Learn EFIT: Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy

Name: 2025 June | EFIT Essentials
Start: 2025-06-23
End: 2025-06-26
Location: Live-Online

What is EFIT?

A revolutionary attachment-based approach to individual therapy
EFIT is an attachment science-based approach to individual therapy that, like the other EFT interventions, offers an integration of humanistic experiential interventions focused on reshaping intrapsychic experience and systemic interventions focused on reshaping patterns of engagement with significant others. Emotion is given precedence because of its powerful role in structuring inner experience, motivation, and key interactional patterns in relationships. Emotion links and organizes core experience and interaction.

Emotion moves people. Understanding the intuition of emotion and how to use it to create potent and sustainable change moves both the client and therapist. Sessions become more focused and effective. Corrective emotional experiences transform, shift perspectives, shift thoughts about self, about trust, confidence and competence. It is an organic process: when emotions are tapped into and used effectively, a shift in thoughts naturally follows.

Emotion is a reliable guide post, and the destination is clear: secure attachment. The lens of attachment helps us to see and understand individuals in context. EFT provides us with the tools, a roadmap, to help each individual achieve a secure connection with themselves and their most important relationships.

Goals of EFIT

Goals:
To offer corrective experiences that positively impact models of self and other and shape stable, lasting change.
To offer transformative moments where vulnerability is encountered with balance.
To enable clients to move into the accessibility/openness, responsiveness and full engagement that characterizes secure attachment with others.
To enable clients to shape a coherent sense of a competent self that can deal with existential life issues and become a fully alive human being.

Which modality is right for me?

EFFT is the most appropriate modality for working one-on-one with children and youth, as well as with caregivers and their children (including adult children). EFCT is most effective for working with couples. EFIT is most effective for working one-on-one with adults.

Features of learning with ICEEFT Courses

ICEEFT Courses offers online trainings, in English, in North America. For EFFT training elsewhere in the world, in other languages, or in-person within North America, please visit the ICEEFT Event List.

All our courses offer CEs; learn more on our CE page.
All our live-online courses include a 40min lunch + two 10min breaks each day.
A certificate of completion is available for all our courses.

What is the goal of EFIT?

What can EFIT do?

How does EFIT work?

What does EFIT look like?

How did EFIT come about?

What is different about EFIT?

Pathway to EFIT Certification

ICEEFT created a certification pathway for EFIT in 2024. To learn more about each step of EFIT certification, please visit ICEEFT.com’s EFIT page.

Courses in Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy

Mental health professionals have a range of training options for Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy.

Introducing “Fundamentals of EFT”

Engage with the essence of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and attachment science; this 6.25-hour workshop provides practical tools to enhance your therapeutic practice across individual, couple, and family modalities. Learn more about Fundamentals

Prerequisites: none. We recommend Fundamentals precede any other course. This is not a requirement; this course is not required for therapist certification. Fundamentals can also be taken after other courses, as it provides context for EFCT, EFIT, and EFFT.

Introducing EFIT short courses

EFIT short courses can be taken as a first taste of EFIT, or can be enjoyed after taking other EFIT training. The following EFIT short courses are approved parts of the path to EFIT Certification.

Prerequisites: none. One day short courses may be taken at any time: as a first introduction to EFIT or as one of the Additional Steps required for EFIT certification.

Approved EFIT short courses offered by ICEEFT Courses

EFIT for Anxiety

Live online event: November 7, 2025. REGISTER!

Interested in a recorded version of this course?

If you would be interested in purchasing access to a recorded version of this course in 2026, please submit your interest here:

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EFIT for Depression

Live online event: November 13, 2025. REGISTER!

Interested in a recorded version of this course?

If you would be interested in purchasing access to a recorded version of this course in 2026, please submit your interest here:

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Introducing “EFIT Essentials”

EFIT Essentials

“EFIT Essentials” is, quite simply, our two-day Level 1 plus two-day Level 2 combined together into a four-day course.

For details on Levels 1 and 2, please read on.

Why EFIT Level 1?

