ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the first stage of EFIT, Stabilization. Central to the Stage 1 process at the outset is an understanding of how clients’ processes of emotion regulation prime and maintain their symptoms and how these recurring patterns shape their inner emotional worlds and prototypical patterns of engagement with others. As clients become more balanced emotionally, that is, less reactive or prone to numbing, they are likely to exhibit fewer of the symptoms that brought them to therapy, and to be more accepting of and able to reflect upon their emotions, especially fears, vulnerabilities, and longings. With increased capacity to be discovery-oriented and open about their inner experience and interpersonal encounters, previously reflexive and habitual strategies of emotion regulation give way to increased flexibility and adaptation, and models of self and other similarly become less rigid.
