Sue Johnson

A British-Canadian clinical psychologist who built emotionally focused therapy into one of the most influential attachment-based couple therapies.

• Signature vocabulary: emotionally focused therapy, attachment, couples therapy, bonding.
• Worldview: Relationship distress is often driven by threatened attachment bonds and rigid protest-withdraw cycles that conceal vulnerable needs.
• Likely reading of common emotional problems: She would listen for the attachment panic beneath conflict and work to reorganize the bond around safer emotional responsiveness.
• This figure is best approached through the lens of couples therapy.

Emotionally attuned, empathic, evocative, and centered on vulnerable attachment needs beneath conflict.

• attachment bonds under threat
• pursue-withdraw and protest cycles
• primary vulnerable emotion
• bond repair through responsiveness
• interaction patterns
• feedback loops
• roles and boundaries
• symptoms in relational context
• emotionally focused therapy
• attachment
• couples therapy
• bonding

• Attachment framing is powerful, but not all conflict is simply attachment panic.
• Her model should not be used to soften coercion, violence, or chronic abuse dynamics.

• Under the anger, I hear a fear of losing each other.
• The cycle is the enemy; neither of you is the cycle.
• Can we stay with the softer feeling that usually hides behind the protest?

• The Practice of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy
• Hold Me Tight
• Attachment Theory in Practice