Emotionally Focused

Lisa Popelka

Licensed Professional Counselor

This is an experiential therapy. We stay present to your inner experience, exploring your thoughts, behaviors, and feelings, as they surface in the room. As your emotional awareness increases, we are able to identify your unmet needs and old patterns that have kept you stuck. Our work focuses on transforming those patterns, which frees you to make choices to lead you to a fulfilling life.

Darin Bergen (he/him)

Clinical Psychologist

PsyD

My Emotion-Focused Therapy (for individuals) training has roots in the beginning of graduate school and it helps with the processing of emotional problems and healing old wounds. EFT has a strong basis in the science of emotion and therapeutic change. I have completed the Level 1 and Level 2 Emotion-Focused Therapy training with Les Greenberg.

Benita Munson

Licensed Professional Counselor

LPC, CRC, CADC I

I am trained in Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples through Edwards Psychotherapy in Portland. In EFT I will teach you how to access your primary emotions (IE sadness, fear) that are underlying secondary defensive reactions (resentment, jealousy). Once a person can communicate their primary emotion to a partner, it helps to increase connection and attachment. We will also do enactments in session which heighten emotion and also build connection and attachment.

Stacey Vallas

Licensed Professional Counselor Intern

Emotions can illuminate our genuine needs and guide us in fulfilling them. But when our feelings aren't recognized and valued, we learn to respond to life with patterns of emotion that undermine our well being and even mask what we authentically feel. I will support your experiencing and working through of your own emotional patterns to gain clarity about your authentic feelings and needs.

Varsha Ruparel MS,CMHC,NCC

Licensed Professional Counselor Intern

EFT emphasizes creating and strengthening emotional bonds between family members or partners. I have successfully helped individuals identify adaptive and maladaptive relational patterns and develop more open, attuned, responsive, and loving relationships. I like this approach because it helps in addressing the underlying relational disturbance between people suffering from dysregulation.

Alana R. Ogilvie (she/her)

Licensed Marriage Family Therapist

LMFT, CST

Using an integrated EFT approach I help couples and individuals identify their primary emotions, work through maladaptive responses, and develop empathy and compassion for themselves and others.

Paula Emerick (she/her)

Licensed Marriage Family Therapist

LMFT

It's not as fluffy as it sounds. I believe in it. It works. But it goes deep. In a nutshell - integrating emotional understanding with intellectual meaning and attending to the body while creating a trusting relationship with me working from the foundation of attachment. Wow. That's quite a sentence, Paula! Or just google it. ;)

Mary Bruce-Owenby (she/her)

Licensed Marriage Family Therapist

LGBTQIA-affirmative couples therapist

I have studied EFT in my training programs and use this approach in conjunction with others when working with couples. EFT's tools of engagement and attunement help us to first identify and deescalate negative patterns that have kept the couple isolated from one another, and then restructure and rebuild the trust, strengthening the emotional bond and renewing connection.

Michael Wilson, MA

Licensed Professional Counselor

I view my therapy through an attachment lens. Attachment lays the groundwork for how we will interpret and process the world around us. Utilizing EFT I examine my clients attachment style, identify mismanaged emotions, and develop healthier strategies of coping with negative emotional experiences.

Kelly Arthur, LPC, CADC I

Licensed Professional Counselor

Emotionally Focused Therapy has been my primary modality in working with couples since 2015. I find it a most beneficial therapeutic modality because it enables me to help couples get right down to the root of what's happening in problematic interactions. Using EFT helps me help couples much more quickly because we work with the shared human experience of emotions rather than staying in the story.

Jenna Washburn (she / her)

Licensed Professional Counselor Intern

MA: Mental Health Counseling - Specialization in Addictions

While I also use CBT often, I always pair it with Emotionally Focused Therapy because it allows a more well-rounded approach and links together the cognitive with the emotional spheres of a client's experience.

Christine Artmann

Licensed Professional Counselor

LPC, CADC III

EFT helps individuals ad couples recognize and understand the negative cycle that interferes with their communication efficacy. Using an integrated EFT approach, I help couples and individuals identify their primary emotions, work through maladaptive responses, and develop empathy and compassion for themselves and others.

