Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy Grief n’ Loss
October 10th , 2026
Simultaneous translation into Greek.
Experiential training seminar, open to therapists EFCT/ EFIT/ EFFT
Course Description
Grief and loss are at the core of attachment theory. Grief is a natural, organic moving process that can become stuck. Experiences of loss can be destabilizing and leave individuals disconnected and emotionally stuck. This one-day training examines how Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT) helps clients move through the organic process of grief to resilience and connection. Using EFIT’s attachment-based model, you will learn to conceptualize the impacts of loss and the growth process from an attachment perspective, and you will increase your confidence and competence to work with grief and loss with EFIT. This training is designed to enhance your therapeutic effectiveness, expand your EFIT skill set, and support your professional development. Completion counts toward EFIT certification with ICEEFT.
Attachment is at the core of understanding the impacts of trauma and loss. Attachment provides the map for growth, resilience, and secure connections that are achieved with EFIT.
Lorrie Brubacher
MEd, LMFT, Certified EFT Trainer/Supervisor and Therapist
Learning Objectives
Following the training, participants will be able to:
- Conceptualize different types of grief and loss from an attachment-oriented, EFT perspective
- Identify the goals and stages of the EFIT model as they apply to working with grief and loss.
- Describe how to utilize attachment science as a moment-to-moment guide to shape systematic change with clients experiencing grief and loss.
- Define the moves of the EFT Tango (macro-interventions).
- Describe your attunement to the client’s experience and construct empathic reflections and other EFT micro-skills from your attunement.
- Operationalize the Moves of the EFT Tango in work with griefand loss.
Apply core EFT micro-interventions to work with grief and loss.
Conceptualization of Grief
A Normative, Organic ProcessTypes of Loss
Agenda
Introduction
The Attachment Perspective of Grief and and the impact ofLoss Loss
The Attachment Behavioral System: Prototypical Response to Loss
Grief Trajectories and the Key Role of Resilience
A Normative, Organic Process
Types of Loss
Stage 1
Stabilization
A Secure Base, Safe Haven Alliance
Attachment-Based Experiential Assessment
Working at the “Leading Edge” (within the Window of Tolerance)
Stage 2 Restructuring/Reorganizing Attachment
Stage 3
Consolidation of New Patterns, Positions, Bonds, Resilience
Tango Moves 1& 2
- Tracking, mirroring, and reflecting present process, with moment-to-moment attunement and staying close to client’s experience.
- Validating as psychoeducation
- Tracking intra- and interpersonal patterns as valid survival strategies that could be keeping clients stuck
- Slowing the process and assembling emotion – linking triggers, perception, action tendencies, bodily responses and meaning making.
- Deepening coherently assembled experience.
Tango Moves 3-5
- Shaping, processing, and integrating relational experiences to promote stabilization in Stage 1
The EFT Tango in Stage 2 EFIT with Grief and Loss
Deepening emotion to access core emotion, fears, longings, and needs, and internal working models (IWM) of self and others.
Revisiting key pivotal interpersonal events central to the loss and grief process.
Choreographing corrective experiences at levels 4 and above (EXP scale, Klein et al, 1986)
Shaping interpersonal encounters to promote restructuring/reorganization of attachment and secure attachment bonds in the face of loss.
Deepening emotion to access core emotion, fears, longings, and needs, and internal working models (IWM) of self and others.
Revisiting key pivotal interpersonal events central to the loss and grief process.
Choreographing corrective experiences at levels 4 and above (EXP scale, Klein et al, 1986)
Shaping interpersonal encounters to promote restructuring/reorganization of attachment and secure attachment bonds in the face of loss.
Consolidating new patterns and positions.
Assembling and deepening positive affect.
Envisioning resilience and emotional balance in the face of potential distressing cues.
Predicting generalization of gains to life and love outside of therapy.
The Person of the EFIT Therapist Working with Grief and Loss
