Honoring EFT Founder, Dr. Sue Johnson

December 19, 1947 - April 23, 2024

With sadness, we share that Dr. Sue Johnson, founder of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy, died April 23, 2024, after living with cancer for three years. If you’ve been to a Hold Me Tight® workshop, or read the book, you are among the countless couples, individuals, and families worldwide who have been impacted by Sue’s life and work.

Sue’s life began December 19, 1947, in Kent, England, staying there until completing her undergraduate degree at the University of Hull. She then moved to Vancouver, Canada, collecting her master’s degree and subsequently her doctorate at the University of British Columbia.

Wanting to help couples repair conflicts, strengthen their relationships and improve their mental health, Sue poured herself over hundreds of hours of therapy sessions discovering her key elements that made a difference and changed peoples’ lives. Her thesis became the core of EFT — a humanistic and experiential model of therapy, based in attachment theory, that draws on the power of emotion to create change. EFT has since been widely reviewed as the couple therapy with the highest empirically-validated results.

Sue leaves a substantial body of work including numerous books, articles, chapters, educational videos, interviews, podcasts, and her fictional work, Edgar & Elouise. Her first book, Hold Me Tight, Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love, has sold over one million copies, been translated into over 30 languages, and has been developed into relationship educational programs for both live events and online formats.

In addition to her legacy of therapy and research, we hope Sue is remembered as an amazing partner, incredible “mum,” cherished friend, person of warmth and wisdom, gardener, feminist, tango dancer, lover of nature, and student of history.