I want to share some reflections on Emotion Focused Therapy for Youth (EFT-Y). This approach holds a special place in my heart, not just as a therapist, but also as someone who deeply believes in the adaptability and growth potential of young people. Discovering the EFT for Youth model brought me back to working with teenagers after a long break.
When I came across the EFT model for Youth and Caregivers, I felt like I had finally come home. I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to Dr. Mirisse Foroughe for her knowledge, wisdom, and heart in developing this approach. Previous therapy models often focused on the child, overlooking the parent’s experience. Today, I know that treating a teenager means treating the parent too. The child needs their parent, and the parent needs our support. We as therapists need to see the child within the parent and support them, so that they can see and support their own child.
Anxious Attachment: Is It Really All Bad?
Anxious attachment strategies are often seen as something to be fixed. However, in EFT for Youth, we view attachment strategies as adaptive responses to a child’s environment. They aren’t fixed traits or signs that something is broken. Rather, they reflect a child’s deep wisdom in trying to meet their needs, find safety, and manage emotions within their relational context.
Our job as therapists isn’t to change the child, but to help them build an environment—both internal and external—where they can feel safe. We want their emotional needs to be validated and respected so that they can grow with the confidence that they deserve. In EFT for Youth and Caregivers, this means working actively to transform the child’s emotional pain caused by unmet needs, all while focusing on how to involve caregivers in a way that supports the child in developing secure attachment strategies.
Two Paths of Support in EFT for Youth
In EFT for Youth and Caregivers, we recognize two interconnected paths of therapeutic work.
- Corrective Emotional Experience Within
The first path is corrective emotional experience within the adolescent’s emotional world. This involves reversing the effects of chronic unmet needs. These needs include:
- Being seen, appreciated, and accepted for who they are. Without this, shame may arise
- Being emotionally understood, received, and supported in their feelings. When these needs go unmet, a sense of lonely abandonment often takes root.
- Feeling protected and supported, to exist in a safe environment. When this is missing, chronic anxiety, distress, or even trauma-related fear may emerge.
To help a teenager process the resulting emotional pain we use deep attunement, active empathic interventions, and non-verbal emotional expression. One key tool is the “empty chair” technique which engages different areas of the brain—both those responsible for emotional processing and those linked to expressing emotions through the body.
- Corrective Emotional Experience in Parent-Teen Interaction
The second path is the corrective emotional experience in parent-teen interaction. EFT for Youth provides therapists with flexibility in involving parents in their teenager’s therapy, while also offering the tools and guidance to work with parents and teenagers effectively. In practice, this can take many forms:
- Parallel sessions: working separately with both the parent and the teenager toward the same goal.
- Joint sessions: focusing on emotions directly in the parent-child relationship.
- Time dedicated to shared meetings: where each side works with the therapist towards the same goal but in a way tailored to their needs and capacity.
By working this way, we also help parents move from looking for an “instruction manual” for their children to providing them with a compass and a map so they can understand their child’s signals and needs.
Children in therapy often express their needs and receive support quicker than parents can take in and respond to those emotions. Until we, as therapists, can see the child within the parent and support them, that parent may not be able to truly see and support their own child.
EFT-Y isn’t about universal solutions—it’s about developing the ability to recognize emotional signals and respond to them flexibly—navigating through emotions.
The Healing through Feeling — The Most Beautiful Aspect of EFT for Youth
When parents start seeing the effects of their adaptive responses and learn what works for their child, the child begins revealing their needs more clearly, and the relationship becomes a dynamic process of mutual understanding.
Working with parents often also means addressing their own emotional blocks—those that prevent them from responding in more supportive, secure ways. EFT for Youth and Caregivers is about being with family members in a way that is authentic, full of appreciation, warmth, and understanding—based on a deep belief that every child, when their emotional needs are noticed, can grow and find their best path forward.
