What is EFiT?

EFiT (Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy) is an attachment-based approach that helps you understand the emotional patterns driving your relationships—with others and with yourself. Rather than just talking about your relational difficulties, EFiT helps you experience what's underneath them: the attachment wounds, unmet needs, and survival strategies that shape how you show up.

How EFiT Works

EFiT follows the same attachment framework as EFT for couples, but focuses on your relationship with yourself and your relational patterns more broadly. The work helps you:

  • Identify attachment patterns rooted in early relationships that still shape how you connect (or don't) with others

  • Access underlying emotions rather than staying in your head analyzing why you do what you do

  • Understand your survival strategies — the ways you learned to stay safe in relationships (people-pleasing, debating, score-keeping, withdrawing, performing, fawning)

  • Build secure attachment with yourself so you can show up differently in relationship with others

This work is experiential — you feel what's happening emotionally, and that felt experience is what creates change.

Who EFiT Is For

EFiT is especially helpful for:

  • People with C-PTSD or relational trauma who need attachment-focused work that addresses how trauma shows up in relationships, not just in symptoms

  • Queer and trans folks processing identity, coming out, or navigating relationships without secure models of what authentic connection looks like

  • Anyone stuck in relational patterns — pursuing and withdrawing, people-pleasing, avoiding vulnerability, difficulty trusting — who wants to understand the attachment wounds driving them

  • Highly self-aware people who can intellectually understand their patterns but can't seem to shift them because the work needs to happen at an emotional, not cognitive, level

  • People who struggle with self-compassion or self-acceptance and carry a lot of shame or criticism toward themselves

EFiT vs.

  • EFiT vs. CBT: CBT focuses on thoughts and behaviors—identifying distortions, challenging unhelpful patterns, building skills. EFiT focuses on the emotional and attachment roots of those patterns. It's not about challenging thoughts; it's about understanding what emotions and attachment needs are driving them.

  • EFiT vs. DBT: DBT teaches emotion regulation skills and distress tolerance. EFiT helps you understand why you're dysregulated in the first place (usually attachment-related) and works at that root level rather than building skills to manage symptoms.

  • EFiT vs. Psychodynamic Therapy: Both are insight-oriented and explore how past relationships shape present patterns. But EFiT is more structured, present-focused, and experiential. Rather than interpreting patterns, you experience them emotionally in session.

EFiT Intensives

I offer EFiT in an intensive format—extended sessions of 3-9 hours rather than weekly 50-minute sessions. Intensive EFiT works well because:

  • Attachment work needs sustained time. You can't drop into the emotional depth required in 50 minutes.

  • You build momentum. Rather than re-orienting every week, you stay with the material and go deeper.

  • You have space to feel, not just think. Longer sessions allow for emotional experience and integration, not just insight.

  • It works when weekly therapy doesn't fit your life. If your schedule is demanding or unpredictable, blocking focused time for intensive work can be more sustainable than committing to weekly appointments.

EFiT intensives are offered virtually throughout Oregon, including Portland, Eugene, Salem, Bend, and beyond. Each intensive includes an intake session, custom workbook, the intensive session(s), and an integration session afterward.

Is EFiT Right For You?

EFiT might be a good fit if:

  • You've done therapy before but stayed mostly in your head

  • You can analyze your patterns but can't seem to shift them

  • You struggle with relationships and suspect it's rooted in attachment

  • You carry shame or self-criticism and want to understand where it came from

  • You're queer or trans and processing identity and relationships

  • You have C-PTSD and need attachment-focused work

  • You're experiencing burnout that's tangled up with relational patterns