The first emotion our ancestors evolved was fear—and we remain highly threat reactive today, continually overestimating threats and underestimating opportunities and resources. We’ll explore multiple methods for helping clients “cool the fires” of fear and anger, and internalize inner strength and an appropriate sense of safety.
Building on the keynote on “taking in the good,” we’ll explore ways to use positive experiences to soothe and potentially replace negative material (e.g., relationship upsets, pain from childhood). Through discussion and experiential activities, we’ll match healing experiences to disturbances in the brain’s core motivational systems (Avoid harm, Approach reward, Attach to “us”).
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.
The Atone-Attune-Attach model of couples’ therapy for healing from a revealed extra-relationship affair, with secrecy deception is described. Each of the three phases has 4 objectives. The roles of conflict avoidance and self-disclosure avoidance are discussed, as well as the Gottman-Rapoport conflict blueprint. To deal with attachment injuries and regrettable past incidents, the Gottman Recovery Kit is described. The Gottman-Rusbult-Glass cascade forms the basic theory for this therapy. The roles of cherishing and gratitude versus trashing and betrayal are discussed, as well as the theory of attunement and trust, and CL-ALT and betrayal.
Price:
$29.00Base Price - $59.00 Sale is $29.00price reduced from Base Price - $59.00
Based on Perel’s Mating in Captivity, this bold take on intimacy and sex grapples with the obstacles and anxieties that arise when our quest for secure love conflicts with our pursuit of passion. We will tackle eroticism as a quality of aliveness and vitality in relationships extending far beyond mere sexuality and consider how the need for secure attachment and closeness can co-exist with the quest for individuality and freedom.
Price:
$29.00Base Price - $59.00 Sale is $29.00price reduced from Base Price - $59.00
Based on research, Gottman will discuss his new theory of how to conceptualize “trust” and “betrayal” using interdependence game theory. Trust and betrayal metrics here are not personality traits, but characteristics of daily interaction processes. He will present practical flowcharts for how couples build trust and loyalty, versus how couples build distrust and betrayal. The social skill of “emotional attunement” will be described precisely. A new therapy for preventing distrust and betrayal, and a therapy for healing from betrayal will be presented. Concepts will be illustrated with video-tape and transcripts from actual cases.
Price:
$29.00Base Price - $59.00 Sale is $29.00price reduced from Base Price - $59.00
CC12 Topical Panel 01 - Infidelity: What is the Essence of the Crisis for the Couple? What are the Challenges for the Therapist? - Ellyn Bader, PhD, Helen Fisher, PhD, John Gottman, PhD, and Esther Perel, MA, LMFT
Price:
$29.00Base Price - $59.00 Sale is $29.00price reduced from Base Price - $59.00
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
Ever since Freud’s patient dubbed psychoanalysis a “talking cure,” most forms of therapy include someone talking to a professional. This workshop posits that therapy consists not so much in the action of talking but in the experience of how one is listened to while they talk, and that the more accurate name for successful therapy is the “listening cure.”
Price:
$29.00Base Price - $59.00 Sale is $29.00price reduced from Base Price - $59.00
Remarried couples are often poorly served by therapists who treat them without enough appreciation for the unique complexity and multiple loyalties of stepfamily life. This workshop will combine clinical assessment and treatment issues with a special focus on values issues, such as commitment and fairness that often dominate conflict in stepfamilies.