Greg Arbo, PsyD, RYT

Clinical Psychologist Resident

I integrate EFT to help individuals/couples gain insight into what drives styles of responding by focusing on your experience of emotions. By expanding emotional awareness, you may better understand yourself/your partner; you may form deeper and more secure connections in mind, body, relationships, and lifestyle. EFT is effective and is an evidenced-based approach to individual/couples therapy.

Robin Magdahlen

Licensed Professional Counselor

LPC RDT

Emotionally focused therapy proposes that emotions themselves have an innately adaptive potential that, if activated, can help clients change problematic emotional states or unwanted self-experiences. Emotions themselves do not inhibit the therapeutic process, however learning better coping strategies enables clients to move through old behaviors and patterns into a state of increased well being.

C.J. Sanders

Marriage Family Therapist Intern

I am an EFT-informed couples therapist. This means that I prioritize your emotional way of relating to one another. This helps us get to deeper issues beyond what is on the surface level. We will unlock stalemates, break negative communication cycles and improve bonding, communication and intimacy.

Kelle DeBruin (she/her)

Marriage Family Therapist Intern

As humans our natural state is for companionship, intimacy, and support as we journey through challenges and joys in life. Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) works to understand needs of attachment and builds emotional bonds between couples and families.

Chris Lehman

Licensed Professional Counselor Intern

I studied and practiced emotionally focused therapy at Portland State University. In my experience I find this approach to be an effective way for a client to change and grow through an authentic relationship with their therapist.

Portland Counseling & Anxiety Specialist

Licensed Professional Counselor

Mark Burton, Psy.D.

Clinical Psychologist

Emotionally-focused therapy (EFT) enhances a couples’ capacity for insight into motivations, expression of emotions and development of a close and secure attachment. It is one of several approaches to couples therapy that has been found highly effective in treatment outcome studies. I’ve received advanced EFT training from Les Greenberg, the founder of this approach.

Erin Axelrod, MA

Licensed Professional Counselor Intern

Honoring emotion is a continuous thread throughout our work together. As recent research demonstrates: we are not thinking beings who sometimes feel, but rather feeling beings who sometimes think. We will explore how to safely notice, express, and move emotions in service of individual and collective healing.

Tever Nickerson

Licensed Professional Counselor

LPC

I have done extensive training in emotionally-focused therapy for both individuals and couples. I believe EFT work gets to the heart of people's pain by examining how maladaptive emotions get in the way of our health and happiness. EFT allows us to work on shifting less helpful feelings and responses to allow room for more adaptive emotions.

Amanda Fitzpatrick (She/her/hers)

Marriage Family Therapist Intern

I have additional training specifically in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy and attachment theory. I believe engaging in the emotional climate of a couple is where change happens.

Sarah Small

Licensed Professional Counselor Intern

MA

Emotions are temporary physical sensations that allow our body to communicate with us. There is no such thing as a 'bad' emotion, but there are plenty that are highly uncomfortable or difficult to manage. Emotions have the power to help us change, heal, and grow. I work with individuals to accurately identify their emotions and understand how to regulate them productively and meaningfully.

Lauren Saville

Licensed Professional Counselor

C5949

Kristen Genzano (she/her)

Licensed Professional Counselor

MA, LPC, NCC

I am trained in Emotionally Focused Therapy and use this orientation to inform my work with individuals and couples. Emotions are central to the human experience. By being aware of and expressing our emotions we can more deeply understand ourselves. Deeper self-understanding gives way for more authentic self-expression.

JESSICA VAN DER MERWE (She/Her)

Licensed Professional Counselor Intern

LMHCA, LPC Intern

EFT focuses on individual emotional states (or lack thereof) as the “barometer” for the one's most important and unresolved issues. According to this form of therapy, emotions are adaptive but can become problematic. EFT works to identify core emotions and beliefs, and transform them to resolve conflict.

Brittany Boney, LMFT

Licensed Marriage Family Therapist

Emotions are often assigned a negative reputation, but they hold innate power to help us change and grow. I work with individuals and couples to help them identify and better regulate their emotions. With couples, this work includes identifying the patterns which serve as barriers to connection.

