I’ve always been drawn to understanding what moves people — what builds connection, and what quietly pulls it apart. That curiosity led me into a service called Family Based Mental Health Services, rooted in the Ecosystemic Structural Family Therapy (ESFT) model, where I spent years working with families in their homes, seeing firsthand how stress and pain ripple through relationships.
During that time, I also explored Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) because of its close connection to the principles of ESFT. Both approaches view relationships as living systems where emotion and structure interact — and both emphasize attachment, empathy, and responsiveness as the foundation of healthy connection. EFT deepened my appreciation for the power of emotion in shaping how we relate, while ESFT grounded that understanding in the broader context of family systems and environment.
Still, something in me wanted to go even deeper. That’s when I discovered Terry Real’s Relational Life Therapy (RLT)— an approach that wove together the emotional depth of EFT with the systemic clarity of ESFT, while adding an unflinching focus on accountability and relational repair.