1st Edition
An Emotionally Focused Workbook for Relationship Loss Healing Heartbreak Session By Session
Complete with exercises, reflections, and specially selected tasks, this workbook is written for those suffering from heartbreak (and their therapists) to support them in navigating and managing the pain of breakups. The authors help people in this position learn from their experiences, grow stronger from their suffering, and create healthy and fulfilling relationships.
Kathryn D. Rheem and Clare Rosoman bring their experiences as relationship therapists and devotees of attachment science to offer informed support and encouragement to the broken hearted by providing practical strategies to help readers make sense of and grow from their experiences. Mirroring the therapy process, the book is structured so that readers actively participate in their own healing process with activities that guide their journey session by session. Chapters address attachment strategies, facing fear, riding waves of anger, processing grief and loss, forgiveness, and trusting yourself again. This book will help the reader create a future in which they can know and accept themselves as the perfectly imperfect human they are and create secure bonds with the special people in their life.
This workbook is for people who have experienced the loss of a close relationship and are struggling to heal and move forward in their lives, as well as therapists assisting clients in their recovery from relationship loss.
About the Authors
Acknowledgements
Foreword – Dr. Sue Johnson
Part I: Getting Started
1. Getting Ready to Go on This Journey
2. Love and Heartbreak
3. Determining Your Relationship Cycle of Distress
4. Learning about Your Attachment Strategy
Part II: Going Deeper
5. Facing Fear
6.Riding the Waves of Anger
7. Naming and Healing Emotional Scars
8. Processing the Enormity of Grief and Loss
Part III: Growing Momentum
9. Forgiving and Letting Go
10. Trusting Yourself (Again)
11. Building Security with Others
12. Maintaining Your Momentum
Index
Biography
Dr. Kathryn D. Rheem, EdD, is a couples therapist, international EFT trainer, and co-founder of the EFT Café. She has published numerous chapters including as a co-author of Becoming an Emotionally Focused Therapist: The Workbook 2nd edition (Routledge, 2022).
Dr. Clare Rosoman, DPsych, is a clinical psychologist in Brisbane, Australia. She is an international trainer in EFT and is the author of An Emotionally Focused Guide to Relationship Loss: Life After Love (Routledge, 2022).
"Kathryn and Clare have written the workbook to help you heal your pain. The tools you need to start navigating the emotional fall-out of losing your mate and getting your life back on track are embedded in these pages. Science shows that walking through your heartbreak with expert guides changes everything. We have all been right where you are and this workbook is a much needed resource. Clare and Kathryn have brought the process of healing into focus and action within this workbook. It will be a gem for many who are reeling after loss."
Susan M. Johnson, EdD, Founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy, Director of the International Center for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy (ICEEFT).
"For all of us who have felt the agonizing pain of relationship betrayal and loss, this book by Kathryn Rheem and Clare Rosoman is a needed pathway for healing the wounded heart. My colleagues clearly understand the emotional devastation, confusion, and profound loneliness that can be unbearable when our hearts are broken. The chapters of this book guide the reader through the exact steps needed to heal from the deep pain of the heart and soul that comes with relationship loss. It is the same process I use with my clients in therapy. While expressed in culturally sensitive ways, your pain and my pain can be transformed when we can allow ourselves to feel and even befriend it. Rheem and Rosoman offer the reader a guided series of exercises designed to reduce the damaging spiral of emotional pain, heal the wounded heart, and revive the spirit toward growth. While this journey is not painless, you can trust the pain will shrink as you follow their masterful lead. They have written this book with clarity, empathy, and humanity. They are experts and knowledgeable guides, and you will hear yourself in their words and feel better as a result."
Paul Guillory, PhD, EFT Trainer, Author of Emotionally Focused Therapy with African American Couples: Love Heals.
"Facing relationship loss is difficult and all the more so when done alone. This workbook meets you in the heart of loss, guides you through its painful uncertainties, and leads you toward a healing path of resilience and recovery. As compassionate companions, Drs. Rheem and Rosoman walk the journey with you with wisdom, kindness, and hope. Truly an exceptionally honest, inspiring, and practical resource for making it through the hurts that come in love and life."
James Furrow, PhD, Professor, Family Therapist and contributing author / editor of Becoming an Emotionally Focused Therapist, Emotionally Focused Family-Therapy, and The Emotionally Focused Casebook.
"Wow, finally an attachment book that helps us deal with the pain of losing Connection. This invaluable resource will help so many people learn how to authentically face their loss and in the process transform it into growth and resilience."
George Faller, EFT Trainer, Author, Co-Host of Foreplay Podcast, Founder of Success in Vulnerability.
"If you are suffering from the heartbreak of a relationship loss, you will not want to be without the comfort and wisdom of this workbook. From the first pages, you will feel the authors’ strong, caring presence. They draw on cutting edge attachment science and decades of clinical experience to walk you through your grief and confusion. You will be taken through a process that helps you make sense of your distress and reflect on your relationship, but the journey will feel uniquely personal because the authors do not assume all people are the same and process emotions in the same way. In the end, this workbook is about much more than healing a broken heart. It is about getting to know and befriend your emotional world so you can use its inherent wisdom to rebuild your life and love again."
Veronica Kallos-Lilly, PhD, ICEEFT Certified EFT Trainer, Co-Author of An Emotionally Focused Workbook for Couples: The Two of Us 2nd Ed.
"I love this book. Most of us don't know how to move through the grief from losing a partner. Rheem and Rosoman get it and they want to walk with us as we heal from our losses. Their insights and understanding of the overwhelming pain of loss are deeply moving. This workbook is insightful, accessible and very empowering"
Jette Simon, EFT Trainer, Internationally Renowned Psychologist featured on Denmark's DR TV series "We are Fighting to Survive", Director of Center for Emotional Focused Therapy in Copenhagen.
