Full Course Description

Repairing Trust after Betrayal Trauma

Beyond affairs, violations in intimate relationships are often the result of more common and seemingly small and innocuous betrayals. And when one or both members of the couple have a trauma history, it can significantly impact their ability to work through betrayals of all kinds. This session will explore how to apply complex PTSD interventions in couples' treatment to help partners work through the initial shock of a betrayal, minimize blame and shame, heal the root trauma, and regain trust in the relationship. In this session, you’ll learn:

How to prevent couples from re-injuring partners in sessions
Strategies for creating corrective emotional experiences to regain trust
How to work with “parts” that get activated and triggered when working with betrayal
How to integrate the stages of couples’ treatment with IFS informed trauma techniques

Program Information

Objectives

Execute three steps required for forgiveness to be achieved by someone who has been relationally violated.
Catalogue the core components of healing relational wounds.
Assess the qualities of resilience that are necessary for clients to overcome complex PTSD.

Outline

How understanding the impact of betrayal can guide us clinically in therapy
Why re-injury can occur in therapy and how to prevent it
Implementing IFS-based strategies for treating betrayal trauma
Limitations and Risks of using IFS for betrayal trauma

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychologists
Marriage & Family Therapists
Addiction Counselors
Physicians
Physician Assistants
Nurses
Nurse Practitioners
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 03/18/2023

Strategies for Last Chance Couples

A badly broken marriage—in which both spouses show high levels of anger and disdain, and low levels of patience, good will, or hope—doesn't seem to hold promise for clinical salvation, especially if one or both partners may not even really want things to get better. It’s possible, however, to turn things around! In this session, we'll explore how to engage reluctant partners in therapy without making them feel trapped in an unhappy future. Although we'll focus on four major types of “last chance couples,” the approach applies to couples at any level of distress. Through video as well as role-play demonstrations, you'll learn how to:

Restore hope when couples seem about to give up
Carry out an engaging and nonthreatening first session
Introduce fresh perspectives on problems and engage clients in trying changes that they might feel they’re absolutely unprepared to try
Offer strategies for safeguarding communication and restarting passion and pleasure

Program Information

Objectives

Describe the four major last chance couple scenarios.
List the five principles of the Creative Relational Movement Approach to change.
Describe the steps to creating a therapeutic alliance and contract that honors the ambivalence of the partner(s) who are strongly considering ending the relationship, so that they can engage in “experiments in possibility” without fear that therapeutic progress will trap them in an unhappy marriage.
Describe the steps of a mindfulness-based approach to empathic problem discussion called Beginning Anew.
List three techniques that increase mutual respect, pleasure, and intimacy.

Outline

The four most common “last chance” couples scenarios and how to intervene
The five principles of the Creative Relational Movement Approach to change
The steps to creating a therapeutic alliance that honors the ambivalence of the partner(s) who are strongly considering ending the relationship, so that they can engage in “experiments in possibility” without fear that therapeutic progress will trap them in an unhappy marriage
The steps of a mindfulness-based approach to empathic problem discussion called Beginning Anew, which integrates Buddhist-based and traditional “Western,” research-based communication skills
Three techniques that increase mutual respect, pleasure, and intimacy

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychologists
Marriage & Family Therapists
Addiction Counselors
Physicians
Physician Assistants
Nurses
Nurse Practitioners
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 03/19/2023

Two Approaches to Healing Trauma with Couples

Childhood trauma leaves survivors with a fundamental mistrust in the safety of relationships. As adults, they develop defenses against vulnerability, commitment, and emotion—either shutting down or getting stuck in mutually escalating conflicts with their partner. This session will demonstrate two very different styles of intervention with these clients. One will emphasize challenging the couple’s ability to be emotionally authentic; the other will focus on the importance of somatic communication in helping couples connect. You’ll discover how to:

Help partners identify the role of trauma in their troubled relationships
Challenge them to move beyond their stories and automatic responses
Use nonverbal communication to reduce conflict and connect safely
Evoke a couple’s inherent capacity for authentic emotional connection and expression

Program Information

Objectives

Evaluate two different approaches toward approaching trauma in troubled relationships.
Devise two different strategies for helping couples re-work their automatic responses to each other.
Demonstrate how to use nonverbal communication to reduce conflict.
Demonstrate how to evoke a sense of safety and connection within a couple’s relationship.

