MARITAL THERAPY

Dr. Jay Lindsay uses marital therapy if your marriage is in crisis or chronic discord.

In his marital therapy, Dr. Lindsay primarily uses Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFT), a powerful cutting-edge approach thought by many marriage experts to be the most effective form of relationship treatment available today.

Dr. Lindsay is the only marital therapist in Colorado who is fully trained and certified in EFT. He has had extensive training with Dr. Susan Johnson, the master of EFT and one of the originators of the approach.

Here are some facts about Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy:

• EFT marital therapy has been proven by research studies to bring recovery to 70 – 73 % of distressed couples and significant improvement to 90%, with a very low relapse rate
  
  
• EFT marital therapy has been proven to work better than the widely-used Behavioral Couple Therapy (Communication Skills Training), which produces recovery in only 35% of distressed couples and has a high relapse rate
  
  
• more than 20 years of process and outcome studies, show EFT marital therapy to be a cost-effective approach
  
  
• EFT marital therapy is a short-term, cost-effective approach that usually succeeds in just 8 to 20 sessions
  
  
• the American Psychological Association recognizes EFT marital therapy as being empirically validated
  
  
• using an eight-step research-based approach, EFT marital therapy helps spouses heal from the wounds of betrayals such as extramarital affairs

• EFT marital therapy has been shown to work especially well with men who tend to withdraw and have trouble expressing emotion



• it has been demonstrated to be effective with relationships in which one partner has depression, an anxiety disorder such as PTSD, trauma from childhood sexual abuse, low sexual desire, or a chronic medical illness



• EFT marital therapy is based on attachment theory, which offers the therapist a reliable map to the terrain of adult love relationships



• it fits with recent research on the nature of marital distress and satisfaction in the developing science of intimate relationships



• EFT marital therapy arose from systematic observation of couples in therapy and the process by which they succeeded in repairing their relationships



• EFT research has identified the key change events that must occur in successful couple therapy and specific interventions for orchestrating these

Here’s how Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy works:

EFT marital therapy uses emotions as leverage to help couples shift out of negative interaction patterns and into positive ones. It helps couples repair their broken bond and deepen their emotional connectedness.

Usually by the time a couple comes to marital therapy, their relationship has deteriorated. The partners have lost their closeness and both are feeling angry, misunderstood, distressed, and alone.

Conflict and/or alienation have taken over the relationship, maintained by negative interaction patterns.
These patterns usually include at least one destructive cycle in which each partner has unwittingly been
cueing the problematic behavior in the other.

For example, one partner has been negatively pursuing the other: demanding, criticizing, blaming, or attacking. The other partner has been reacting by becoming increasingly withdrawn. 

The more the first partner has negatively pursued, the more the second has withdrawn, and vice versa.  It has become a vicious cycle in which each partner, without realizing it, has been fueling the other. 

Here’s how Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy works to get a couple close again:

1. EFT marital therapy helps the couple de-escalate their destructive cycle
   
   
2. It then helps the partners access, explore and express the underlying emotions that are driving their cycle.
   
   
3. This frees the couple to shift out of their cycle. The withdrawer engages and the negative pursuer softens.
   
   
4. EFT marital therapy then helps the couple to replace their negative interaction patterns with positive ones
   
   
5. Both partners become able to state their needs in ways that elicit responsiveness.
   
   
6. This helps the partners reconnect emotionally and become close again.
   
   
7. EFT marital therapy then helps the couple consolidate their gains so that their improvements last.

By the end of EFT the couple has developed a deeply satisfying love relationship.  To borrow a maritime metaphor, for both partners the relationship has become like a seaport that is a secure base and a safe haven. 

It is a secure base from which they can confidently set sail each day into uncharted waters.  It is a safe haven to which they can retreat from unexpected storms, find shelter, and drop their sails.

The couple has gotten their loving feelings back!

Approaches that Dr. Lindsay uses in addition to EFT marital therapy include scientifically-based, solution-focused, integrative, collaborative, narrative, strategic, structural, and psychodynamic couple therapy.