About Us
Master Emotion. Create Change. Realize Potential.
Our goal is to help people feel better...
By helping people get better at feeling.
Who We Are
We are a global community of EFSTers. We are parents, clinicians, educators, youth, and anyone who wants to get better at feeling. What began as a little idea has grown into an evidence-based model with global reach and proven results.
Emotion-Focused Skills Training (EFST® ) is built on the transformative power of emotion and a specific, learnable mechanism of change passed on to us by Dr. Les Greenberg, founder of Emotion-Focused Therapy. EFST® was developed for everyday use by our founder, Dr. Joanne Dolhanty. EFST® was created as a simple alternative with one mission: breaking down barriers and redefining access.
Because Les always taught us that the best way to learn is in the client’s chair, we all use the emotion skills we’ve acquired with EFST® in our own lives. Learning EFST® and becoming an expert explicitly involves applying it to ourselves.
What Makes Us Different
This is the people’s model.
When you master the core principles and tools, it empowers you to be creative in making them your own. Staying true to the model keeps us aligned with the research; making it our own keeps it alive and relevant.
We learn in the client’s chair.
Les Greenberg always taught us that the best way to learn is in the client’s chair. Becoming an EFST® expert explicitly means applying the skills to ourselves first; in our own lives, not just our practices.
Boundaries without judgment.
Our innovative construct of “boundaries without judgment” is the piece so many people tell us they’d been missing as it creates clarity and accountability without shame or escalation.
Skills that multiply.
When we train parents to help their own children, youth to lead their own recovery, and educators to handle emotion in the moment before it explodes – and we teach them all to share those skills – we see an exponential spread of healthy emotion skills that reaches far beyond the help we could give treating one person at a time.
Servant-leadership and mentorship.
We embrace a mentorship/apprenticeship philosophy. That paired with a servant-leader practice, makes the EFST® community a place that attracts the best and lets us help the most.
EFST® for everyone. You too can become an expert and make the core tools your own.
Meet Our Founder: Dr. Joanne Dolhanty PhD
Dr. Joanne Dolhanty is best known for her pioneering work in three areas: applying Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT) to eating disorders, incorporating motivational principles into the Emotion Focused approach, and creating a central role for parents in their loved one’s recovery.
This work provided the foundation for EFST® for Parents (EFST-P): a lifespan model for parents, caregivers, and families supporting a loved one of any age facing a mental health, physical health, social, or educational challenge.
Her path was unusual. After a first Master’s in Comparative Literature, she came to psychology driven by a single question: What helps people survive and thrive after adversity? She earned her PhD in Clinical Psychology at York University in Toronto and spent 15 years at the Toronto General Hospital Eating Disorder Program, where she became convinced that determination – once seen as “resistance” – could be channeled and that emotion could provide hope where there was little.
A clinical trainer for three decades, Dr. Dolhanty has trained professionals at the highest levels across Canada, the U.S., and internationally. She is known for a lively, warm, and engaging style, and for an extraordinary talent: making complex theory simple, accessible, and immediately usable. She is known for her ability to inspire trainees toward mastery and excellence. Every trainer at the Institute works to carry forward the philosophy, approach, and constructs she developed.
Join Our Community
EFST® is more than training. It’s a movement of people who believe in the healing power of emotion and in the simple idea that we can all get better at feeling.
Wherever relationships matter, EFST® strengthens them and creates the conditions for change and growth.