Outline

The long-term legacy of early traumatic attachment experience
The “dance of trauma:” how trauma affects intimate relationships
Challenging trauma-related patterns in couples without loss of attunement
Disrupting cycles of blame or disconnection
Teaching couples how to have new conversations
Communicating emotionally
Communicating without the use of words
Capitalizing on the healing potential of relationship

Target Audience

Psychologists
Physicians
Addiction Counselors
Counselors
Social Workers
Marriage & Family Therapists
Art Therapists
Nurses
Other Behavioral Health Professionals

Copyright : 03/11/2022

Imago Relationship Therapy: A New Perspective

Do you avoid seeing couples? Have you started dreading your next appointment with a couple? Or love working with couples and are interested in new tools, techniques, and frameworks for treating their issues effectively? The principles and practical interventions of Imago Relationship Therapy can help. In this session, you’ll be introduced to a new way of viewing couples who come to you for help with communicating their needs and frustrations, ending their power struggles, and revitalizing their devitalized marriages. You’ll explore ways to:

Guide couples from power struggles to empathy with Imago Dialogue
Teach the challenging skill of validating a partner even when you strongly disagree
Support couples’ connection by increasing their awareness of the “Space Between”
Provide your couples with simple yet powerful tools for creating safety in and after sessions

Program Information

Objectives

Appraise the impact of safe communication between couples experiencing relationship distress.
Justify how safety is a necessary conduit to move through conflict.
Demonstrate the Imago Dialogue Process with couples.

Outline

How to help couples focus on the “space-between” rather than the “space-within”
Giving couples a new vision of their relationship early in therapy
How to help couples talk through any topic without polarization
Helping couples through seven stages of differentiation
Helping couples commit to “Zero Negativity”
Connecting current struggles to childhood memories
Guiding copules in learning and practicing relational competency

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychologists
Marriage & Family Therapists
Addiction Counselors
Physicians
Physician Assistants
Nurses
Nurse Practitioners
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 03/19/2023

Emotionally Focused Therapy: A Step-by-Step Approach to Harnessing the Power of Emotion

Even as advances in attachment science have led to an increasing appreciation of the centrality of emotions in human relationships, we still find ourselves often intimidated by the raw power of our clients’ emotions.

Primary developer of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) and best-selling author of, Hold Me Tight, Dr. Sue Johnson, shows you how the EFT method illustrates the new science of love and bonding and helps you become more attuned with your client’s emotions that often flare up in session.

Emotionally focused therapy (EFT) harnesses the new science of love and relationships. Watch now and be guided step-by-step through the process of helping clients tap into their deepest emotional reserves as a positive force for shaping growth and transformation.

Program Information

Objectives

Articulate techniques of EFT to put to practical use in-session to focus on the clients’ emotions versus the content in relation to clinical assessment.
Identify the stages, steps and interventions of EFT and how they relate to case conceptualization.
Describe how to set up new bonding interactions among clients that redefine connection and change working models of attachment.
Instruct the process for facilitating new bonding interactions that promote corrective emotional experiences in clients.

Target Audience

Psychologists, Addiction Counselors, Counselors, Social Workers, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses, and other Behavioral Health Professionals

Outline

Attachment and EFT

Couple and Family Relationships
Focusing on Emotion versus Content
- Dealing with Vulnerability
The Problem with Distressed Relationships
- Conflict in All Relationships
- Consequences of Suppressing Emotion

Emotionally Focused Therapy Overview

The Basics of EFT
- The Essential Problem in EFT
- Empathic Responsiveness
- Empathic Reflection
The Dance of Emotion
- Attachment

The Steps of EFT

Corrective Emotional Experiences in Therapy
Interpretations
Validation
Evocative Questions to Ask
Basic Emotions
- Naming Emotions
Reframing

Video Demonstration - Couple Session

Review and Analysis

Copyright : 03/23/2018

Help Couples Expand Their Sexual Love Language

Many people define intercourse as penetration, disregarding all other aspects of sexual connection such as foreplay or afterplay. The pressure for penetrative intercourse, however, can contribute to power struggles and unhappiness for many couples. What if we reframed intercourse as outercourse—sex play without penetration? This session will help therapists work with couples and individuals for whom intercourse is not a desired erotic experience. You’ll discover how to help couples:

Navigate sexual interactions when one partner wants intercourse and the other does not
Develop erotic compassion toward one another
Find creative and fulfilling ways to be sexual outside of penetration
Talk about common physical struggles with painful intercourse

Program Information

Objectives

Categorize various medical reasons for engaging in outercourse over intercourse.
Distinguish the difference between intercourse, abstinence and outercourse.
Formulate the benefits of outercourse.
Demonstrate how to help couples create safe dialogue around sexual activities.