Priscilla Gilbert

Highlighting the emotions and attachment relationships that impact our well-being and stress

Henry Cameron

Licensed Professional Counselor

I have taken courses taught by Sue Johnson, founder of EFT

Marena Passarelli (She/Her/Hers)

Licensed Professional Counselor

MA, LPC, LMHC

I believe that all emotions serve a purpose or function. I work to help clients identify, regulate, and express their emotions in more effective ways.

Hayden Collier

Licensed Professional Counselor

LPC, CADC-I

Heather Simpson (she/her)

Marriage Family Therapist Intern

MA LMFT Intern

Nicole Kammerlocher (she/her/hers)

Licensed Professional Counselor Intern

Emotionally Focused Therapy is based in attachment theory and focuses on recognizing how we experience our emotions, what we do with them, and how we can connect more effectively and fully with our partners.

Margot Standeven (she/her/hers)

Licensed Marriage Family Therapist

Masters in Marriage, Couple, & Family Counseling

EFT helps couples recognize and understand the negative cycle that interferes with their communication. With this awareness, less time and energy is spent on regulating negative emotions and protecting individual vulnerabilities. Instead, the partners can turn to each other for comfort and support so as to be resilient and meet life’s challenges

Alicia Turgesen (She/Her)

Marriage Family Therapist Intern

MA

Emotionally Focused therapy is centered in attachment. As people, we all crave and deserve secure attachments and relationships. In therapy, we work to rebuild those secure bonds.

Fayanna Johnson

Licensed Clinical Social Worker

MSW, LCSW

Gillian Sleeman

Licensed Marriage Family Therapist

Emotions hold an incredible power over our lives and relationships and this can be destructive or productive. I utilize Emotionally Focused therapeutic approaches in order to help individuals and couples experience emotions as positive and motivating. Therapy is an important place to better understand and manage our emotions.

Gayle Waitches

Licensed Professional Counselor Intern

Emotion Focused Therapy suggests that our emotional inner life can be our most valuable guide rather than felt as mere states of being. As we allow ourselves to more deeply experience our emotional climate, we can become more intentional, aware and discerning with our life choices.

Catherine Palmer; MS, LPC, MFT (She/her)

Licensed Professional Counselor

Julie Finnell

Licensed Professional Counselor Intern

I have completed EFT Externship with Sue Johnson, the creator of the EFT approach for couples therapy.

Ayala Parker (she/they)

Marriage Family Therapist Intern

LMFT-I

Leslie Jones

Licensed Professional Counselor

I have formal training in Emotionally-Focused Therapy, applied specifically to the work I do with couples. This modality has enhanced my ability to help clients see the foundational causes of the emotion that comes to the surface; the root cause is able to be addressed and remedied. I have been able to apply this theory to all of the clinical work I do.

Cayla Panitz (she/her)

Licensed Professional Counselor

LPC

I utilize Emotion Focused Family Therapy to support caregivers who are facilitating mental health recovery of their loved ones.

Miranda Bayard-Clark, LPC (she/her)

Licensed Professional Counselor

Attachment is one of the key drives all humans need. We learn attachment from our primary caregivers, which is translated to our intimate partners. When we feel emotionally secure and attached, we feel good and safe. When our emotional connections are not validated, we feel threatened. I work with couples understand each other on a primary level, and create strong, secure attachments.

Yshai Boussi

Licensed Professional Counselor

I've been to trainings with the founder of EFT, Susan Johnson, and a lot of my work with couples is informed by this model.

Stacey Johnson, LPC

Licensed Professional Counselor

I trained in Emotion Focused Therapy for Individuals with Edwards Psychotherapy.

Sonia Holdaway

Licensed Professional Counselor Intern

My approach to counseling is grounded primarily in Emotion-Focused therapy, which encourages exploring and experiencing your emotions in the therapy room in order to help you connect with, and better articulate, your deeper needs. I love supporting my clients in this challenging and meaningful work.

Lindsay Anderson

Licensed Professional Counselor Intern

M.A., NCC, LPC-intern, MHCA

When we suppress or numb our emotions we don't get to pick and choose the ones we want to feel, they all get suppressed. Emotions are information and they are often trying to tell us important things. Recognizing and sitting with our emotions is a practice that we can get better at; allowing us to move deeper into our understanding of ourselves and others.

