Learn EFIT: Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy

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 EFIT 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.

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.

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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!

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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”

Explore the enriching journey of an EFIT Essentials course, the introductory 24-hour training in Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT). This training provides a solid foundation and an advanced understanding of the EFIT model, embedded within an attachment science framework. Through a blend of theoretical instruction and experiential exercises, participants will be guided to apply the model with individuals in their practice, fostering their growth as adept, attuned, and responsive EFIT therapists. The training will delve into the heart of the empirically-validated EFIT model, presenting a coherent framework for understanding individual emotional processing and change.

This consolidated program is an amalgamation of our previous Level 1 and Level 2 trainings, now offered as a seamless, intensive learning experience.

Prerequisites: none. EFIT Essentials is a 4-day course, equivalent to taking both EFIT Level 1 and EFIT Level 2. The Levels courses were replaced with Essentials in 2024.

Learning Objectives

Participants will learn to:

• Describe the key elements of the attachment perspective on personality and its significance for clinical intervention
• Set out clients within and between cycles and how they create each other and link to presenting problems that manifest as emotional disorders
• Describe the core components of emotional disorders – depression and anxiety
• Outline the process of change and the elements of the EFT Tango to shape corrective emotional experience, such as affect assembly and deepening
• Describe the micro-interventions used by the EFT therapist
• Outline the applicability of EFIT for different clients with different symptomatology.
• Adopt an attachment humanistic perspective on clients, problems and interventions
• Discover and distill core emotional experiences and promote emotional balance
• Outline protective, self-defining and interactional iatrogenic patterns
• Implement the 5 moves of the EFT Tango to shape corrective emotional experience and 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.

Introducing “EFIT Consultation”

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

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!

Learning Objectives

You’ll 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.

Ready to start learning EFIT?

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

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.

Recommended

“Attachment Theory in Practice: Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) with Individuals, Couples, and Families” by Dr. Susan M. Johnson, 2019.

Guilford Press offers this publication in hardcover or eBook.

Recommended

“Becoming an Emotionally Focused Therapist: The Workbook (2nd Edition)” by James L. Furrow, Susan M. Johnson, Brent Bradley, Lorrie L. Brubacher, T. Leanne Campbell, Veronica Kallos-Lilly, Gail Palmer, Kathryn Rheem, Scott R. Woolley, 2022.

Routledge offers this publication in paperback, hardcover or eBook.

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

More from Dr Sue Johnson about EFIT

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