This book presents deliberate practice exercises to help students, trainees, and clinicians rehearse fundamental skills in emotion-focused therapy (EFT) and hone their own personal therapeutic style. Deliberate practice is a rigorous training method that involves repeated behavioral rehearsal and stimulation-based learning therapy techniques, thus ensuring that practical knowledge is retained and becomes natural so that it drawn upon automatically in real clinical encounters. Each exercise in this book presents several role-playing scenarios in which two trainees act as a client and a therapist, switching back and forth under the guidance of a supervisor. Instructions guide all three participants through the application of specific EFT techniques and interpersonal skills, such as responding empathically to clients, exploring emotions with them, building therapist self-awareness, recognizing client markers to set up chair work, and repairing relationship ruptures. Client statements and sample therapist responses, organized by difficulty from beginner to advanced levels, highlight common therapeutic interactions. These exercises were developed and thoroughly tested and refined based on feedback from EFT training groups internationally, ensuring that deliberate practice effectively complements existing training programs and methods. About the Authors:
Rhonda Goldman, PhD, is a clinical psychology professor at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology in Illinois and an affiliate psychotherapist at the Family Institute at Northwestern University, where she practices emotion-focused therapy (EFT) for individuals and couples. She has authored or edited multiple books on EFT with APA, including Clinical Handbook of Emotion-Focused Therapy (2018) and Case Formulation in Emotion-Focused Therapy (2014), the latter of which has a companion instructional video by the same title. She received the 2001 Carmi Harari Early Career Award from APA Division 32 (Society of Humanistic Psychology). Alexandre Vaz, MSc, is a clinician, professor, and psychotherapy researcher at the University Institute in Lisbon, Portugal. He is the editor of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration's newsletter and program assistant of their international conferences. He hosts a series of online webinars including, the Society for Psychotherapy Research's "Distinguished Researchers" and founded "Psychotherapy Experts Talk," inviting clinicians and psychotherapy researchers to participate in in-depth interviews. Visit https://alexandrevaz.com. Tony Rousmaniere, PsyD, is a licensed psychologist on the Clinical Faculty at the University of Washington Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in Seattle, where he also maintains a private practice. His research focus is clinical supervision and training for psychotherapists and graduate students. He hosts the clinical training website https://www.dpfortherapists.com/. Dr. Rousmaniere’s work has been featured in mainstream press outlets like The Atlantic. In 2018, he won the Early Career Award from the Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy and the Outstanding Publication of the Year Award for the Cycle of Excellence from APA Divisions 29 and 17, respectively. | 
