To address and reformulate key emotions, the therapist tracks and attunes to each client's relational experience and reflects the essential elements in this experience. Emotion theorists note that there are only six or so basic emotions that can be recognized from facial expressions by people of all cultures (Ekman 2003; Plutchik 2000). The EFT therapist is happy to deal with positive emotions such as joy and surprise but is usually working with anger, sadness, and shame, and most of all with fear and helplessness. The therapist privileges emotional responses and places them in the context of attachment realities and interactional cycles. The therapist also acknowledges conflicting emotions, recognizing, for example, that a client may long to risk reaching for the partner but is too afraid to do so. As in other experiential therapies, an attuned empathic reflection orders and clarifies responses. The therapist focuses on the most poignant, vivid aspect of emotional experience that is salient in terms of attachment and on a partner's position in the interactional dance. Attachment offers an invaluable guide to the core meaning of the couple's powerful emotions.