Do you often feel like your thoughts are stuck in a loop? Have you ever experienced a sense of relief after voicing such thoughts? Many people do. However, articulating our thoughts and emotions to others can be challenging.
It’s often difficult to find the right words to convey our experiences, and sometimes it doesn’t feel like there’s any ‘right’ or ‘best’ time to talk about them openly, or be vulnerable and aligned with our inner selves while mentioning them to other people. That’s why at Expressions Counselling, we offer emotionally focused therapy (EFT) not only for couples but also for individuals.
What is EFT?
EFT is an evidence-based approach that recognizes the importance of emotions in the healing process, rather than viewing them as obstacles to be avoided or fixed. It integrates experiential methods with empathy and thoughtful guidance to assist you in engaging with your emotions and breaking the ‘loop’, rather than resisting them and letting the ‘looping’ thoughts continue.
EFT guides you in connecting with your inner emotional landscape, helping you understand what your feelings are trying to tell you, and encouraging a compassionate response to your inner self rather than a critical one. Through chairwork, you can learn to express significant thoughts and emotions in a constructive manner.
What Issues Can EFT Address?
EFT is beneficial for various emotional and psychological challenges, particularly when the primary issues relate to identity, self-esteem, or avoiding emotions. EFT-I can assist with:
- General depression, shame, and self-criticism
- General anxiety, often stemming from emotional suppression or past trauma
- Unresolved trauma, grief, and loss
- Exploring and discovering identity
- Challenges in relationships, communication, and attachment styles
- Addressing and healing from childhood emotional neglect or unmet attachment needs
- Struggles with low self-esteem and self-acceptance
- Getting closure on unmet attachment needs
EFT employs a range of experiential methods to aid in emotional processing. One such method is chairwork, which is designed to assist clients in experiencing and navigating their emotions during therapy.
Overall, EFT, whether for couples or for individuals, is backed by research. For individuals, it can assist in processing unspoken emotions, discovering one’s deeper emotional needs, and progressing towards true healing and personal growth—even after enduring years of internal conflict.
What is Chairwork?
Chairwork transcends simply discussing problems intellectually. It consists of a process where individuals engage with emotions on a deeper level.
Chairwork uses two empty chairs to promote self-reflection, emotional expression, and conflict resolution. You sit in one chair and then interact with the empty chair, which may symbolize another person or a part of your inner self.
Through guided, structured dialogue and role-playing, chairwork can encourage individuals to intentionally examine various viewpoints, resolve internal conflicts, process unspoken emotions, gain new insights, and find solutions to lingering issues. It offers a concrete and experiential method to explore thoughts, feelings, and relationships, presenting a distinctive opportunity for personal development and healing.
Many of us already have internal conversations, debates, and conflicts throughout the day. We may argue with ourselves, replay interactions, criticize ourselves, or imagine what we wish we had said to someone.
Chairwork slows these processes down and brings them into awareness. By expressing these thoughts and feelings out loud in a structured format, individuals can better understand their emotional experience, identify patterns that may no longer be serving them, and develop new ways of responding to themselves and others. Rather than remaining stuck in repetitive mental loops, chairwork creates an opportunity for deeper emotional processing, insight, and change.
What is Chairwork Used For?
The empty chair practice is a helpful solution to tackle unresolved interpersonal conflicts and enhance mental well-being. It can:
- Access and process underlying emotions.
- Work through self-criticism and develop self-compassion.
- Resolve internal conflicts between different parts of the self.
- Identify and express unmet attachment needs.
- Process grief, shame, hurt, and anger.
- Increase assertiveness and emotional expression.
- Address unfinished business with a parent, abuser, partner, or other significant person through empty-chair dialogues.
- Move from intellectual understanding to emotional healing and resolution.
- Decrease self-interruptions.
What is Self-interruption in EFT?
In Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT), self-interruption refers to the ways people block, inhibit, or shut down their own emotional experience before it can be fully felt, expressed, or processed.
Common forms of self-interruption include:
- Criticizing yourself when emotions arise (“Stop being so sensitive.”)
- Minimizing feelings (“It’s not a big deal.”)
- Distracting yourself from emotions.
- Intellectualizing instead of feeling.
- Tensing muscles, holding your breath, or shutting down tears.
- Stopping yourself from expressing anger, sadness, fear, or needs.
- Changing the subject when emotions become intense.
- Laughing or joking when discussing painful experiences.
In EFT, self-interruption is viewed as a protective process that often developed for good reasons, such as avoiding rejection, punishment, shame, or vulnerability. However, over time it can prevent emotional processing and keep people stuck.
Chairwork is often used to explore self-interruption. For example, one chair might represent the part that wants to express sadness, anger, or a need, while the other chair represents the part that says:
- “Don’t cry.”
- “Don’t make a scene.”
- “Just get over it.”
- “No one cares.”
The goal is not to eliminate the protective part but to understand why it developed, what it is trying to protect against, and whether it is still helping in the present. By reducing self-interruption, clients can access deeper emotions and unmet needs, which facilitates emotional processing and change.
In Summary:
Engaging in chairwork via EFT can be a powerful way for individuals to finally address unresolved, unspoken emotions. Although having a conversation with an empty chair might feel awkward at first, it can significantly enhance self-awareness, provide new insight and perspective, and assist in addressing and navigating inner conflict that remains unresolved.
Emotionally focused therapy is a collaborative and relational approach that is sensitive to your emotional journey. Your therapist will guide you with an approach founded on empathy and curiosity, fostering an environment where even the most difficult emotions can be safely examined and transformed.
At Expressions Counselling, we hold the belief that emotional healing occurs when you no longer face your feelings in isolation. We are here to support you with compassion and integrity. Our team provides emotionally focused therapy for individuals both in person at our Port Moody BC office and online.
Together, we’ll guide you on your pathway to greater healing, where you can safely transition from feelings of overwhelm and confusion to clarity, self-trust, and a deeper connection to your true inner self.
