The Approach
Pay attention to what happens between you.
Therapy is not only about discussing what happened — the argument on Saturday, the thing that was said. It is also about what happens in the room while you talk about it: where the conversation tightens, where someone goes quiet, what moves underneath the words. That is often where the useful work is.
IThe central idea
The room tells us something.
Most people understand their relationship intellectually. You know what the recurring argument is. You know what happened last Saturday, and what your partner said. But knowing the story is not the same as understanding the pattern underneath it.
Slowed down, an exchange shows its parts:
- the moment one person reaches
- the moment the other pulls away
- the fear underneath the anger
- the longing underneath the criticism
- the protection underneath the silence
We are not analysing the relationship from across the room. We are watching what happens between the two people in it.
IIFirst influence
Emotionally Focused Therapy
EFT starts from the idea that couples get caught in a cycle — a loop of moves and countermoves that, once running, carries more force than either person’s intentions. One partner criticises; the other defends or goes quiet; the criticism sharpens; the distance grows. The particular loop differs from couple to couple. What tends to hold is that underneath the sharp or shut-down surface are attachment needs — to feel wanted, to matter, to be reachable — that aren’t getting through.
The work is to name that cycle plainly, slow it where it usually speeds up, and help each partner show the more vulnerable thing directly enough that the other can actually respond to it.
In practice
A partner says something cutting. Instead of moving on, we stop there. What happened in the few seconds before — what did you notice, what did you feel, what did you expect was about to happen? The cutting remark often turns out to have been covering something far less armoured.
IIISecond influence
Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy
AEDP is concerned with how people handle feeling that was once too much to manage alone. We all build ways to hold such experiences at a distance — changing the subject, going numb, getting busy, making a joke. Those defences made sense when they formed. They also keep a person from what the feeling has to tell them.
Rather than discussing emotion from a safe remove, AEDP works with it as it moves — the therapist tracking what is happening moment to moment, and staying alongside the person while they feel it, so it can be felt through rather than managed around. The aim is more room: to notice, tolerate, and make sense of what is there.
In practice
Someone’s eyes fill mid-sentence; they wave it off and keep going. We slow down instead. What just happened? Can we stay with it a moment? Given a little room and some company, the feeling usually has somewhere it needs to go.
This is how Jacob works with emotional experience — in individual therapy and inside couples work alike.
IVIn the room
Less explaining. More noticing.
A lot of what matters between two people happens quickly — too quickly to catch as it goes by. Much of the work is simply slowing those moments down enough to see them.
Notice the moment
We stop at the point the conversation usually turns — a flinch, a shift in tone, a sudden change of subject — and mark it.
Stay with what is happening
Rather than explain it away or move past it, we hold still there long enough for it to be felt and looked at.
Find the words underneath it
Under the sharp version is usually a plainer one: a fear, a wish, a read of what the other person thinks. We put language to that.
Try something different
With the plainer thing said, you respond to each other from there. Done enough times, it stops feeling like an exercise.
None of this is about forcing vulnerability or working up emotion for its own sake. It is about putting enough attention around the important moments that they can be understood, rather than defended against, avoided, or acted out.
VBetween the words
Sometimes the important part isn’t what was said.
- The pause after a question.
- The glance away.
- The change in a voice.
- The joke that arrives when something gets too close.
- The silence after one person reaches for the other.
These carry information. Not always decisive, but worth noticing — a fairly reliable read of where the feeling actually is, as opposed to where the conversation has agreed to keep it.
Understanding the pattern matters.But eventually it has to become something you can do differently.
VICommon questions
Questions about the approach.
What is Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)?
A way of working with couples that treats recurring conflict as a cycle, with attachment needs underneath it. The work is to slow the cycle down and help partners reach for and respond to each other more directly.
What is AEDP?
Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy. It works with emotional experience as it happens rather than only describing it, on the premise that feeling, met with company instead of alone, tends to move toward clarity.
How are EFT and AEDP different?
EFT gives a map of what happens between two partners. AEDP gives a way of working closely with what happens inside one person as they feel something difficult. In practice they overlap more than they compete.
Do you use these approaches with individuals as well as couples?
Yes. EFT is specific to couples work; AEDP shapes how the work goes with individuals and couples both. More on that under individual therapy.
Does therapy always involve talking about difficult emotions?
Not on command, and not for its own sake. Difficult feeling tends to come up because it is relevant, and when it does there is room to stay with it. Plenty of sessions are ordinary conversation.
What happens if I don't know what I'm feeling?
Common, and not something to solve before starting. Often the not-knowing is itself a form of protection worth understanding, and the feeling gets clearer with a little attention and less pressure.
Start with what is happening.
You don’t need to have it worked out first. A first conversation can begin with what’s going on in the relationship, or in you, exactly as unclear as it currently is.