Jennifer Burrell, MS, NCC

Licensed Professional Counselor

Emotion must be evoked, experienced, validated, respected and accepted in order to move forward. People get stuck when their emotions have been denied, repressed, depressed, dismissed or invalidated. EFT works with clients difficult and sometimes painful emotions to allow the necessary healing and integration to occur.

Ajay Dheer (He/They)

Marriage Family Therapist Intern

M.S. Marriage and Family Therapy

I am currently being trained in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) with anticipated completion in spring of 2021. EFT attunes to our own emotions and emotional regulation as well as how they interact with those of our partner(s). I primarily use EFT with relationships (monogamous couples as well as polyamorous/open relationships), though the benefits of my training can also be utilized with individuals.

Marla Christensen LPC NCC (she/her)

Marriage and Family Therapist

MA LPC NBCC

My approach is also connected with Dr. Sue Johnson’s Emotionally Focused Therapy, and Integrated Behavioral Couple therapy (Neil Jacobson and Andrew Christensen). Emotionally Focused Therapy allows the therapeutic relationship to identify vital information that client emotions can provide as an attempt to develop strong, safe relationships.

Sarah Hardin

Licensed Marriage Family Therapist

What feelings underlie your behaviors and your ways of relating to others? This approach helps you identify your core emotional needs and learn ways to express those to others. EFT works wonderfully with individuals, couples, and families alike to deepen connection and fine-tune communication skills. I excel at helping folks uncover the feelings that are often difficult to name.

Mauri Castle Myers, MS

Marriage Family Therapist Intern

For me, this means that our emotions have a purpose and that they can be informative if we can determine the 'logic' that informs them. I find that understanding and better utilizing emotions can really help people move through life in ways that are more satisfying.

Myra Sicilia, LPC (she/her)

Licensed Professional Counselor

As I have grown into a professional license counselor I have come to realize the benefits of deep work to heal trauma and various other human concerns. It helps individuals accept, regulate, express, and bring awareness of the complexity of human emotions. Understanding emotions help guides us to our needs or wants.

Carewell Portland Carewell Portland/Julie Berman (she/her)

Licensed Professional Counselor

LPC

Emotionally Focused Therapy helps people understand themselves better so they can make big changes.

Josh Clark, PhD

Clinical Psychologist

Emotion-Focused therapy, or EFT, can help you identify, utilize, and process emotions. Suffering comes when we encounter distressing emotions but try to resist or avoid them rather than accept and feel them fully. With EFT, I help patients learn to recognize their emotions and feel them in a safe and validating way.

Maegan Megginson (she/her)

Licensed Marriage Family Therapist

MA, LMFT, LPC, AASECT CST

I have trained in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy and Emotionally Focused Therapy for individuals. This is the foundation from which I work with all clients in my therapy practice.

Mira Shah, LPC, ATR, LAT (she/her)

Art Therapist

LPC, LAT, ATR

Emotionally Focused Therapy is rooted in the theory that as humans, we all need secure attachment and healthy relationship. We work to rebuild those secure bonds by helping clients learn to recognize their emotions and feel them in a safe and validating way. I will support your work to recognize the emotional patterns we get into when our relational needs aren't met and grow healthy tools to break the pattern.

Alex Bistroi

Licensed Professional Counselor

I completed training in Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) for individuals. I also completed training in EFT for couples.

Richard Marshall

Licensed Marriage Family Therapist

M.A., LMFT

Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT) is an evidence-based treatment, and together with the Gottman Method, is the therapeutic model I most commonly use with couples. Its power comes from its ability to tap into people's primal need for a close attachment bond to others. It helps people express their softer, more vulnerable emotions with the aim of increasing connection and closeness to others.

Eric Nielson

Marriage Family Therapist Intern

I integrate Emotionally Focused Therapy (or, 'EFT') in my work with couples and with families. I have done training with Sue Johnson, one of the progenitors of EFT, and am engaged in on-going supervision and training in this therapeutic model.