EFFT trains the parent(s) and/or caregiver(s) in the following four domains of action:

1. HOW TO BECOME THE CHILD’S BEHAVIOUR COACH

   Parents and caregivers learn strategies to help the child interrupt maladaptive behaviours, promoting adaptive emotional engagement and modified behavioural responses (e.g., managing anger more effectively).

2. HOW TO BECOME THE CHILD’S EMOTIONAL COACH

   Helping the child identify and process emotions involves understanding the adaptive function of emotions, encompassing bodily felt sense, expressed needs, and action tendencies. Emotion coaching aims to identify and label these elements in real-time responses, facilitating emotional understanding and adopting such skills. Subsequently, the parent or caregiver attends to, labels, validates, and meets the child's emotional needs, utilizing narrative articulation to reduce emotional intensity.

3. HOW TO HEAL RELATIONAL AND ATTACHMENT TRAUMA AND REPAIR RELATIONSHIPS

   Family dysfunction, possibly stemming from relational or attachment trauma, can create resistance in the child towards parental guidance, especially if the parent is involved in the child's trauma. Both child and parent might have experienced traumas hindering therapy progress, including insecure attachment styles. EFFT addresses and heals relational and attachment trauma, fostering parent-child relationship repair. This process enhances adaptive relationships and improves underlying attachment styles, improving the client's capacity to enjoy all relationships.

4. HOW TO WORK THROUGH AND OVERCOME PERSONAL OBSTACLES TO THEIR CHILD’S THERAPY

   Parents or caregivers seeking therapy for their child sometimes feel frightened, anxious, or uncertain about the therapeutic program and their child's reaction. With good intentions, they may inadvertently hinder the therapy. This interruption can happen when they avoid emotionally-charged discussions or fear the therapy's intensity, leading to partial implementation or tolerance of maladaptive behaviours. EFFT identifies and addresses these barriers to ensure the practical application of the therapy.

The outcome resulting from the successful completion of EFFT is twofold.

1. IMPROVEMENT IN PRESENTING MENTAL HEALTH CHALLENGES
   When EFFT (Emotion Focused Family Therapy) is successful, it will lead to a noticeable improvement in the symptoms associated with the specific mental health issue that triggered the pursuit of therapeutic intervention. This positive change occurs due to internalizing the parental or caregiver figure as an emotional and behavioural mentor the child emulates to surmount the mental health challenge.

2. IMPROVEMENT IN FAMILIAL RELATIONSHIPS
   EFFT can revitalize relationship dynamics between the parent or caregiver and the child, creating a sense of enjoyment and closeness. Before engaging in EFFT, tension and displeasure may have dominated the relationship experience. However, the successful application of EFFT leads to a transformative process wherein receptivity, openness, harmony, and pleasure in the relationship increase. The acquisition of skills during EFFT benefits the parent-child relationship and extends to improvements in other interpersonal connections. Thus, EFFT effectively enhances the agency of individuals facing mental health challenges by bolstering their emotional intelligence and augmenting their social support structures, incorporating the family unit.

In a traditional therapeutic setting, a client with a mental health challenge will work with a therapist to improve their condition, often independently. In Emotion Focused Family Therapy (EFFT), the family is actively involved in recovery. Specifically, EFFT aims to have the parent or caregiver play an integral role in the therapeutic journey and help them learn to model healthy emotional engagement with their child. This process also allows parents and caregivers engage more adaptively with their emotions. This modality helps to improve the prognosis of the mental health challenge and the environment the individual and family are in and returning to following treatment.