“New beginnings start with knowing how we create the trap that we are caught in, how we have deprived ourselves of the love we need. Strong bonds grow from resolving to halt the cycles of disconnection, the dances of distress.” Dr. Sue Johnson

We offer therapy for all types of couples in the many stages of relationship: Premarital, Longterm Couples, Couples in Transition, and Couples in Distress.

When couples feel such safety in their relationship, they grow far more comfortable with navigating difficult situations and feelings. Hence, EFT teaches us that we may already possess good communication skills. But, it’s not enough.

Emotional security must also be present in order for such skills to be properly and regularly applied. This belief is a component of “attachment theory.”

Attachment, of course, is not a one-time event. It’s ongoing and fluid. EFT helps couples grow in this process, with one of the goals being a deeper, more secure emotional connection. From this springs more loving and productive interactions.

Some Goals When Utilizing EFT for Couples

Re-organize our palette of emotional responses

Create new cycles of communication

Cultivate a more secure bond between partners

The 9 Steps to a Stronger, More Secure, and Happier Marriage

EFT for couples is divided into three stages. Steps 1 through 4 (below) constitute the “Assessment and Cycle De-escalation” stage. The second stage is “Changing Interaction Patterns and Creating New Bonds” and consists of steps 5, 6, and 7. The final two steps make up a stage called “Consolidation and Integration.”

STAGE 1: ASSESSMENT AND CYCLE DE-ESCALATION

1. Identify primary issues of concern. Set goals. Then, assess your relationship history.

2. Identify negative patterns in your interactions. Work with your therapist to trace past patterns.

3. Recognize previously unacknowledged attachment-related emotions. Identify the feelings “underneath” your behavioral patterns and discuss this “underneath” with your partner.

4. With help from your therapist, reframe all of the above into categories. Especially relevant to your relationship are negative cycles, underlying feelings, and attachment needs categories. Subsequently, use this time to assess your emotional cycle and identify triggers each step of the way.

STAGE 2: CHANGING INTERACTIONAL POSITIONS AND CREATING NEW BONDING EVENTS

5. Partners voice their attachment needs and define whatever emotions have been previously disowned.

6. Listen and accept. While each partner responds with compassion to the other partner’s expressed needs and emotions, sometimes those needs and emotions take you by surprise and require processing.

7. Your therapist coaches you on how you’re expressing your attachment needs, your fears, and your new interactional goals. In addition, couples work more deeply with listening and acceptance. As a result, they work more purposefully towards the goal of “being there” for each other.

STAGE 3: CONSOLIDATION/ INTEGRATION

8. Work on ways to apply your new communication styles and techniques while discussing old problems to create new solutions. This includes time outside of the therapy session environment. Then, it’s time to re-visit issues that have been put on hold.

9. Consolidate. Blend all your developing skills with the awareness of new closeness and deeper bonds. Begin to work together on future plans. Also, don’t forget to celebrate your efforts. Create rituals too. In addition, be sure to set up safeguards to address concerns as they arise.

Again, EFT for couples has an extremely strong track record.

However, its intangible power may lie beyond the research studies. Most of all, Emotionally Focused Therapy reminds couples how much they need each other!

“Healing is embracing what is most feared; healing is opening what has been closed, softening what has hardened into obstruction, healing is learning to trust life.” – Jeanne Achterberg.

Our background in couples work is reflected in our individual work, we strive not only for you to discover your wise compassionate self, we also encourage you to stay compassionate and work on developing a “We” consciousness.

We offer therapy for clients struggling with Trauma, Depression, Anxiety, Grief, and Self-Esteem. Amy Scully, LCSW also works with serious mental health symptoms like clinical depression, OCD, addiction, suicidality, urges for self-harm, bipolar disorder, psychosis, and personality disorder.

A Self-Therapy Approach

We offer practical methods to learn greater emotional flexibility and resilience. These new habits of thinking, feeling, acting, and embodiment will propel you to grow and feel better. By using a less traditional style, we can move beyond the boundaries of conventional talk therapy to meet your individual needs. Anxiety, depression, stress, and relationship issues are areas of prime focus.

Tools for self-therapy: In our first session, we will explore your history and current relationships to discover patterns and repeating experiences. These thoughts, moods, and behaviors may have been effective in the past but no longer produce the results you expect. Next, you’ll see how those patterns began and the unconscious blocks that keep them in place. Together, we will identify the tools that will help you become your own therapist.

Relationship with the inner self: When you feel caught in internal conflict, you will learn to recognize parts of the self. Some parts we like and some we are not even aware of. When we can honor these parts with compassion, it’s possible to shift and transform. I will help you learn to know and interact with these parts intellectually, physically, and emotionally.

We will help you identify what you really value in your life – the things that truly matter to you in the present. You will also learn to recognize and welcome all feelings and emotions, both positive and negative, as messengers telling you about your wants and needs. This mindfulness approach will help you identify what brings fulfillment and meaning to your life.

Body-centered therapy: We will offer body-centered methods to help you attune to the messages your physiological state is sending you. Your breath and body inform your experience and are essential tools for exploration and change.

Self-compassion: The culminating focus will be on self-compassion. So much of our struggles come from self-blame, guilt, and shame, compounded by the inability to offer yourself forgiveness for past mistakes. These feelings can hinder therapy, and even when improvement begins to occur, it might feel undeserved or temporary. When we embrace these feelings without judgment, we can nurture an attitude of compassion and forgiveness for past mistakes and instill hope for the future.

Adolescence is a new birth, where the higher and more completely human traits are now born.” G. Stanley Hall

We offer therapy for teens struggling to find their way.

Because you love your child so much, it hurts to see them struggle. We offer a caring, compassionate, and effective approach that is informed by both our professional and personal experience as mothers of young adults, each with unique personalities and needs.

We specialize in working with difficulties such as:

Anxiety

Stress

ADHD

Depression

Trauma

Social Skills

Family and friend relationships

Anger