The Dance: A Way of Being

Recently, I finished a course in the program I'm taking to become a certified Emotionally Focused Individual Therapist. It was an intensive two days, all day event live by Zoom, with 72 participants from all around the world. 

During that course, we got to see an entire session of EFIT (Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy). That's when I had a "light bulb moment". I saw someone practicing EFIT from start to finish, in various phases of the method, with a real client who was brave enough to let their vulnerability be seen by those in training (in being recorded). 

Over the last couple of years, as I learn more and more, I have been incorporating elements of EFIT into my practice - with clients' permission of course - but only using the individual techniques (which work) with them. Here, finally, I saw that EFIT (as in all Emotionally Focused Therapy: with couples, families, and individuals) is a way of being with clients, of walking alongside them on their journey, something that resonates strongly with me. 

Image from Pixabay

Instead of techniques, I saw a dance, a thoroughly responsive and meaningful co-existence where the therapist led the client, but responded to their cues as well. It was beautiful - so incredibly touching and healing. The results were unmistakably demonstrated in that session. 

It inspired me. I began to see that as effective as using the individual techniques in my practice has been, dancing the dance from start to finish would be even more so. And it gave me a vision for the way it could look in my own practice with clients. For the first time perhaps, I began to picture myself as an EFIT therapist. 

Of course, that doesn't mean that I lose or discard all the other tools in my toolbox. I can still do the other types of therapy that clients might need: Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Narrative, Solution-Focused, and Cognitive Processing along with techniques from Mindfulness and of course, Person-Centred Therapy. The saying goes, "If all you have in your toolbox is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." I'm not that naive. Human beings are gloriously different from each other, and what works for one might not work for another. 

The process of learning about and experiencing a new way of being with a client is, nevertheless, exciting and inspiring. And I just wanted to share that with my readers... 

And I'm looking forward to the dance.  

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