EFT Trainers in Italy

Giulia Altera

ICEEFT Certified EFT Trainer, Supervisor and Therapist.

Psychotherapist, clinical and forensic psychologist, Giulia Altera is a co-founder, with Andrea Pagani, of EFT Italia Community, of which she is President, and director of the Centro EFT Nord Italia.

She works in private practice in Casale Monferrato and internationally, offering couple, family and individual therapy as well as supervision, also online. Giulia brings warmth and commitment to her work, with close attention to the needs of her clients, her colleagues and the groups she trains. Her teaching and clinical practice rest on a continuous search for feedback, so as to keep learning from colleagues and clients alike.

An ICEEFT certified international Trainer, Supervisor and Therapist, Giulia was trained directly by Dr Sue Johnson and works with a number of EFT mentors. She teaches in postgraduate psychotherapy schools in Italy and Brazil, and co-founded the EFT communities of Sul-Sudeste and Nordeste Brasil, fostering a collaborative and generous environment.

Before specialising in EFT she completed her training in Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapy with honours at the Istituto Miller in Genoa, and a Master’s degree in Criminology and Forensic Psychiatric Sciences with full marks at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Genoa. She worked in psychiatric institutions and maximum security prisons, contributing to the validation study of Robert D. Hare’s PCL-R II. She also completed international training with Dr Kathy Steele on the treatment of trauma and dissociative disorders, and is an ISST certified Schema Therapy therapist.

Giulia is fluent in Italian, Portuguese and English, and offers therapy, supervision and training in all three. She has contributed to the growth of EFT in Brazil, Portugal, Poland and Iran.

She co-authored a chapter with Dr Ana Rizzon for a Schema Therapy volume on integrating EFT and Schema Therapy interventions. She edited the Italian editions of Hold Me Tight and of A Primer for Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy by Sue Johnson, and worked with Adriana Zilberman on the scientific review of the Brazilian edition of Sue Johnson’s Attachment Theory in Practice.

Her clinical interests lie in affective and relational difficulties, work with LGBTQ+ couples, trauma survivors and personality disorders, through an approach to Emotionally Focused Therapy enriched by a relational, inclusive and multicultural perspective.

Selected international speaking engagements:

• 10th Conference of the European Family Therapy Association, Naples (2019)
• International Congress of Schema Therapy, Rome (2018)
• 1st International Symposium on Schema Therapy for Couples (2024)
• International EFT Congress, Haarlem (2022)
• EFT World Summit, Amsterdam (2024)
• 5th International Conference, Polish Society for Psychotherapy Integration, Poland (2024)

With global experience as a trainer and speaker, Giulia addresses themes central to contemporary EFT practice: attachment injuries, relational ruptures and the challenges posed by trauma.

Andrea Pagani

Co-founder and Vice President of EFT Italia Community. ICEEFT certified Therapist, Supervisor and Trainer. Director of the EFT Roma Center. Psychologist, psychotherapist, trainer, researcher and writer. President of the Istituto “La Casa della Coppia”. Faculty member of the four-year postgraduate school in Community Clinical Psychology and Integrated Humanistic Psychotherapy, ASPIC.

He has worked in psychotherapy for around twenty years, in individual therapy and leading experiential groups in the Gestalt-Integrated tradition, alongside his work with couples.

As a researcher at Aspicarsa, he studies couple psychotherapy and the use of technology in clinical psychology. With the publisher Sovera he has written Il successo professionale 2.0 (2012), Il Counselling psicologico (2014) and La casa della coppia (2017). He has published widely in scientific and general-interest journals and has spoken about couple relationships on radio and television.

He conceived and developed the first Italian smartphone app for couples, “Crescere insieme in coppia”. His work aims to make psychology available as a resource for wellbeing and for communication within couples and families.