που μπορούσα να τα χρησιμοποιήσω σαν θεραπευόμενος με βοήθησαν πολύ. Αυτά αφορούν την τεχνική με τις δυο καρέκλες και τον διάλογο με τον εσωτερικό κριτή ή με έναν τραυματικό άλλο. Είχε βέβαια και πολλά τεχνικά θέματα που απευθύνονταν σε θεραπευτές. Αυτά δεν μπορούν να αξιοποιηθούν από έναν θεραπευόμενο γι αυτό και τα αφήνω στην άκρη.

[Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an introduction to the theory and technique it is great. I wish he had dealt with the more liminal aspects of therapy, working with more severe pathology and some of the psychodynamic pieces implicit in every therapy relationship. As an introductory and theory heavy book though, it has significant value.

[Nitu Valentin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Both super informative and relatable. Incredible read for both EFT practitioners and anyone else interested in emotion-based work.

[xenia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Neurotypical daddy conflates emotional intelligence with being more human and civilised.

Look, you can affirm the transformative and agential power of narrativising previously overwhelming emotions without reproducing a colonial conception of the maladapted subject as some squalid unthinking savage.

I generally like humanism, but only the forms that are capable of recognising difference and multiplicity as the grounds of being, not this teleological bullshit that gloats over how humans in the present are the most emotionally-developed they've ever been. This is the kind of humanism that is comfortable sorting the neurodivergent into various categories of subhumanity due to their lessened capacities to express emotions in a normative way.

This sort of humanism also flies way too fucking close to new age idealism, that fanatical belief in world revolution through a psychic cleansing of our collective repressions. If we just talked more about feelings and stuff we'd have world peace. It's the bullshit people spout when they don't want you to analyse their material privileges, or when they've been reduced to an aspiring-to-be-middle-class-fragile-wreck.

There's some good information here about how affective pathways are non-conscious and immediate, meaning that certain self-soothing techniques cannot be passed on through conscious channels (i.e. taught as a volitional skill), only through empathic relations (i.e. being validated by the other), but the whole framework sends warning bells to me about the conceit of the middle-class, the allistic, and the able-bodied.

I might return to this review with an in-depth explanation of EFT when I don't have my crit-theory-bitch-glasses on. In the meantime, I'd recommend Russell Meares for a primer on narrativisation and selfhood, and Richard Swartz for a primer on validation and self-states.

[Autumn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I sure did like this book even though it took me forever to read. Sometimes you just connect with certain ideas...I did when I was sitting in class learning about it. Reading this book helped me to figure out what it was all about. Learning to connect with emotions and identify them correctly can be very helpful.

[Catherine Woodman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Greeberg is a well known therapist, but this approach to psychotherapy is a bit too touchy feely for my residents

[Muhammet · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is time to feel those who needs to be felt

[Dr. Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book to help couples deal with their emotional connection.