ICEEFT certified EFT Trainers are the principal leaders in advancing the mission of ICEEFT: to educate mental health professionals and to raise public awareness of the effectiveness of EFT and of its role in strengthening relational bonds.
As of August 2026 the official ICEEFT register lists 81 Trainers in active practice, alongside seven Trainers holding emeritus status. They work in North America, including Mexico, in the Netherlands, England, New Zealand, Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, Romania and Turkey. Some Trainers also teach regularly in Asia, Brazil, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Iran, Israel, Norway, Russia, Slovenia, South Africa, several countries of Central and South America, Spain and Sweden.
Trainer candidates are currently considered only if they are fluent in at least one language other than English and/or are based outside North America. A moratorium on new Trainer candidates is in place in North America, because ICEEFT vouches for the Trainers it certifies and for their level of qualification, preparation and accountability.
Responsibilities and coordination of ICEEFT certified Trainers
The role of an EFT Trainer is demanding. EFT Trainers lead Externships, Core Skills, workshops and masterclasses, as well as advanced trainings on specific themes, and they offer supervision.
A Trainer is usually affiliated with an EFT centre and often directs it.
Their responsibilities typically include:
- Developing and promoting an EFT centre
- Acting as the primary link between the ICEEFT Board and a local EFT centre
- Serving on ICEEFT committees
- Contributing to the development of EFT practice, supervision, training and research
- Collaborating with and supporting one another in developing EFT training events and resources
Following the core values of ICEEFT, EFT Trainers look for opportunities to support the development of EFT centres and communities through innovation, collaboration and advocacy in the best interests of EFT professionals.
As ambassadors and stewards of the EFT model, Trainers seek opportunities to collaborate actively and to co-train with other Trainers, supporting the growth of EFT competence globally and locally.
Where training opportunities or invitations involve overlapping interests and expertise, Trainers contact their colleagues in the area concerned in order to consult and to coordinate any training they wish to offer with existing training programmes and local community initiatives.
This open and cooperative consultation respects the considerable effort and investment of all Trainers and community organisers, and reflects the collaborative and generous nature of the EFT model.
Sue Johnson
Sue Johnson was the founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy and an ICEEFT Trainer. She founded the International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy (ICEEFT) and, with her husband John Douglas and her colleagues Gail Palmer and Alison Lee, the Ottawa Couple and Family Institute. For more than ten years she directed the Marital and Family Clinic at the Ottawa Civic Hospital. A clinical psychologist, researcher, teacher and author, she was one of the leading innovators in the field of couple therapy, and taught and wrote across the world on attachment and relational bonds, on the science of love, on couple relationships, on trauma in couples, on forgiveness and on relational repair. She died on 23 April 2024.
Sue was the principal developer of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFT), whose effectiveness has been demonstrated across more than thirty-five years of clinical research. Author of several authoritative texts and of numerous articles on couple and family therapy, as well as of Hold Me Tight (2008), she was a professor at the University of Ottawa and at Alliant University in San Diego, California. Her last books are Attachment Theory in Practice: Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) with Individuals, Couples, and Families (2019) and, with Leanne Campbell, A Primer for Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT): Cultivating Fitness and Growth in Every Client (2022).
She received many honours for her work, among them the Outstanding Contribution to the Field of Couple and Family Therapy Award from the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy and the Research in Family Therapy Award from the American Family Therapy Academy. In August 2017 she was appointed to the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian honour, in recognition of her paradigm-shifting work in couple and family interventions, her research and her contribution to the training of mental health professionals worldwide.
Leanne Campbell
Dr T. Leanne Campbell, Ph.D., R. Psych., is a registered psychologist in Canada and an ICEEFT certified Therapist, Supervisor and Trainer. Trained by Sue Johnson in the early 1990s, she has worked in the EFT model ever since and has trained thousands of therapists worldwide.
She lives and works on Vancouver Island, where she is co-director of the Campbell & Fairweather Psychology Group and of the Vancouver Island Centre for EFT, and an Honorary Research Associate of Vancouver Island University. She runs a full-time private practice across two sites, comprising more than twenty clinicians, and is a site coordinator for an outcome study on Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT). Before entering clinical practice she worked in education, first as a teacher and then as a professor of psychology.