This EFIT program teaches you how to tune into, order, and use the power of potent emotion to literally ‘move’ clients into a new sense of self. As they construct their inner emotional world in new ways, the results are:

– an increased sense of competence and worth,
– a sense of secure connection with self and others,
– and diminished symptoms of emotional disorders.

Immediately transform your practice and clients with EFIT.

Level 1 Objectives

EFIT Course Objectives
To offer corrective emotional experiences that positively impact models of self and other and shape stable, lasting change.
To offer transformative moments where vulnerability, that is “frightening, alien and unacceptable emotion,” is encountered with balance.
To validate the client’s sense of competence and worth in every session.
To enable clients to move into the accessibility/openness, responsiveness and full engagement that characterizes secure attachment with others.
To enable clients to shape a coherent sense of a competent self that can deal with existential life issues and become a fully alive human being.

EFIT Level 1 Objectives
Participation in EFIT Level 1 will enable you to:
Describe the key elements of the attachment perspective and its significance for understanding personality and development, as well as the impacts of trauma
Describe the key elements of the attachment perspective and its significant for clinical intervention
Describe the key elements of the humanistic experiential perspective and its significance for clinical intervention
Delineate clients’ within and between patterns of affect regulation, and how that impacts self-development and relationship functioning
Identify how repetitive patterns create and maintain each other and generate presenting problems that manifest as emotional and trauma-related disorders
Identify how repetitive patterns block growth and generate and maintain presenting problems that manifest as emotional and trauma-related disorders
Describe the core elements of emotional disorders such as depression, anxiety, and trauma-related disorders
Outline the three-stage process of therapy in EFIT
Describe and use the C.A.R.E. model in the initial sessions, and throughout the course of therapy
Identify the 5 moves of the EFIT Tango
Implement the 5 moves of the EFIT Tango to shape corrective emotional experiences
Describe the micro-interventions used by the EFT therapist
Outline the EFIT process of change
Validate the client’s sense of competence and worth in every session

Why EFIT Level 2?

Transform your practice – and your clients – with EFIT!

Deepen your understanding of EFIT while discovering effective ways to overcome barriers and obstacles to change. EFIT Level 2 expands on Level 1, delving deeper into objectives and providing more extensive discussion and practice. Level 2 also offers support for challenging clients and situations.

Participants are encouraged to prepare for this live-online course by identifying specific examples where you have encountered confusion or difficulty in implementing EFIT and/or the Tango.

Level 2 Objectives

EFIT Course Objectives
To offer corrective emotional experiences that positively impact models of self and other and shape stable, lasting change.
To offer transformative moments where vulnerability, that is “frightening, alien and unacceptable emotion,” is encountered with balance.
To validate the client’s sense of competence and worth in every session.
To enable clients to move into the accessibility/openness, responsiveness and full engagement that characterizes secure attachment with others.
To enable clients to shape a coherent sense of a competent self that can deal with existential life issues and become a fully alive human being.

EFIT Level 2 Objectives
The Level 2 objectives will be addressed in more depth and with more practice and discussion than in the Level 1 training and with more reference to specific kinds of clients and situations that participants find challenging. Participants are encouraged when they enrol to be prepared to pinpoint brief examples of places they become confused or stuck in the practice of EFIT and/or specifically in the Tango to bring into the training.

Participation in EFIT Level 2 will enable you to:
Adopt an attachment humanistic experiential perspective on clients, problems, and interventions
Outline the applicability of EFIT for clients with varying presenting problems
Tune into clients’ experiences with C.A.R.E. in initial sessions and throughout the therapy process
Outline protective, self-defining and interactional iatrogenic patterns
Describe and delineate the 5 moves of the Tango
Outline how the therapist uses the Tango within sessions and over the course of therapy
Discover and distil core emotional experiences
Implement the EFIT Tango to offer transformative moments where vulnerability is encountered with balance
Implement the 5 moves of the EFTI Tango to shape corrective emotional experiences
Pace and structure the EFIT process to move clients into the accessibility/openness, responsiveness and full engagement that characterizes secure attachment with others
Implement the EFT micro-interventions
Choreograph dramas that expand the self and open engagement with others
Integrate corrective emotional experiences into models of self and other
Validate the client’s sense of competence and worth in every session
Move clients into a felt sense of security with self and others – shape a coherent sense of a competent self that can deal with existential life issues and become a fully alive human being

