ABSTRACT
CBT has few techniques for overcoming the avoidance of emotional processing. Emotion-focused therapy (EFT; Greenberg, 2004) – formerly known as process-experiential therapy (Greenberg, Rice, & Elliott, 1993) – originates from humanistic and experiential schools of psychotherapy. EFT views emotion as fundamental to adaptive functioning and therefore seeks to improve how individuals process their feelings. Preliminary research suggests that emotion-focused chairwork can be successfully integrated into CBT (e.g. Newman et al., 2011) and is an effective way to enhance emotional processing. This chapter provides a brief introduction to EFT and describes two iconic emotion-focused techniques which can be used to augment CBT: two-chair procedures for overcoming emotional inhibition (‘self-interruptive splits’), and empty-chair procedures for resolving lingering feelings towards significant others (‘unfinished business’).