She worked closely with Sue Johnson over many years, studying session transcripts and recordings to refine the key interventions of the model. With Sue Johnson she wrote A Primer for Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT): Cultivating Fitness and Growth in Every Client (Routledge, 2022) and Emotionally Focused Therapy for Trauma (Guilford, 2026).
Her clinical and training work covers EFT with individuals, couples and families, with a primary focus on trauma and grief.
Matt Angelstorf
Matt is a German clinical psychologist who has always been drawn to understanding how intimate relationships work and to helping people strengthen their love for one another.
An ICEEFT certified Therapist, Supervisor and Trainer, Matt has been a driving force in teaching and growing EFT in Germany since 2009. In 2013 he had the opportunity to work at Sue Johnson’s Ottawa Couple and Family Institute, training alongside some of the most experienced EFT Trainers.
Matt brings a powerful presence and warmth as a therapist, and excellent structure and clarity as a teacher.
Alongside his clinical practice, he has long been interested in finding ways to educate the wider public on how to build and sustain satisfying, lasting relationships.
George Faller
George Faller is a certified Trainer, Supervisor and Therapist in Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy. A retired Lieutenant of the New York City Fire Department who served during 9/11, he is a licensed marriage and family therapist in both New York and Connecticut, and that background, together with his teaching style, makes him a sought-after speaker around the world. He founded the New York Center for Emotionally Focused Therapy. He is an AAMFT approved supervisor, teaches at the Ackerman Institute for the Family, serves as Director of Training at the Greenwich Advanced Counseling Center in Connecticut and sits on the Board of the Tulane School of Social Work.
He is the author of True Connection, Sacred Stress, Emotionally Focused Family Therapy and Brave Love / Great Sex. He hosts the podcast Foreplay Couples Therapy and runs the therapist training platform Success in Vulnerability.
James Furrow
James L. Furrow, Ph.D., is a recognised leader and active contributor to the practice and research of Emotionally Focused Therapy with couples and families. He is author and editor of core EFT texts, among them Emotionally Focused Family Therapy: Restoring Connection and Promoting Resilience and Becoming an Emotionally Focused Therapist: The Workbook. His research on couple therapy and positive youth development appears in leading journals in the field.
He is a clinical fellow and an approved supervisor with the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. Jim co-founded the Los Angeles Center for Emotionally Focused Therapy and is an ICEEFT certified EFT therapist, supervisor and Trainer. He has served as Professor of Marital and Family Therapy and Chair of the Department of Marriage and Family at Fuller Graduate School of Psychology, Pasadena, California. He now lives in Seattle, Washington, where he maintains a clinical practice, teaches at Seattle University and conducts professional trainings.
His research, writing and training guide therapists towards the effective use of emotion to transform relationships and renew resilience.
Paul Greenman
Paul is an ICEEFT certified EFT therapist, supervisor and Trainer. Alongside his work at the Ottawa Couple and Family Institute and at the family medicine unit of the Montfort Hospital in Ottawa, he is a full-time professor of psychology and former Chair of the Department of Psychoeducation and Psychology at the Université du Québec en Outaouais in Gatineau, Québec.
Throughout his career Paul has been closely involved in teaching and supervising EFT at the Montfort, at the UQO psychological services clinic and at the Ottawa Couple and Family Institute. He has a strong interest in the application of psychological treatments in medical settings: he has supervised and contributed to research on EFT with couples where one partner lives with cardiac disease, and on its effects in the management of other conditions, including diabetes and postpartum depression. He recently worked with Sue Johnson and colleagues at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute on the development of “Healing Hearts Together”, an adaptation of the Hold Me Tight groups for cardiac patients and their spouses.
Paul has published numerous peer reviewed articles and book chapters, and presents regularly at scientific conferences on the process and effectiveness of EFT for couples. He works and teaches in French, German, Italian and English.
Lieven Migerode
Lieven Migerode (b. 1957) is a clinical psychologist and an ICEEFT Therapist, Supervisor and Trainer, now holding Emeritus Trainer status. He is a collaborator and family therapist at Context, UPC KULeuven.
He was president of the Belgian association for relationship and family therapy and systemic counselling (BVRGS) from 2008 to 2016, and is a certified BVRGS supervisor and Trainer. He has published in Belgium and abroad on love, relational therapy, sexuality and the role of couple and family therapy in psychological care, including Love and Loving (2015, in Dutch). He worked for years at the University Psychiatric Hospital in Leuven, co-leading the postgraduate training programme in couple and family therapy. In his clinical practice, couples have been at the centre of his work for thirty-five years.
