Emotion focused

Alliance-Focused Training developed in parallel with the principles of emotion-focused therapy (beginning with Greenberg & Safran, 1987, Emotion in Psychotherapy, Guilford Press). Emotions are conceptualized as a form of internally generated information that provides us with ongoing feedback about ourselves as biological organisms in interaction with our environment.  Emotions are biologically wired into human beings through the evolutionary process and they play an adaptive role in the survival of the species. Emotions function to safeguard both biological and learned goals.  Alliance-Focused Training tracks both clients’ and therapists’ emotional experience closely and uses a range of interventions to activate affective processes that facilitate change.  How clients and therapists self- and co-regulate their emotions is an integral part of the focus.