Introducing “EFIT Consultation”

Also known as “Mastering Skills and Overcoming Challenges in EFIT: A Consultation Process”

EFIT Consultation

Advance your practice and improve your client outcomes by taking your EFIT skills to the next level. In this two-part course, you will learn from expert trainers as they show and talk about their therapy sessions: where they get stuck, how they get unstuck, and how the attachment map and EFT Tango provide a beacon in all cases.

Next, you will join with your colleagues as they show their work, and watch as expert trainers help guide the therapy process through feedback, consultation, and role plays specifically aimed at framing clients’ problems through the lens of attachment, mapping the process, maintaining momentum, unblocking barriers to growth, and more!

Participants will discover:
– How to model safety as a surrogate attachment figure to promote relationship security and harness the potency of emotion to transform trauma, quell anxiety, dim the darkness of depression, and more!
– Ways of creating and maintaining a robust therapeutic alliance.
– Methods for tracking and identifying key inner and interpersonal patterns that block growth, connection, and progress in therapy.
– How the EFIT therapist uses key interventions to first validate and then dissolve blocks.
– How to harness the power of attunement, an attachment map, and key EFIT interventions to keep clients at their leading edge of discovery and promote growth within and between sessions.
– A proven set of interventions that you can rely on to move any and all clients away from reactivity and numbing to greater emotional balance, paving the way for increased growth, and growth through connection.
– Greater mastery of the core EFIT interventions, and how to use these skills to effectively move you and your clients out of stuck places and into growth!
– A more nuanced understanding of the core EFIT macro-intervention, the EFIT Tango, and the power of attunement in using the Tango to propel the therapy process forward.
– Key methods and interventions that will lead your clients into secure attachment, the platform for well-being and ongoing growth and connection!
– The confidence and competence to help any type of client, with any presenting problem.

First four hours
Participants will learn from expert trainers as they share and discuss their work. Key points considered include:
– Maintaining a Robust Alliance
– Finding and Keeping Focus in Session
– Identifying Key Inner and Interpersonal Patterns that Block Progress
– Deepening Engagement in the Face of Avoidance and Intellectualization
– Working with Blocks at Leading Edge of Experience
– Assembling, Befriending, and Ordering Emotion
– Maintaining Focus, Depth, and Momentum with Complex Client Presentations
– Shaping Core Identity Dramas with Elements of Self or with Others

Next six hours
Six cases are presented. Expert trainers provide feedback and consultation, and engage in role plays with each other and/or consultees for the purposes of demonstrating the EFIT model as specifically applied to the case discussed and presenting issue(s).

Course Features

These workshops are presented live-online and include:

– Didactic presentations accompanied by recorded EFIT client sessions and experiential exercises.
– An outline of the theory and practice of EFIT, focusing on the primacy of emotion and the creation of a safe haven and secure base alliance.
– An exploration of core models of health and dysfunction from an attachment perspective including how within and between cycles interact and block growth and adaptation.
– A systematic sequence of interventions (called The EFT Tango) as well as numerous micro-interventions.
– Techniques to stay with present processes in session and shape key change events.

CEs & Schedule

EFIT Essentials
24 CE hours are available for this course. Visit our CE Information page for instructions.
This course is 28 hours long (including breaks), and is taught over 4 days. Each day includes: 6 training hours + 40min lunch + two 10min breaks.

EFIT Consultation
10 CE hours are available for the PreRecorded course, 12 CE hours for the live-online course (which includes Q&A). Visit our CE Information page for instructions.
The live-online course is 14 hours long (including breaks), and is taught over 2 days. Each day includes: 6 training hours + 40min lunch + two 10min breaks.