Gail Palmer
Gail Palmer, MSW, RMFT, is a founding member of the Ottawa Couple and Family Institute and co-director of the International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy (ICEEFT). She holds a Master’s in Social Work, is a registered Marriage and Family Therapist in Canada and an AAMFT Approved Supervisor. Over the past thirty years Gail has worked closely with Sue Johnson, the creator of Emotionally Focused Therapy, and is an experienced EFT supervisor and Trainer.
She currently offers workshops, trainings and core skills courses to mental health professionals in institutions around the world. She chairs the ICEEFT Education Committee and is responsible for mentoring and training EFT Trainers internationally. Gail lectures in couple and family therapy at the School of Social Work of Carleton University and at Saint Paul University in Ottawa.
Gail has a particular interest in applying the model to work with families. Over the past decade she has been one of the principal EFT Trainers developing and extending Sue Johnson’s EFFT method. She is co-author of Emotionally Focused Family Therapy: Restoring Connection and Promoting Resilience and of Becoming an Emotionally Focused Therapist: The Workbook. Her work has included EFFT trainings across North America, Europe and Australia and New Zealand, presentations at EFT summits, workshops at the Networker Symposium and AAMFT, and articles in professional journals and in the ICEEFT newsletter.
Professionally, Gail’s main passion is helping therapists, whether new to EFT or already certified, to bring the powerful interventions and skills of this model into their own family therapy room. Further information is available on Gail’s website, gailpalmerefft.com.
Zoya Simakhodskaya
Zoya is a psychologist and psychotherapist, and an ICEEFT certified EFT Therapist, Supervisor and Trainer. She has a full-time practice in Chelsea, New York, with adults and couples, specialising in cross-cultural and bilingual populations. Zoya is a founding member of NYCEFT and sits on its Board of Directors.
In order to provide the best treatment for couples and families she founded and directed the Center for Psychological and Interpersonal Development in New York City. Alongside her psychotherapy practice, Zoya has many years of experience in crisis intervention within a city psychiatric emergency service. She continues to teach on a voluntary basis at the New York University School of Medicine, at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and at the CUNY Graduate Center. Zoya teaches and presents EFT nationally and in other countries, including Russia, Ukraine and Italy.
She enjoys helping therapists master the EFT model and work through their obstacles in learning it. She has a particular interest and expertise in applying EFT to help couples build satisfying sexual relationships.
- Master’s in Counselling Psychology, Northwestern University
- Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, CUNY Graduate Center
- Faculty of Psychiatry, New York School of Medicine
- Adjunct faculty of doctoral psychology programmes at CUNY and Rutgers University
- Founding member and member of the Board of Directors, NYCEFT
- Level 3 therapist in Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy
Jef Slootmaeckers
Jef is a licensed marriage and family therapist in Belgium, and a certified EFT therapist, supervisor and Trainer.
He began his work in a shelter for women and children and then spent more than a decade in a specialist centre, offering couple therapy to people whose relationships had escalated into violence. He specialised in EFT and looks for ways of approaching partner violence from a position of attachment and love. He has written widely on the subject and, with Lieven Migerode, is the author of the Dutch-language book Partner Violence and Emotionally Focused Therapy. Fighting for Love.
In recent years Jef has trained a number of teams to work with highly reactive and violent couples. He now runs a private practice for EFT therapy and supervision.
He sits on the board of EFT Belgium. With Lieven Migerode he has presented the EFT and Violence / Fighting for Connection training in several countries.
Alexine Thompson-de Benoit
Alexine is an ICEEFT certified Therapist, Supervisor and Trainer for French-speaking Switzerland, specialising in couples and families.
A Swiss FSP psychologist, she lived in Los Angeles for twelve years, where alongside her work as a licensed marriage and family therapist she undertook specialist training in Emotionally Focused Therapy and went on to certify as an EFT therapist.
In 2013 she returned to Switzerland with her family, where she is a clinical psychologist and a member of the Swiss Federation of Psychologists, and works in private practice almost exclusively with couples. In recent years she has been central to the development of EFT in her country, co-facilitating and co-organising trainings, introductory workshops and public speaking events, delivering numerous Hold Me Tight workshops and supervising EFT therapists in training.