Emotion Focused Skills Training

In this video,Dr. Joanne Dolhanty and Anne Hilde Vassbø Hagen discuss how skills from emotion focused therapy can be used to help caregivers deal with both their children’s emotions and their own.

In the featured demonstration, Dr. Dolhanty works with a caregiver as they explore and identify emotional blocks in order to allow the client to flourish in using the skills they are being taught. Dr. Dolhanty incorporates the two-chair method as well as other carefully timed interventions to help the client focus on confronting rather than avoiding their emotions and fears in being a parent. This demonstration is followed by a lively discussion between the guest experts about key moments in the session.

Joanne Dolhanty, PhD, CPsych, is a clinical psychologist and the mother of two young-adult sons. She has extensive training in emotion focused therapy, is a certified supervisor with the International Society for Emotion Focused Therapy, and provides trainings to individuals, parents, professionals, and organizations through her Emotion Training Institute, the Emotion Focused Therapy Clinic at York University, and through institutions in countries around the globe.

With Dr. Leslie Greenberg, Dr. Dolhanty developed the application of emotion focused therapy to eating disorders. She is the developer of an emotion focused skills training (EFST) program that brings the benefits of emotion focused therapy to the broader population in a simplified format.

She is coauthor of the books Emotion-Focused Skills Training for Parents: A Guide for Clinicians and Angry Kids, Angry Parents: Understanding and Working With Anger in Your Family.

Anne Hilde Vassbø Hagen, cand.psychol, is a psychologist, author, mother of three, and filmmaker who produced the popular educational film series “Alfred & Shadow.” She is head of the Institute of Psychological Counseling, Inc., in Norway, and the director of The Norwegian Institute of Emotion-Focused Therapy.

She has written several books in Norwegian about emotions, and is coauthor of the books, Emotion-Focused Skills Training for Parents: A Guide for Clinicians and Angry Kids, Angry Parents: Understanding and Working With Anger in Your Family.

She is an experienced trainer, speaker, and therapist in emotion focused therapy and emotion focused skills training for parents, and is also trained in emotion focused couples therapy.

APA Videos

Working With Emotion in Emotion-Focused Therapy 
Leslie S. Greenberg, PhD, Michael A. Tompkins, PhD, and Norka T. Malberg, PsyD

Emotion-Focused Family Therapy
Adele Lafrance, PhD, CPsych

Attachment-Based Family Therapy 
Guy S. Diamond, PhD

Providing Emotion-Focused Therapy Online
Rhonda Goldman, PhD

Generating Self-Compassion in Emotion-Focused Therapy
Ladislav Timulak, PhD

Shame and Anger in Therapy
Leslie S. Greenberg, PhD

APA Books

Angry Kids, Angry Parents: Understanding and Working With Anger in Your Family
Anne Hilde Vassbø Hagen, cand.psychol, and Joanne Dolhanty, PhD, CPsych

Attachment-Based Family Therapy for Depressed Adolescents
Guy S. Diamond, PhD, Gary M. Diamond, PhD, and Suzanne A. Levy, PhD

Working With Parents of Aggressive Children: A Practitioner's Guide, Second Edition
Timothy A. Cavell, PhD, and Lauren B. Quetsch, PhD

Emotion-Focused Family Therapy: A Transdiagnostic Model for Caregiver-Focused Interventions 
Adele Lafrance, PhD, Katherine A. Henderson, PhD and Shari Mayman, PhD

Working With Emotion in Psychodynamic, Cognitive Behavior, and Emotion-Focused Psychotherapy
Leslie S. Greenberg, PhD, Norka T. Malberg, PsyD, and Michael A. Tompkins, PhD

Attachment-Based Family Therapy for Sexual and Gender Minority Young Adults and Their Nonaccepting Parents
Gary M. Diamond, PhD, Rotem Boruchovitz-Zamir