Ready to start learning EFIT?

These live-online or pre-recorded “EFIT” training events are coming up next. Click through to register today!

23 - 26 June

Live-Online

2025 June | EFIT Essentials Sale has ended

View Detail

01 - 31 July

Prerecorded EFIT Consultation: access July 1 until Aug.31

01 - 15 July

Prerecorded EFIT Essentials: access July 1 until Aug.31

12 - 20 September

Live-Online

2025 Sept. | EFIT Essentials

28 - 31 October

Live-Online

2025 Oct. | EFIT Essentials

07 November

Live-Online

2025 Nov. | EFIT for Anxiety

13 November

Live-Online

2025 Nov. | EFIT for Depression

02 - 10 December

Live-Online

2025 Dec. | EFIT Essentials

04 - 05 December

Live-Online

2025 Dec | EFIT Consultation

No event found!

Membership Discount

ICEEFT Courses offers a discounted rate for the first year of ICEEFT Membership to eligible EFIT Essentials graduates. You may learn about the benefits of membership on the ICEEFT Members site.

Instructions

How to get your discounted first year of ICEEFT Membership:
1. If you do not already have a members site login, please do not create one yet.
2. Register for an EFIT Essentials with ICEEFT Courses.
3. Once you complete the course, please submit your Exit Survey as soon as possible. This can be found within the Courses Portal under the “Post Event” section.
4. Please allow a couple days after the event ends for the courses team to verify everyone’s attendance and receipt of exit survey.
5. Look out from an email from ICEEFT Courses with special instructions, then sign up to the ICEEFT Members Site within 30 days of receipt.

“Membership in ICEEFT offers a supportive platform to learn, improve my skills using EFT, connect with different EFT communities around the world, and allows potential clients to find me.”

Aaron Oog, MCounsPrac., MFT

Joining ICEEFT has helped me personally and professionally. I have benefitted from growing my practice, learning more about stuck spots, and even improved my marriage. What a gift.

Dr. Dianna Troutt, LMFT, LPCC

Readings

Required & Recommended

Discounts
Each publisher offers Courses attendees a discount of 15-25% off the following texts. Once you have registered for a course, you may access the relevant discount codes via the Courses Portal.

Required for EFIT Essentials
Recommended for all other EFIT courses

“A Primer for Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT): Cultivating Fitness and Growth in Every Client” by Susan M. Johnson and T. Leanne Campbell, 2022.

Routledge offers this publication in paperback, hardcover or eBook.

More from Dr Sue Johnson about EFIT

2023 ARTICLE: “A therapist’s guide to emotionally focused individual therapy (EFIT)“

Over the lifespan, the need for connection with others shapes our neural architecture, our responses to stress, our everyday emotional lives, and the interpersonal dramas and dilemmas that are at the heart of those lives.
– Dr. Sue Johnson, Attachment Theory in Practice (p. 5), 2019

Keep Me Informed

Learn EFIT: Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy

What is EFIT?

Goals of EFIT

Which modality is right for me?

Features of learning with ICEEFT Courses

Pathway to EFIT Certification

Courses in Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy

Introducing “Fundamentals of EFT”

Introducing EFIT short courses

Approved EFIT short courses offered by ICEEFT Courses

EFIT for Anxiety

Interested in a recorded version of this course?

EFIT for Depression

Interested in a recorded version of this course?

Introducing “EFIT Essentials”

EFIT Essentials

Why EFIT Level 1?

Level 1 Objectives

Why EFIT Level 2?

Level 2 Objectives

Introducing “EFIT Consultation”

EFIT Consultation

More

Course Features

CEs & Schedule

Ready to start learning EFIT?

2025 June | EFIT Essentials Sale has ended

Membership Discount

Instructions

Readings

Required & Recommended

Required for EFIT EssentialsRecommended for all other EFIT courses

Recommended

Recommended

More from Dr Sue Johnson about EFIT

Required for EFIT Essentials
Recommended for all other EFIT courses