Reflections from the 4th isEFT Global Meeting – July 2024

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  Immogen O’Connor

  PRESIDENT

  The  Global Community Networking and Training Quarterly Meeting was started by isEFT in 2023 as a way to connect EFT therapists, supervisors, trainers, researchers and enthusiasts across the world. 130 EFTers were in attendance over Zoom at the June meeting, at least 6 of whom were in Australia. It was exciting to see so many familiar faces representing Australia in the Global EFT space. Considering the event ran from 11pm to 1.30am AEST, it was an impressive turnout!   AIEFT’s Lou Cooper was in conversation with Marco Aurélio Mendes (an Institute-Based Trainer in Brazil, a certified therapist and a certified supervisor by isEFT) about their experiences of hosting an EFT podcast. Both Lou and Marco agreed that starting a podcast seemed to be the best way to get the ‘EFT message’ out to the public. This conversation ended with a nudge to other EFTers and institutes to start their own EFT podcast.   Les Greenberg provided a keynote presentation entitled Phases & Tips. Les identified 6 phases (and one pre-phase) in the development of EFT:  

Methodological Pre-phase:

the creation of a methodology to study the moment-to-moment process of change in therapy  

1. Emotion Theory Phase:

the idea that emotions are central to our functioning (who would’ve thought?) and the differentiation of emotions into primary, secondary, and instrumental. These ideas provided a focus for therapeutic intervention, emotions!  

2. Process Experiential Therapy:

the development of a marker and task process directive psychotherapy, where the client is an expert in their content and the therapist is an expert in the process of emotional change.  

3. Focus on Emotion Phase:

providing psychotherapists with a map for working with emotions.  

4. Differential Treatment Phase:

EFT for depression, anxiety, complex trauma, anorexia and more.  

5. Case Formulation & Core Pain Phase:

working with a focus, to follow the pain. A shift from a marker-task focus to a focus on core pain. EFT as a trans-diagnostic approach.  

6. Changing Emotion with Emotion:

an even greater focus on how to help clients access, process and transform their emotional pain.     Les finished his presentation with an acknowledgement of the next generation of EFT Therapists, supervisors, trainers and researchers, who will continue to evolve this beloved approach to psychotherapy.   Unfortunately, Les ran out of time to share his list of ‘tips’ for EFT practitioners. Luckily, access to these tips and a recording of the meeting are available to isEFT members through the isEFT member’s portal. Find out more about isEFT here.

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