CC12 Topical Panel 02 - Bringing Attachment and Neuroscience into Couples Therapy: Benefits, Challenges, and Pitfalls - Rick Hanson, PhD, Harville Hendrix, PhD, Stan Tatkin, PsyD, and Scott Woolley, PhD
A psychobiological approach to couple therapy utilizes a bottom-up versus a top-down approach to psychotherapy. This means that the couple’s therapist utilizes very fast, often surprising interventions in order to access implicit systems as revealed in micro expressions and micro-movements in the face and body, respectively. This workshop will introduce several exciting bottom-up techniques to use in couple therapy, including the use of surprise statements, movements, poses, and music.
Deficits such as affect blindness, alexithymia, and poor theory of mind will likely lead to mutual dysregulation in couples during periods of distress or threat and is the driving force behind relationship dissatisfaction and dissolution. This workshop will introduce attendees to the most common social-emotional deficits and will demonstrate how to identify these deficits and what to do about them in couple therapy.