Podcast Feature! Listen to Dr. Abrams talk with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, psychologist & owner of Therapy for Black Girls, about how she uses Emotionally Focused Therapy with her couples to bring their love back to life: 

Get Unstuck.

Relationships--healthy, fulfilling and supportive relationships--are at the core of optimal functioning. Relationships require risk, vulnerability and attachment in order to form secure bonds and exist together across a lifetime.  Every relationship, even the healthiest ones, experiences change, challenge, & conflict.  When couples are in crisis, it can feel extremely difficult, even impossible, to reach to your partner to see each other through these difficult times.

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), developed in the 1980’s, is a structured approach to couples therapy that focuses on attachment and bonding to help couples understand their relationships better.  This strengths-based technique is collaborative and helps to replace negative cycles that couples often fall into, with more emotionally safe and effective techniques use to better connect with each other. This treatment style is respectful, warm and a proven method of helping couples resolve conflict and build closer, deeper and stronger relationships. Research studies find that 70-75% of couples move from distress to recovery and approximately 90% show significant improvements after working with EFT trained therapists.

Couples Therapy Specialities:

• Dating, Pre-Marital & Marital Counseling

• Feeling Emotionally Disconnected or Distant

• Poor Communication

• Infidelity

• Gentle Separation or Uncoupling

• Frequent & Hostile Conflict

• Transition to Parenting

• Grief & Loss

• In-law Adjustment or Conflict

• Sexual Desire Discrepancy

Dr. Abrams uses a 4-session assessment model (1 joint, 2 individual, 1 joint for feedback) to get a full picture of a couple’s history, individual experiences and characteristics that influence how partners connect with each other in love. Success in this model does more than heal the relationship; research shows that EFT helps individuals transform their own sense of self towards a healthier connection with others.  

Dr. Abrams is currently completing intensive training in Emotion Focused Therapy for Couples at the Atlanta Center for EFT, under the supervision of Michael Barnett, LPC. For more information on EFT, visit the International Centre of Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy.