EFT Workshops by Giulia Altera

What you’ll find on this page:

• The D.A.R.E. Trilogy: De-escalation, Accessibility, Reach and Restructuring the bond, Enactment – Through Trauma, Fear, Anger and Longings: Daring Love in the Territories of Emotional Survival
  [These workshops can be attended in progressive order or selected individually, according to your own needs and preferences.]
  • Workshop 1: Don’t Bleed in Front of Sharks: Focus and presence in the heat of anger and reactivity, reaching the first safe zone of de-escalation.
  • Workshop 2: Behind the Curtains: The invisible movement, the sound of “I don’t know” and of silence, the hidden power within withdrawal, and staying true to oneself while moving toward the other.
  • Workshop 3: Pieces of a Pursuer’s Heart: A journey into the emotional world of pursuers and the change event of softening, guided by the music of Janis Joplin.

• AIRM Workshop: Where It Hurts the Most: Healing Attachment Injuries and Betrayals using the AIRM model in EFT.
• In the Hideout of the Self: Clinical Immersion in Shame with the EFT and EFIT Approach: Phenomenology, conceptualization, and intervention on the cycle of shame in the individual and in the couple.

The D.A.R.E. Trilogy – De-escalation, Accessibility, Reach and Restructuring the bond, Enactment

Through Trauma, Fear, Anger, and Longings: Daring Love in the Territories of Emotional Survival

A Clinical Journey Born from the Field

This advanced training—three workshops focused on specific stages and change events in EFT, developed by Trainer Giulia Altera and approved by ICEEFT—offers a comprehensive exploration of the D.A.R.E. framework within Emotionally Focused Therapy. The D.A.R.E. Trilogy is designed to enhance clinical proficiency with complex relational dynamics, especially those marked by intense emotional reactivity, attachment-related trauma, and entrenched interactional patterns, offering a structured yet flexible way to navigate the intricate emotional landscape of EFT practice.

Its roots are personal and clinical. I still remember the first time I froze in session—my body and mind stopped while the couple escalated in front of me. I had the map, but I couldn’t find the road. That moment stayed with me and raised a question: was I the only one, or were there others who felt the same?

So I asked. I reached out to colleagues across three continents, inviting them to share the moments when therapy faltered: when reactivity overwhelmed, when partners retreated into silence, when enactments failed, and when change events never fully took shape.

Those blind spots became our starting point. The D.A.R.E. Trilogy emerged from a direct clinical need identified through extensive consultation with the global EFT community. A multilingual questionnaire, disseminated across three continents, revealed shared challenges: points where therapeutic progress falters due to overwhelming reactivity, persistent withdrawal, ineffective enactments, or incomplete change events—the “fault lines” where direction is lost, the attachment map fades, and the dance of connection breaks down. These are places shaped by trauma and fear, by survival strategies, and by disconnection with yearning held beneath layers of protection. These fault lines became the foundational impetus for this specialized training.

Addressing Core Clinical Thresholds

D.A.R.E. directly targets three recognized clinical thresholds in experiential models of change (Johnson, 2004; Greenberg, 2011; Fosha, 2000). Each letter names a pivotal movement in the EFT process, mapping what therapists must do when the work becomes dense, reactive, and hard to steer.

• De-escalation focuses on restoring safety in the heat of reactivity, working explicitly with the nervous system and with protest that often masks deeper fear.
• Accessibility centers Alliance & Attunement. It highlights the foundational role of the therapeutic alliance and the therapist’s continuous attunement to clients’ emotional experience, creating a secure base for vulnerable exploration—especially with partners organized around withdrawal. This involves compassionate work with shame and trauma histories, and relies on the therapist’s embodied presence and resonant responsiveness to co-create a robust bond that supports vulnerable openness in both partners.
• Reach is Restructuring the Bond: helping clients risk new emotional positions and reshape the relationship into a more secure connection. This phase supports profound shifts through two core change events: Withdrawer Re-engagement, where the withdrawn partner risks vulnerability and reaches for connection, and Pursuer Softening, where the pursuing partner meets that vulnerability with empathy and tenderness. Their reciprocal movement reorganizes the interactional pattern into a corrective emotional experience.
• Enactment frames the therapist as a choreographer of connection. Enactment, as a central EFT intervention, guides clients to express core emotions and attachment needs directly to their partner in-session, generating new corrective interactional experiences that consolidate bond restructuring. The D.A.R.E. Trilogy offers advanced strategies for shaping these moments with precision across different stages of therapy, integrating both the intervention and the theory of change.

Together, these interconnected movements form an architectural framework for EFT: fundamental affective, emotional, and human processes that orient both clients and therapists through an attachment-focused change journey.

Real Couples, Real Cultures, Real Changes

Across the D.A.R.E. Trilogy, participants work with authentic clinical video recordings of couples from diverse cultural, relational, and emotional contexts, offering granular access to the micro-movements of change and the interplay of attachment, trauma, culture, and longing. A consistent emphasis stays on enactment in multiple clinical contexts—from restoring contact amid reactivity to supporting vulnerable reach and pursuer softening—to craft enactments that are both containing and transformative.

Daring the work, Daring the Love

The training also foregrounds a core tenet of EFT: truly relational change. The D.A.R.E. framework supports therapists in moving beyond individual-focused interventions to actively shape the interactive system, recognizing that deep transformation occurs within the relational space, not only within individual psyches.the Love

D.A.R.E. is more than just a word — it is a stance. It calls on therapists to develop clinical fluency together with emotional courage: to remain experientially immersed in the very moments where change becomes possible.

Just as clients grow when they dare to feel, dare to love, and dare to reach from new positions, therapists too are invited to dare — to meet the moment with presence and courage.
Dare to stay present in emotional intensity
Dare to enter the fire of disconnection
Dare to track the cycle while emotion is still unfolding
Dare to set up enactments when the ground feels unstable
Dare to shape affect with clarity, humility, and presence

This is where therapy breaks down — or breaks through.

Workshop 1: Don’t Bleed in Front of Sharks: Focus and presence in the heat of anger and reactivity, reaching the first safe zone of de-escalation.

About the Workshop

In the emotionally charged world of relationships, reactivity often emerges as the first response when vulnerability feels too dangerous. In Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), this reactivity shows up in rigid cycles of pursuing and withdrawing, where both partners struggle to feel safe enough to open up, trust, and connect.
This workshop focuses on the art of working effectively with emotional reactivity, active defenses, and common impasses, guiding the couple through the delicate shift toward de-escalation.

Vulnerability, like blood in the water, can provoke counterattacks rather than openness. Why? Because it’s not only the external environment that feels unsafe—but also the internal landscape, shaped by internal working models forged by past, and sometimes traumatic experiences. When attachment wounds are triggered, intimacy is experienced as danger: personal dragons awaken, and what should bring closeness becomes a threat.
Primary emotions are covered by protective emotions such as anger, sarcasm, guilt, withdrawal, or rationalization. The waters grow turbulent. The partner is no longer a safe harbor, but a shark.

Amid these dynamics, even the therapist can find themselves struggling—caught in the cycle, stuck, unsure whether to intervene or stay, uncertain how to move. These are the moments that call for presence, flexibility, and the ability to move with the cycle, not against it.
In particular, we will explore the work involved in Step 2 and Step 3 of the EFT process, focusing on regulation, validating defenses, and the conscious, flexible use of the EFT Tango, guiding the couple toward the first movements of de-escalation.

Alongside verbal interventions, the therapist’s body language will also be emphasized: how posture, subtle gestures, tone of voice, breath, and the RISSSC can transmit safety, openness, meaning, and containment.
The therapist’s internal emotional regulation will be considered an essential clinical tool—able to hold the storm in session and set the pace for change. As Sue Johnson and George Faller highlight, in moments of high intensity it’s not only what we say that makes the difference, but how we say it—and the quality of our emotionally present presence.

Even with a clear structure, EFT therapeutic work requires adaptability, creativity, and emotional centeredness.
This workshop aims to support therapists in navigating the most intense and complex moments of couple therapy: when escalation is just around the corner, when connection seems lost, when the risk of impasse is high—but also when a small opening appears, one that must be protected and gently supported toward a new relational possibility.

A part of the workshop will be dedicated to recognizing how dysfunctional cycles and protective strategies can take different shapes in various cultural and identity contexts, including LGBTQIA+ relationships.
Understanding these aspects helps offer more precise, respectful, and attuned interventions—while remaining grounded in the core EFT focus on attachment and emotion.

The therapist’s presence becomes the anchor in the chaos, the steady light in the emotional fog, with cultural and identity awareness as part of the compass that guides the therapeutic journey toward the possibility of a safe haven.

During this two-day workshop, participants will be able to:

• Identify and navigate emotional reactivity cycles in therapy, helping clients recognize and shift their automatic responses.
• Recognize how cultural contexts and LGBTQIA+ identities influence emotional reactivity and protective strategies, understanding how social narratives, marginalization, and cultural norms shape attachment models and defensive behaviors in therapy.
• Work with active defenses in real time, slowing down the emotional process, fostering curiosity, and transforming reactivity into opportunities for connection.
• Connect with both positions, Pursuers and Withdrawers.
• Develop strategies for emotional re-attunement.
• Strengthen therapeutic presence in moments of high emotional intensity, maintaining attunement while guiding the therapeutic process.
• Deepen the understanding of pursuer and withdrawer positions, not as fixed roles, but as dynamic emotional strategies rooted in protective mechanisms.
• Explore the link between action and emotion in reactive cycles, understanding how behaviors, emotions, and protective responses intertwine during moments of intense activation.
• Master the EFT Tango with flexibility, learning to adapt its steps fluidly when working with high reactivity.
• Focus on micro-interventions—small, precise shifts in language, tone, and presence that can alter the emotional trajectory of an entire session.
• Understand how the RISSSSC model evolves when working in the heart of the emotional storm.

Learning Objectives

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

• Identify and intervene in negative reactivity cycles using EFT principles to disrupt rigid interactional patterns.
• Differentiate between active and passive emotional defenses (e.g., anger vs. withdrawal, intellectualization vs. emotional numbness) and adapt interventions accordingly.
• Apply strategies to regulate high emotional intensity, helping clients stay connected to their emotions without becoming overwhelmed.
• Use de-escalation techniques that go beyond surface-level management, reaching the emotional core of clients’ experiences.
• Cultivate a therapeutic stance that fosters safety, remaining centered and emotionally present even when sessions feel like emotional battlefields.
• Work with emotions such as anger, shame, and fear—not to avoid them, but to understand their protective function and channel them toward emotional processing.
• Transform reactive emotions into active agents of change, including cognitive defensive mechanisms like over-rationalization, excessive talking, or avoidance through “explaining.”
• Use micro-movements and attunement strategies to shift rigid relational dynamics, applying small but powerful interventions to create emotional openings.
• Navigate therapeutic impasses with clarity, recognizing when the process is stuck and applying targeted strategies to restore movement.

Workshop 2: Behind the Curtains: The invisible movement, the sound of “I don’t know” and of silence.

The hidden power within withdrawal, and staying true to oneself while moving toward the other.

An experience in the emotional world of Withdrawers and in the transformational event of the Withdrawer Engagement.
Withdrawal represents one of the most complex and often underestimated clinical challenges in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). When a partner shuts down, retreats into silence, freezes, or repeatedly answers “I don’t know,” the therapeutic process can lose momentum. These moments mark a critical threshold where the attachment system is highly activated—yet often invisible on the surface.

For the therapist, working in this space can evoke clinical uncertainty, a sense of inefficacy, or even the fear of losing the process. It is easy to feel excluded, disoriented, or caught in dynamics where withdrawal starts to look like disengagement, control, or indifference. Yet beneath these signals lies a complex emotional world shaped by shame, helplessness, and deep fears of emotional failure or rejection.

In many cases, the withdrawn partner is not alone in the room. There may be an active pursuer, still holding residual reactivity—even after meaningful de-escalation in Stage 1—expressing urgency, protest, or emotional pressure. The therapist must learn to track both partners simultaneously, containing the energy of one while inviting the other into moments of emotional risk. These are the moments when we practice the clinical art of “catching the bullet”: capturing reactivity in real time, using it to reframe and reorganize the dynamic, and creating space for recognition, safety, and new meaning.

It can be particularly effective to name and normalize the difficulty of taking in something new. When partners have engaged in protective, defensive patterns for years, even a moment of openness or responsiveness from the other can feel disorienting. Noticing that this new information or interaction feels foreign or hard to trust—especially when shaped by unhealthy attachment strategies or entrenched communication cycles—can reduce fear and support emotional engagement.

This workshop provides a comprehensive clinical roadmap for re-engaging withdrawn partners—without pressure, without disengagement, and with deep clinical intentionality.

Learning Objectives

1. Understanding withdrawal as a protective attachment strategy

• Explore the neurobiological mechanisms of freeze, collapse, and shutdown
• Recognize early signs of attachment activation in withdrawn clients, even in the absence of verbal cues
• Identify how shame, inadequacy, and self-protective narratives shape emotional distancing

2. Working with silence and “I don’t know” as clinical signals

• Reframe silence and non-responsiveness as forms of emotional communication
• Apply slowing down, heightening, and evocative responding to support the emergence of felt experience
• Track micro-movements of connection and avoid reinforcing distancing responses

3. Managing clinical complexity with reactive pursuers

• Balance the reactivity of the pursuing partner while preserving access to the withdrawn partner’s emerging signals
• Develop strategies for de-escalating reactive protests without silencing emotional needs
• Practice “catching the bullet” to slow the cycle and keep emotional risks manageable for both partners

4. Addressing perceived power dynamics and relational threat

• Explore how withdrawal may reflect a history of relational injury, emotional invasion, or power imbalance
• Support clients who feel unsafe, dismissed, or emotionally outmatched in the relationship
• Maintain a balanced therapeutic stance that acknowledges the emotional truth on both sides of the cycle

5. Facilitating vulnerable engagement from within withdrawal

• Help clients move from protective distance to authentic emotional expression
• Use structured enactments, reframes, and attachment-based interventions to support reconnection
• Honor the client’s internal coherence while creating space for new emotional experiences

6. Integrating cultural and intersectional awareness

• Examine how culture, gender, family history, and intergenerational trauma influence withdrawal patterns
• Adapt EFT interventions to respect diverse identities and relational narratives
• Avoid pathologizing behaviors that are rooted in cultural survival strategies

7. Using music and nonverbal tools to access implicit emotion

• Incorporate music, rhythm, and tone to evoke emotional depth and embodied resonance
• Use metaphor and creative modalities to amplify connection when language is limited
• Let musical voices of withdrawal guide the session into deeper emotional fields

This workshop includes clinical video recordings featuring multicultural couples, highlighting subtle moments of withdrawal, risk, and reconnection. Participants will have the opportunity to observe, analyze, and practice interventions grounded in Stage 1 and early Stage 2 of EFT.

You will leave with advanced tools to work in the stillness—when words vanish, emotional movement slows, and the therapist becomes the guide through invisible terrain.

Workshop 3: “Pieces of a Pursuer’s Heart”: An experience in the emotional world of pursuers and in the transformational event of softening, through the music of Janis Joplin

A formative and transformative experience with Giulia Altera
Based on the life and songs of Janis Joplin and on Emotionally Focused Therapy

The Pursuer Softening is a pivotal moment in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). It refers to the process in which the partner who typically seeks greater emotional closeness (the pursuer) accesses their deepest, most vulnerable emotions, expressing them in a way that evokes an empathic and connecting response from the withdrawing partner. This transformative process reconfigures negative interaction patterns, fostering a more secure and fulfilling emotional bond.

By participating in this workshop, you will deepen your clinical expertise in EFT, learning how to:

• Identify and interrupt negative cycles that perpetuate emotional distance between partners.
• Facilitate the pursuer’s access to and expression of primary emotions through specific interventions, such as evocative responses and intensification, promoting more authentic and vulnerable communication.
• Guide the pursuer in formulating emotional requests that invite the withdrawing partner to respond more openly and receptively, deepening intimacy and mutual understanding.
• Integrate awareness of cultural differences in pursuer-withdrawer dynamics, adapting therapeutic interventions to respect and honor each couple’s unique narratives.

This workshop offers practical tools and theoretical insights to facilitate Pursuer Softening in your sessions, enriching your clinical practice and enhancing the effectiveness of your therapeutic interventions with couples.

For further insights into “Pursuer Softening” and related EFT techniques, you may wish to consult the following resources: Risking, Reaching and Responding and Shaping Secure Connection: Stages 1 & 2 of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy

What you will learn: advanced clinical skills

By the end of the workshop, you will have acquired practical tools to:

1. Guiding Pursuer Softening:
   • Identify emotional defenses and work with the pursuer to access authentic vulnerability.
   • Support the withdrawing partner in responding more empathetically, creating a moment of transformative connection.
2. Manage shame and emotional defenses:
   • Understand how shame affects pursuer and withdrawing behaviors.
   • Apply EFT strategies to transform shame into a catalyst for connection.
3. Working with cultural diversity:
   • Explore how expressions of pursuit and withdrawal vary across cultures.
   • Adapting therapeutic interventions to respect the unique narratives and cultural identities of each couple.
4. Incorporate music and movement into therapy:
   • Use musical metaphors to explore and modify relational cycles.
   • Integrate creative tools to facilitate access to deep emotions.

Detailed Technical Program

Duration: 2 days (12 total hours)
Prerequisites: Completion of an EFT Externship

Day 1 – Morning: Clinical Foundations

• Introduction to EFT: Review of fundamental principles and the roles of pursuer and withdrawer.
• Negative Cycles and Attachment: Clinical analysis of relational dynamics in multicultural couples.
• Janis Joplin and the “Pursuer’s Heart”: Thematic exploration through her music.

Day 1 – Afternoon: Practical Tools

• “Piece of My Heart”: Guided listening and discussion on the emotions of the pursuer.
• Role Play: Practical application of interventions to decode negative cycles.
• Dyadic Exercises: Deepening into the emotional world of the pursuer.

Day 2 – Morning: Advanced Clinical Exploration

• Shame and Protection: Working with shame to access vulnerability.
• Advanced Strategies for Pursuer Softening: Techniques to facilitate the pursuer’s transformation.
• De-escalation Techniques: Creating a safe space to interrupt negative cycles.

Day 2 – Afternoon: Advanced Applications

• Interventions in Stage 2 of EFT: Reshaping interaction patterns for deeper connections.
• Role Play with Multicultural Couples: Practice with feedback to refine clinical skills.
• Experiential Integration: Using music and movement to transform relational dynamics.
• Final Reflections: Clinical case discussions and sharing of experiences.

Added Value for Therapists

This workshop is not just an opportunity to enhance your technical skills in EFT, but also offers:

• A Unique Perspective: Integrating music and therapy brings new, creative tools for working with emotions.
• Practical Strategies: Every technique learned will be immediately applicable to clinical practice.
• Focus on Diversity: You will learn to adapt therapeutic interventions to multicultural contexts, expanding your ability to work with couples from diverse backgrounds.

Here is a brief preview of an intervention based on this workshop by Giulia for the Polish PSEFT community

AIRM Workshop: Where It Hurts the Most: Healing Attachment Injuries and Betrayals using the AIRM model in EFT.

In every relationship, some moments leave deep marks. Betrayals, abandonments or broken promises at the most vulnerable times can create wounds that seem impossible to overcome. But these injuries, known as Attachment Wounds, do not have to define a couple’s future. They can be healed.

Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) is an empirically validated approach, developed by Sue Johnson and based on attachment theory, that offers a powerful and structured path to transform these hurts into opportunities for reconnection. The Attachment Injuries Repair Model (AIRM) is part of this work. It was created to restore trust, rebuild emotional safety and transform relational trauma into a new beginning.

This interactive workshop, based on Buchanan and Brubacher’s AIRM program, is intended for therapists who already have a working knowledge of EFT, having completed at least the Externship or EFIT Essentials. During the training, the processes of Stage 1 (de-escalation and wound recognition) and Stage 2 (engaging the withdrawn partner) will be explored, providing a clear understanding of the steps needed to repair attachment wounds.

Why is this workshop essential?

Attachment wounds can trap couples in cycles of pain and distrust, blocking any chance of reconnection. This course is designed for therapists who wish to:

• Identify the presence of an attachment wound and assess its impact on the relationship.
• Depathologize the experience of the wound, promoting compassionate and practical understanding.
• Prepare the couple for the repair work, ensuring that both partners are emotionally engaged in the process.
• Apply Tango EFT within the AIRM model, using specific interventions to facilitate relational transformation.

What will you learn?

At the end of the workshop, you will be able to:

• Define and identify an attachment wound according to the EFT model.
• Work in Stage 1, facilitating de-escalation of negative cycles and recognition of the wound.
• Implement in-depth work in Stage 2, promoting emotional rewinding and reconnection.
• Outline the 8 steps of AIRM and use them to structure effective interventions.
• Address the most common difficulties in working with attachment wounds, such as emotional readiness and partner engagement.

How will the workshop be conducted?

This will be an interactive, hands-on event that will include:

• Real clinical sessions, to illustrate the application of AIRM in practice.
• Guided role plays, to experience and hone your skills in a safe environment.
• In-depth, evidence-basedtheoretical discussions to reinforce your understanding of the model.
• Viewing of a complete recorded session, which will show the AIRM process in its entirety, allowing you to understand every detail of the repair work.

Who is this workshop intended for?

This workshop is suitable for professionals with experience in EFT who work with couples facing challenges such as infidelity, abandonment, pornography addiction, or other significant breakups. If you want to help your clients overcome these wounds and rebuild a secure bond, this training is essential.

Ready to transform your clinical work?

Healing attachment wounds is not just about repairing what has been lost, but creating something new, stronger and deeper. AIRM combines science, empathy and connection to transform grief into a path toward reconnection.

We are ready to get started. How about you? Find the next AIRM workshop HERE

In the Hideout of the Self: Clinical Immersion in Shame with the EFT and EFIT Approach

Phenomenology, conceptualization, and intervention on the cycle of shame in the individual and in the couple.

Scientific Rationale and Introduction

Shame represents one of the most complex human experiences and at the same time one of the most significant clinical challenges. Defined by theorists such as Bowlby, Tomkins, and Nathanson as an emotion deeply rooted in attachment dynamics and in the disruption of positive affect, its influence on intrapsychic and relational functioning is pervasive. In the therapeutic context, shame frequently manifests as a powerful process inhibitor, fueling dysfunctional cycles, resistance to vulnerability, and blocking the path toward secure connection.

This advanced workshop offers a structured and in-depth immersion into the treatment of shame through the models of Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples (EFT) and Individuals (EFIT). The training pathway is designed to provide clinicians with a rigorous model of conceptualization and a repertoire of targeted interventions to navigate, contain, and transform shame within the therapeutic setting.

We will explore the phenomenology of shame, from its etiology linked to early attachment experiences to its manifestations as a transitory emotional state or as a deep-rooted personality trait. Special attention will be given to its intersections with complex trauma and addictions, contexts in which shame functions as a central organizing mechanism of the experience of the Self and of the relationship with the other.

The goal is to equip therapists with the tools to transform shame from an insurmountable obstacle into a diagnostic indicator and a fundamental therapeutic lever, capable of revealing the most profound attachment needs and catalyzing enduring corrective emotional experiences.

Structure and Program of the Workshop

The workshop is structured in progressive modules guiding participants from theory to applied clinical practice.

