Frank Eckloff

One of the most rewarding experiences as a psychotherapist working with young people is seeing children and adolescents recognise and create solutions to their problems themselves because they feel your trust in their strengths and resources. Functional Fluency (FF) is a very valuable tool in this regard.

I studied Education at the University of Cologne in the 1990s. After graduating, I decided to train as an analytical child and adolescent psychotherapist at the Institute for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in the Rhineland (IPR). At the same time, I worked in a therapeutic residential group within the inpatient youth welfare service in Bonn and accompanied trainee educators in their training as a teacher.

Since 2010, I have been supporting adolescents and educators in my own practice in Frankfurt am Main as a registered psychotherapist.

My work as a therapist is based on psychoanalysis. In addition, I draw on a broad, holistic range of methods and integrate TA, systemic approaches, clinical hypnosis, IFS, Hakomi and now also FF into my therapeutic work. 

I first heard about FF from a colleague who was completing his training as a TIFF coach and spoke very enthusiastically about FF. That made me curious, so I took part in a coaching session and then decided to complete the training myself so that I could use FF/TIFF in my psychotherapy practice.

FF offers me and my clients excellent support in gaining a deeper understanding of my and their individual behaviour: FF shows me ways in which I can act more effectively in both my private and professional life. FF helps me to become more aware of my interaction with myself and others and to meet both my own needs and those of others. My skills in mindful self-observation and my emotional competence are strengthened. In relation to my psychotherapeutic work, FF offers me the opportunity to identify and explain both beneficial and hindering dynamics in a very understandable way, so that I can then work with clients to find ways and solutions to challenging situations and entrenched destructive patterns. For example, the model helps me to better understand irritations and obstacles in the relationship between children and their parents and to ask helpful follow-up questions.