Session 1: Assessment/Working with Emotion
Focuses on Steps 1-4, with particular attention to assessment, alliance building, empathic attunement and basic EFT skills, as well as identifying the negative interactive cycle.
Session 2: Cycle De-escalation
Continues with the first stage of EFT with a focus on formulating the cycle, fostering de-escalation, accessing primary emotion and associated skills.
Session 3: Restructuring positions: Withdrawer Engagement
Emphasizes working with primary emotion, teaches associated skills and focuses on withdrawer re-engagement.
Session 4: Restructuring positions: Softening / Consolidation
Continues to focus on working with primary emotion, and places special emphasis on blamer softening. The third stage of EFT (steps 8 and 9) is also addressed.
In 2024 a Standard Core Skills Training was introduced. Standard Core Skills is a reformatting of the Extended Core Skills to comprise a total of 24 hours of training: 12 hours dedicated to Stage One and 12 hours dedicated to Stage Two. The training can be offered online or in person by an ICEEFT-Certified Trainer. Just like the Extended version, Standard Core Skills workshops are considered core training and one of the requirements for certification in Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy. Applicants for certification are required to attend the full 24 hours. Upon completion of the full 24 hours, trainers will issue Standard Core Skills certificates to participants.
Participants are required to present their own work through audio/videotape presentation. Registrants will be required to declare their professional designation.
Please note: While both the Standard (24hr) and Extended (48hr) versions of Core Skills qualify toward ICEEFT Certification, participants must complete one or the other. In other words, participants in an Extended Core Skills may not simply stop after 24 hours and receive a certificate of completion. The pacing of the curriculum for each version of Core Skills is not the same.
Required reading: The Practice of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy: Creating Connection, 3rd edition, by Susan M. Johnson, 2020.
Routledge.Recommended reading:
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. 
