Masterclass in Emotion-Focused Therapy for Youth (EFT-Y) for EFT-Therapists

Emotion-focused therapy for children and adolescents, carers and families is one of the latest developments in EFT. Given the shortage of trained professionals for children and adolescents and the resulting dramatic undersupply in Switzerland, the IEFT is very pleased to announce the first two-day Masterclass in Emotion-Focused Therapy for Youth (EFT-Y) with Dr Mirisse Foroughe, Toronto, Canada.
Many youth come to therapy when there have been painful or overwhelming experiences in their lives. EFT’s emotion transformation process simply and brilliantly demonstrates how helpful emotions can reduce suffering. EFT has been adapted for youth aged 9 through 17 based on over ten years of clinical research.

EFT-Y supports clinicians to strengthen their attunement with their client’s verbal and nonverbal communication, identifying key moments in therapy, and facilitating emotion transformation through evocative and empathic responses. EFT-Y directs youth to their emotions as a fundamental meaning system. Each emotional experience provides clues to how the youth is experiencing their world while also organizing them to think and act in certain ways.
In addition to praising the fact that EFT offers an alternative to traditional therapies for youth, clients often appreciate that EFT-Y is individualized for them and places them at the centre of the process. As well, EFT-Y opens the door for recognizing how impactful primary caregivers are in a child’s emotional development and mental health. Many youth become more comfortable with expressing their emotions directly to their caregivers and allowing parents and caregivers to become involved in the therapeutic process.

Each training day will include didactic material on therapy principles and processes, live demonstration of therapeutic processes, videotaped examples illustrating specific therapeutic responses and client processes, as well as supervised skills practice with peers. Skills practice will focus on modifications made for youth, building capacity with nonverbal communication, and empathic responding. Emphasis will be placed on assessment of emotional processing styles, case formulation including the youth’s family and social system, and implementing two-chair and empty chair exercises to help youth access and process anxiety, self-criticism, self-interruption, and confront relational trauma or misattunement between themselves and their parents or family members.