Outline

Understanding “outercourse” and why it’s critical to understand when working with clients
Medical reasons and more for engaging in outercourse
The many benefits of outercourse
Helping clients create safe dialogue with partners around sexual activities

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychologists
Marriage & Family Therapists
Addiction Counselors
Physicians
Physician Assistants
Nurses
Nurse Practitioners
Other Mental Health Professionals

Navigate Breakups and New Beginnings

The data is clear: most of us will author more than one love story in our lifetime. We talk a lot about the skills and paradigms needed to create an intimate relationship, but we don’t talk nearly enough about the skills and paradigms needed to end an intimate relationship. Learning relational metaskills can help clients approach endings—and new beginnings—with more integrity and relational self-awareness, reducing collateral damage to both self and others. In this session, discover an integrative approach for helping clients better understand the thoughts, feelings, and common issues that arise during a breakup as well as how to integrate the loss and prepare to begin dating again. You’ll explore:

How to teach relational self-awareness as an essential meta-skill for making sense of relationship endings and new beginnings
How to help clients advocate for their relational needs with romantic partners
An integrative approach to helping clients move from fear and relational ambivalence toward empowerment and clarity

Program Information

Objectives

Catalogue the major intrapsychic and relational tasks involved with relationship endings.
Demonstrate how to help clients set boundaries and advocate for their relational needs with new romantic partners.
Practice how to explore with clients the importance of Relational Self-Awareness in creating a successful romantic relationship.
Demonstrate how to avoid common therapeutic pitfalls when working with clients who are ending a relationship or beginning a new one.

Outline

Understanding the psychology of goodbye and how we process grief
How the pandemic has impacted relationships and break ups
Helping clients to integrate their experience of loss
How to help your client know when they are ready to begin again
What you need to know about dating after Loss

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychologists
Marriage & Family Therapists
Addiction Counselors
Physicians
Physician Assistants
Nurses
Nurse Practitioners
Other Mental Health Professionals

The Great Adaptation

Influential therapist Esther Perel is the author of the bestsellers Mating in Captivity and The State of Affairs, and host of the popular podcasts “Where Should We Begin” and “How’s Work?” Her TED Talks have garnered more than 20 million views, and she’s been named one of Oprah Winfrey’s SuperSoul 100 visionaries.

Now Perel’s turning her laser-sharp focus to how these last years have laid bare the importance of being able to reevaluate our goals and loosen the rigidity we’ve been told will hold our work, families, communities, and our very lives together. Adaptability—knowing how to sway when the heavy winds of an unforeseeable change pick up—has become the order of the day.

How many of us grew up being told to stand straight, hold our heads high, and plow forward in this life with courage and determination? It’s the American way. Know your goal, set your intention, don’t deviate, and all will work out in the end. But what happens when the world itself wobbles? What becomes of our plans, and the carefully structured realities we often rely on to justify our existence? What becomes of us?

In this recording, Perel will take us on a journey of exploring how learning to absorb unexpected changes and unforeseen possibilities can be its own grounding force—one that’s better suited to the newly shaken world we and our clients now call home.

Program Information

Objectives

Theorize on the role our environment plays in relation to our psychological health.
Evaluate the concept of “resilience” and “adaptation” as it relates to clinical practice.
Propose at least 3 strategies for assisting clients to adapt to an ever-shifting environment.

Outline

The great adaptation clients and clinicians are facing
Keys to facing unexpected changes
Amplifying and re-framing the core grounding forces in our lives

Target Audience

Psychologists
Physicians
Addiction Counselors
Counselors
Social Workers
Marriage & Family Therapists
Art Therapists
Nurses
Other Behavioral Health Professionals