Deliberate Practice in Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy

Deliberate practice exercises provide trainees and students an opportunity to build competence in essential emotionally focused couple therapy (EFCT) skills while developing their own personal therapeutic style.

 

These exercises present role-playing scenarios in which two trainees act as a client and a clinician, switching back and forth under the guidance of a supervisor. The clinician improvises appropriate and authentic responses to client statements organized into three difficulty levels—beginner, intermediate, and advanced—that reflect common client questions and concerns.

 

Each of the first 12 exercises focuses on a single skill, such as offering evocative inquiries and reflections, deepening the client’s emotional experience of self and other, and choreographing interactions that promote positive emotional engagement. Two comprehensive exercises follow in which trainees integrate these essential skills into a single session.

 

Step-by-step instructions guide participants through the exercises, identify criteria for mastering each skill, and explain how to monitor and adjust difficulty. Guidelines to help trainers and trainees get the most out of training are also provided.

To demonstrate how deliberate practice can be fully integrated into a professional curriculum, this series features exercises developed and refined within the clinical training curriculum at the Sentio online/hybrid marriage and family therapy (MFT) therapist training program in California, which is where we started developing this series. These exercises, which have been tested at clinical training sites around the world, are used to enhance clinical outcomes within the first hybrid MFT program approved by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences to fully integrate deliberate practice into its entire curriculum. By integrating these models into its hybrid MFT program in California, Sentio University demonstrates that therapist training graduate programs can use deliberate practice to bridge the gap between theory and clinical mastery through repetitive, feedback-informed practice to support the development of modern, outcome-focused clinicians.
 

Hanna Levenson, PhD, is professor emerita at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California. She also maintains a private practice in Oakland where she sees individuals and couples for therapy and professionals for consultation/supervision. Dr. Levenson has specialized in brief dynamic therapy and supervision for over 40 years. She has authored over 85 professional papers and multiple books, including Deliberate Practice in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy and Deliberate Practice in Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy, and has released five professional videos with APA illustrating her approaches. Dr. Levenson received the Distinguished Contribution to Psychology as a Profession Award given by the California Psychological Association.
 
Sam Jinich, PhD, is a certified trainer in emotionally focused couples therapy (EFCT). He specializes in clinical practice with couples from diverse backgrounds. He is founder and director of the San Francisco Center for Emotionally Focused Therapy and cofounder of EFT Academia in Argentina. As a bilingual and bicultural trainer, Dr. Jinich has been responsible for establishing EFCT in Mexico, Argentina, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama, Brazil, Chile, and Spain through mentoring and supervising practitioners, supervisors, and trainers. He was involved in the first-ever multinational randomized clinical-trial research study in Spanish on the effectiveness of general couples therapy and EFCT.
 
Alexandre Vaz, PhD, is cofounder and chief academic officer of Sentio University. He provides deliberate practice workshops and clinical training and supervision around the world. Dr. Vaz is the author/coeditor of four books on deliberate practice and psychotherapy training and two book series: The Essentials of Deliberate Practice (APA Books) and Advanced Therapeutics, Clinical and Interpersonal Skills (Elsevier). He has held multiple committee roles for the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration (SEPI) and the Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR). Dr. Vaz is founder and host of “Psychotherapy Expert Talks,” an acclaimed interview series with distinguished psychotherapists and researchers.
 
Tony Rousmaniere, PsyD, is cofounder and program director of Sentio University. He provides workshops, webinars, and clinical training and supervision around the world. He is the author/coeditor of six books on deliberate practice and psychotherapy training and two book series: The Essentials of Deliberate Practice (APA Books) and Advanced Therapeutics, Clinical and Interpersonal Skills (Elsevier). In 2017, he published the widely cited article in The Atlantic Monthly, “What Your Therapist Doesn’t Know.” Dr. Rousmaniere supports the open-data movement and publishes clinical outcome data at drtonyr.com. He was awarded the Early Career Award by the Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy.

Series Preface
Tony Rousmaniere and Alexandre Vaz
Acknowledgments
Part I. Overview and Instructions
Chapter 1. Introduction and Overview of Deliberate Practice and Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy
Chapter 2. Instructions for the Deliberate Practice Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy Exercises
Part II. Deliberate Practice Exercises for Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy Skills
Exercises for Beginner Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy Skills
Exercise 1. Evocative Inquiry
Exercise 2. Evocative Reflection
Exercise 3. Validation and Tracking
Exercise 4. Attachment-Reframed Validation
Exercise 5. Deepening Emotions with RISSSSC
Exercises for Intermediate Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy Skills
Exercise 6. Tracking Inner Experience
Exercise 7. Providing a Rationale
Exercises for Advanced Emotionally Focused Couple TherapySkills
Exercise 8. Gathering and Assembling the Elements of Emotion
Exercise 9. Deepening and Setting Up Enactments
Exercise 10. Slicing the Risk Thinner
Exercise 11. Catching a Bullet Early in Therapy
Exercise 12. Catching a Bullet Later in Therapy
Comprehensive Exercises
Exercise 13. Annotated Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy Practice Session Transcript
Exercise 14. Mock Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy Sessions
Part III. Strategies for Enhancing the Deliberate Practice Exercises
Chapter 3. How to Get the Most Out of Deliberate Practice: Additional Guidance for Trainers and Trainees
Appendix A. Difficulty Assessments and Adjustments
Appendix B. Deliberate Practice Diary Form
Appendix C. Sample Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy Syllabus With Embedded Deliberate Practice Exercises
References
Index
About the Authors

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