Emotional First Aid (EEH) focuses – from conception onwards – on preserving and sustainably supporting the emotional bond between parents and their unborn and newborn children.
Emotional First Aid is characterized by a humanistic attitude. The most important goal of this body-based counseling and psychotherapy is to awaken the inner growth potential and life forces that make satisfaction and sufficient fulfillment in our love, work and self relationships possible.
The attachment-oriented concept of EEH was developed in the 1990s by the psychologist and parent-baby therapist Thomas Harms. This integrative approach has its most important roots in modern body psychotherapy, attachment and trauma research and the findings of body-based parent-infant psychotherapy.
Body information as a guidance system
The body is the central reference system in attachment-based counseling and psychotherapy. The perception of the body plays an important role in determining the respective quality of the client’s ability to relate and regulate more precisely. Mindful observation and evaluation of the client’s subjective body experience therefore plays a key role in the support provided.
Attachment security as the basis for support
In the early counseling and psychotherapeutic work of the EEH, we pursue an attachment-oriented approach. The relationship between facilitator and client provides an experiential space in which the strengthening and weakening parts of the self can be safely contacted, explored and integrated. Attachment security thus becomes the most important source for enabling the development of potential and the integration of traumatic relationship experiences from the various developmental phases.
Self-connection and relationship intelligence
Mindful self-observation of the body is an important foundation of attachment-based support. The prerequisite for this is a stable inner observer, from which the body perceptions, feelings and thoughts can be experienced safely and described in a non-judgmental way. The aim is for clients to learn to draw on their body perceptions at every stage. In this context, we refer to the establishment of a sufficiently secure “self-connection”.
Pregnancy, birth and bonding
In attachment-based support, we assume that the characteristic patterns of how we feel, think and act are rooted in our experiences during pregnancy, birth and early life. Through various forms of bodywork, the pre-peri- and postnatal bonding experiences and the “inner baby” are revived, made conscious and explored within the framework of a secure relationship.
Heart in the EEH
In EEH, contact with the heart is the most important motor for strengthening the bonding forces. Through the physical heart connection, inner resources are strengthened, decision-making is supported and characteristic relationship patterns with oneself and others are examined more closely. In the course of the coaching, clients learn to sense the various heart information and use it to make coherent life decisions and reshape relationships in an empowering way.
Body and intersubjectivity
Attunement and attunement with the client’s mental, emotional and physical experiences are at the forefront of attachment-based support. In body-oriented attachment support, we work on understanding, feeling and comprehending clients more and more comprehensively in their historically shaped forms of experiencing the world and the subject. The aim of the work is to recognize and see each person in their inner richness, their uniqueness as well as their weakening and strengthening parts of themselves within the framework of a relationship-safe space.
Basic Bonding – Group leader
EEH – Specialist consultant
EEH – Therapist
Additional qualification “Attachment-oriented body psychotherapy”