Pieces of a Pursuer’s Heart

A Pursuer Softening Experience Through
the Music of Janis Joplin

Presenter: Dr. Giulia Altera
Date: Thu-Fri February 27-28, 2025
Time: 8:00 am – 2:30 pm CDT
Location: Online via Zoom

Registration Cost
Regular: $320
ChicagoEFT members*: $290
* login for member pricing
Save $20! Use Coupon code PURSUER20 at checkout before January 2
Update: Coupon extended until January 17!

About the Workshop

In an intimate relationship, we want and need to give and receive love, but often this exchange of love and caring is blocked and somehow difficult. Although we have the need to be loved, to be seen and cared for by our loved ones, this need can go unmet. This impasse is so painful for human beings that there is no other option than to protect ourselves which leads to rigid, negative interaction cycles that we know very well in EFT!

EFT has a map to deescalate these cycles, but to really change the music of a couple’s dance, the therapist must have a way to support the Pursuer in the cycle to soften. In this workshop, we will work on this key change event in EFT by feeling the story and the music of Janis Joplin. This workshop invites you to listen, literally, to the ultimate change event of Pursuer Softening in an EFT therapy. Not only will it provide you with a roadmap of how we can change the music between partners, it will also give you, as a therapist, a song and music to hold on to as you guide this process. Joplin’s music will help us bring the pieces together to guide you in your sessions.

We invite you to listen to Joplin’s song “Piece of My Heart” before the workshop and hear this story of longing and unmet needs. As we begin to attune to this vulnerable need in ourselves and our clients, we will learn together to “reattune” and find the courage to soften!   

Learning Objectives

Participants will learn to:

• Identify the key assumptions of attachment theory as it applies to the cycle
• Discover strategies of pursuing, attuned with them, how to validate them and work with them in stage 1 and 2.
• Identify how protective defenses of one partner trigger more of their partner’s defense forming a negative looping cycle.
• Deepen Anxious attachment style
• Get familiar with pursuer softening
• Get the Pursuer to go deeper into view of self
• Help the Withdrawer keep their focus on the Pursuer
• Get the Pursuer to ask for help

“Thanks to Giulia’s workshop, I was able to feel the pursuer and have compassion for him or her, even when they scream – scream loudly. Now, I can find more meaning in the powerful energy of those of us who search for love in so many ways, in many directions, from the most salvific to the most damaging.”

“Giulia reminded me that, deep down, when I listen to Janis Joplin’s Cry Baby and sing it at the top of my lungs, I’m giving permission to my inner child to say, ‘I’m here, I need you, come and get me.’ Meanwhile, my therapist self can say, ‘I know that need, that cry of the pursuer, can finally find an answer, at long last, an adequate one.’

This is a review, but also a thank you for the courageous choice to bring Janis, with her crazy, magnificent head, covered in that funny headdress full of a thousand colorful feathers.”

M. – Participant in EFT Italia training

“Since hearing your presentation, every time I listen to one of my pursuers, I feel a different kind of connection. I hear Janis in my heart and in their words—I can feel their pain and anger more deeply. Even Janis herself, I no longer hear her with the same heart.”

K. – PSEFT Conference Participant, Poland

“I’ve never been so engaged, so affected, by a presentation from someone who wasn’t in the room. For over an hour, I was completely wrapped up in everything you were telling us. I can now feel what a ‘pursuer’ feels – the pain and the countless ways they try to connect to avoid the agony of loneliness.”

S. – Conference BEFT Participant, England

About the Presenter

Dr. Giulia Altera

Dr. Giulia Altera is a Psychotherapist and a Clinical and Forensic Psychologist.

She is a certified Trainer, Supervisor and Therapist in Emotionally Focused Therapy. As well as one of the founders of the EFT Italia Community and the Director of the EFT North Italy Center. She is also leading the development of EFT in Brazil.

Giulia brings warmth and passion to her work, and she enjoys providing therapy and supervision in person and online. She is supportive and extremely attuned to the needs of her clients, the groups that she trains, and of the co-trainer. She is professional and effective in her teaching and therapy and actively seeks feedback to keep on growing and learning.

Before EFT she specialized with honors in Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapy at the Miller Institute of Genova. Following by the completion of the II level Master’s Degree at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of Genoa in Criminology and Forensic Psychiatric Sciences. She practiced as a freelancer in Criminal Psychiatric Hospital, in prisons of maximum security, and worked for years in the treatment of drug addiction and Alcohol Dependencies. During this time she also completed the International Training on the treatment of trauma and dissociative disorders with Dr. Kathy Steele (International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD).

She is also a certified Schema Therapist.  She speaks fluent Italian (mother tongue) Portuguese and English, and can provide therapy, supervision and teaching in all three languages.  For this she has been involved in trainings outside her country and she is helping to bring EFT in Brasil, Portugal, Poland and Iran.

With great warmth and passion, she deals mainly with problems concerning couples, and in particular with couples of trauma survivors, with personality disorders (individual and couple), and LGBTQI+ couples.

For more information on Dr. Giulia Altera, please visit: http://www.eft-norditalia.com/ or http://www.eftitaliacommunity.com

More Details

• • Registration will close Tuesday, February 25th, 6:00 pm CST.
  • Use Coupon code PURSUER20 before January 2 January 17 for $20 off your ticket price.
  • Completion of EFT Externship is recommended for this workshop.
  • Zoom details will be sent out to all registrants after registration closes. Please add info@chicagoEFT.com to your contacts to avoid having this email sent to your spam folder.
  • Participants attending the seminar will earn 10 CE credit for attending the entire program. Partial credits will not be offered.
  • ChicagoEFT is approved by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation to sponsor continuing education for LMFTs (#168.000220), Psychologists (#268.000137) and for LCSWs and LCPCs (#159.000961). ChicagoEFT maintains responsibility for this program and its content.
  • The training will be recorded and will be available for 3 weeks after the event. Participants must be present for the live event to earn CEs.