JG Gillis Counselling

  About three years ago, a lady walked into my office and she was suffering from one of the worst cases of anxiety and depression I had seen. She was almost always in tears. I won't give her real name or her age, but let's call her Sarah.  Sarah grew up in a relatively (at least on the surface) normal family, but she felt like she was invisible growing up. She felt like she had to pour oil on troubled waters so everyone would get along. She felt like she had to be perfect and she panicked when she couldn't be. She was extremely despondent and had even considered suicide a couple of times in her life. As she sat with me telling me her present story - an infidelity in her relationship with her (now) husband - she cried. And she cried.  I started talking about looking after herself. What did she do to have fun? What activities made her feel good?  She couldn't think of any that she was practicing at the time - and said she "should" do it but couldn't stick wi...

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 jour...