Emotion-Focused Therapy

Emotions carry information — about what matters to you, what you need, and what's not working—even when they feel overwhelming or hard to make sense of. Emotion-focused therapy (EFT) is an approach to individual therapy that helps you get closer to your emotions rather than pushing them away, so you can understand what they're telling you and use that understanding to make real change in your life.

How emotion-focused therapy works

Emotion-focused therapy is grounded in the idea that emotions themselves are a key source of information and change, not just something to manage or think your way past. Your therapist helps you identify and work through emotions that feel stuck, confusing, or overwhelming, and to access the more adaptive emotions underneath—often ones that get buried under longstanding patterns like self-criticism, avoidance, or shutting down. Rather than only talking about your feelings, you learn to experience them differently in the therapy room, which is often what allows old patterns to actually shift. This individual approach is distinct from Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples (confusing, we know!), which we also offer—see our Couple Therapy page for that.

Who this is for

Emotion-focused therapy tends to help people who experience:

  • Feeling disconnected from their own emotions, or overwhelmed by them

  • Depression, anxiety, or low self-worth tied to old emotional patterns

  • A pattern of shutting down, over-explaining, or intellectualizing difficult feelings

  • Difficulty processing grief, hurt, or unresolved experiences from the past

  • A wish to understand the "why" behind recurring emotional reactions

In-person and virtual sessions

We see clients in person at our Aurora office and virtually across Ontario, including Newmarket, Richmond Hill, Vaughan, and Markham. Evening and weekend appointments are available with select clinicians.

Billing is on a sliding scale with select practitioners—see our Fees page for details, or check our FAQs if you have questions about getting started.

Let's Start Here

If you're ready to get curious about what your emotions are telling you, get in touch and we'll help you find the right fit on our team.