If you are looking for couples, individual or family therapy, we can assist in finding an EFT-trained therapist in your region.
If you are a therapist interested in training in EFT or becoming a certified EFT practitioner, we can help you plan your journey.
We are a group of therapists who are trained in EFT. We are committed to bringing EFT to wider New Zealand – for clients and for other practitioners to enhance their skill set.
EFT, developed by Dr. Sue Johnson, is being studied and practiced around the world and is recognised as an effective, evidenced-based couples, individual and family therapy.
We aim to cultivate a climate of inclusion, an environment where all can feel safe, valued, cared for, and given an opportunity to form meaningful connections with each other.
We seek to encourage practices that reflect New Zealand’s cultural diversity and in particular the spirit and intent of the Treaty of Waitangi. We recognise Maori as the Tangata Whenua of Aotearoa, and we are committed to upholding the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi - partnership with and protection of Taonga Maori founded in good faith.
We encourage practices which reflect New Zealand’s cultural diversity and the many cultures who have arrived here to make this our home.
In all facets of our work we strive to embody what we hope to see in the world — a just, loving humanity and community in which people are free to be themselves fully — where people can embrace their most basic universal human attachment needs without fear of persecution or marginalization as a result of religion, race, ethnic or national origin, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, class, mental health, neurodiversity, physical character or disability.
Specifically, humanistic approaches such as EFT are collaborative and respectful.
We create a safe place for people and treat them as persons, not problems or types. Our approach is non-pathologising in practice.
Our values are inclusive and egalitarian while viewing human connection as sacred — something to be honoured and cultivated. Our scientific and theoretical base outlines key universals, emotion and attachment, while respecting individual differences.
Dr. Sue Johnson, who passed away in 2024, was an author, clinical psychologist, researcher, professor, popular presenter and speaker, and a leading innovator in the field of couple therapy and adult attachment.
She developed Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) as a therapeutic model in the 1980s. Over the decades, EFT proved its effectiveness through more than 30 years of peer-reviewed clinical research.
Dr. Johnson was the founding Director of the International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy and served as Distinguished Research Professor at Alliant University in San Diego, California, as well as Professor Emeritus in Clinical Psychology at the University of Ottawa, Canada.
In 2016, she was honoured as Psychologist of the Year by the American Psychological Association. She was also made a Member of the Order of Canada—the country’s highest civilian honour—recognising her outstanding achievement, dedication to the community, and service to Canada.
“Sue Johnson saw no contradiction in viewing love as biology and poetry, physiology and romance. For her, love was the hard-won endowment of our evolutionary history and a source of hope in a world of uncertainty and danger. With this book, Sue revealed that love is scientifically understandable. She emerged not only as a world authority on love’s repair, but also on its underlying neural, physiological, and psychological structure.”
— James Coan, PhD, Professor of Clinical Psychology and Director of the Virginia Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Virginia
We believe that relationships are at the core of human experience and well being.
We are dedicated to the development of a community of EFT trained therapists in Aotearoa New Zealand to promote and increase access to attachment based therapy.
We aim to:
Provide quality and effective EFT therapy to all clients
Meet our communities needs for highly skilled EFT therapists
Promote the learning and practice of EFT
Facilitate training, community and networking opportunities for EFT therapists
Encourage and support therapists to gain EFT Certification
Model the key EFT principles in all our professional and personal relationships