Supervision Essentials for Emotion-Focused Therapy

Emotion-focused therapy (EFT) has become the go-to approach for many mental health professionals today. Although considerable efforts have been undertaken over the years to provide theoretical, practical, and research support for EFT, the same cannot be said for clinical supervision in an EFT context or with trainees who use EFT, which until now has proceeded using broad guidelines derived from general theories of supervision. In this book, Drs. Leslie Greenberg and Liliana Ramona Tomescu introduce a model of supervision that is founded on the same fundamental principles of EFT therapy:: a safe supervisory alliance and relationship, an agreed-upon focus for each supervision session, and the identification of appropriate task markers (moments of uncertainty that present opportunities for supervisory intervention). Together, EFT supervisors and supervisees carefully deconstruct recorded therapy sessions, with moment-by-moment processing of the supervisees responses and emotional understanding. Through close observation, supervisors enable trainees to develop seeing, listening, and empathic skills, as they become more attuned to both verbal and non-verbal cues that indicate clients emotional responses. The book uses transcripts from supervision sessions with real trainees, including those documented on the DVD Emotion-Focused Therapy Supervision , also available from APA Books.