Within the EFT model, the clinical focus is directed towards attachment significance and associated emotional experiences. Therapists and clients together live and work in a larger social and cultural environment that can also engender significant stress. EFT as a clinical model has been constructed on the foundation of both attachment and emotional science.

A new era of integrating cultural matters has been emerging adjacent to, but outside of, major models of therapy. This clinical focus has been towards interventions that break the negative legacies of race and promote cultural thriving. Stress emerging from the boarder environment has been typically

treated as content or contextual matters, but not a central focus of EFT therapists. This workshop suggests that internalized stress and cultural alienation for some should be an essential focus of EFT work when it is experienced by individuals, couples, and families.

This training will advance everyone’s EFT training as stress and culture are integrated into the heart of the EFT process. In this regard, processing stress and multicultural clinical dynamics are a life-long process.

In Dr. Paul Guillory’s book Emotionally Focused Therapy with African American Couples: Love Heals, he suggests that therapists work most effectively with Couples of Color when they have a conceptual model for cultural matters, including stress, racial identity, race-based events, and racial trauma. Integrating these concepts into the clinical work promote both individual wellness and the love bond with persons of color. Case studies, vignettes, and video clips of clinical interventions illustrate the work with breakout groups to practice specific clinical interventions.