Module 1: Foundations and Conceptualization of Shame

• Etiology of Shame: Analysis of the theories of Bowlby, Porges, and Nathanson. Shame as both an adaptive and maladaptive response to the threat to the attachment bond.
• Neuroscience of Shame: Exploration of neurobiological correlates (limbic system, prefrontal cortex) and the physiological freeze and collapse response.
• The Family of Shame: Clinical differentiation between shame, guilt, embarrassment, and humiliation. Implications for intervention.
• Nathanson’s Compass of Shame: Identification of the four main defensive strategies (withdrawal, attack on self, attack on other, avoidance) as a map for diagnosing the cycle.

Module 2: Shame in Individual Work (EFIT

• The Intrapsychic Cycle of Shame: How shame organizes the experience of the Self, generating a negative self-view and blocking access to primary emotions.
• Shame, Trauma, and Addictions: Analysis of the function of shame in maintaining post-traumatic symptoms and addictive cycles. How the avoidance of shame fuels pathology.
• EFIT Interventions: Techniques to attune to individual shame, validate it, and begin to “undo alexithymia” in order to access the underlying needs for safety and acceptance.

Module 3: Shame in Couple Therapy (EFT) – Stage 1

• The Interpersonal Cycle of Shame: How one partner’s shame activates the negative cycle of the couple (e.g., shame-driven withdrawal triggers the other’s critical protest, which in turn reinforces shame).
• The “Hot Potato” of Shame: Analysis of the dynamic in which shame is projected and transmitted between partners, blocking de-escalation.
• Stage 1 Interventions:
  • Contain and validate secondary and reactive shame.
  • Insert shame explicitly into the negative cycle.
  • Use RISSSC and the therapist’s presence to create a secure base that allows for tolerating exposure to shame.

Module 4: Shame in Couple Therapy (EFT) – Stage 2

• From Shame to Fear: How shame, once contained, reveals the primary fear of being unlovable or unworthy of connection.
• The Antidote to Shame: Facilitating enactments where the revelation of primary shame is met with the partner’s acceptance and compassion.
• Stage 2 Interventions (Steps 5–7):
  • Deepen the experience of shame to access attachment needs (Step 5).
  • Promote partner acceptance (Step 6).
  • Create bonding events that actively restructure the negative self-view (Step 7).

Teaching Methodology

The workshop will integrate lectures with a strong experiential component, including:

• Analysis of transcripts and video sessions of clinical cases.
• Self-reflection exercises on therapist resonance.
• Structured role-plays to practice key interventions in a supervised environment.

Who is Giulia Altera

Dr. Giulia Altera is a Psychotherapist, Clinical and Forensic Psychologist, Certified International Trainer, Supervisor, and Certified Therapist with the ICEEFT. Giulia is an international reference in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) training in Italy, Europe, Brazil, and Iran.

She currently serves as the Scientific Director of the Consorzio Universitario Humanitas in Rome for the Second-Level Master’s in Relationship Psychology: Emotionally Focused Therapy and Integrated Approaches for Couple and Family Therapy.

As Co-founder and President of the EFT Italia Community and Director of the EFT Nord Italia Center, Giulia has led the development of EFT communities in Southeast and Northeast Brazil. She conducts official ICEEFT trainings, including Externship®, Core Skills®, AIRM Workshop, Essential EFIT®, as well as specialized workshops on shame, Stage 2 EFT transformations, and experiential events, such as the Janis Joplin-inspired workshop and others.

Before EFT, she specialized with honors in Cognitive-Behavioral Psychotherapy (Miller Institute), completed a Second-Level Master’s in Criminology and Forensic Psychiatric Sciences at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of Genoa, and worked with trauma, addiction, and personality disorders.

She also completed International Training in Trauma and Dissociative Disorders Treatment with Dr. Kathy Steele (ISSTD).

Giulia is a Certified Schema Therapist (ISST). Fluent in Italian, Portuguese, and English, she works as an International Trainer, speaking at conferences across Europe, the USA, and Latin America on EFT, trauma, and attachment.

Her passion for EFT stems from meeting Sue Johnson, who inspired her to integrate emotions and love into a clear and transformative clinical perspective. Today, through her work and publications, including translations of Sue Johnson’s seminal texts, she continues to spread Emotion Focused Therapy with warmth, simplicity and deep respect for people and their stories.