In this keynote, we will delve into the transformative realm of Solution-Focused Couples Therapy, exploring the Diamond Approach that unlocks the potential for harmony in relationships. This approach focuses on cultivating positive change, resilience, and effective communication, empowering couples to navigate challenges and deepen their connection. Join us on a journey to discover practical tools and insights that foster understanding, promote emotional intimacy, and pave the way for enduring relationship satisfaction.
The needs of couples change as our times are changing. Flexibility around sexuality, gender and betrayal are skills that we need to continue to incorporate. This panel will discuss issues of gender, identity shifts, sex and intimacy, and multiculturalism that modern couples encounter in their relationships. We will also discuss alternative and modern monogamy structures and how to create new monogamy agreements.
Although nowadays we have great models of couple therapy, therapists can become pessimistic in working with difficult couples—and inadvertently send messages that undermine their relationships. Based on a new research study with clients who have been in couple therapy, this presentation will describe things to generally avoid saying to couples about their relationship and its prospects for repair. The workshop will offer a mindset for staying positive with couples and a set of skills for handling therapeutic impasses without resorting to making comments that undermine the therapy and the couple relationship.
Although nowadays we have great models of couple therapy, therapists can become pessimistic in working with difficult couples—and inadvertently send messages that undermine their relationships. Based on a new research study with clients who have been in couple therapy, this presentation will describe things to generally avoid saying to couples about their relationship and its prospects for repair. The workshop will offer a mindset for staying positive with couples and a set of skills for handling therapeutic impasses without resorting to making comments that undermine the therapy and the couple relationship.
As practicing relationship experts we find ourselves steeped in war these days. In styles hot and cold, waring couples seek our advice. Conflict between nations haunts our consciences. Even Nature itself seems to be turning against us as a result of our own virtually suicidal behaviors. Across the globe, Democracy is on the ropes with an alarming resurgence of autocracy, the rise of the most virulent, savage aspects of Patriarchy. As a species, we are at a crossroads. We will trade in the millennial old paradigm of “power over” for a new life based on ecological wisdom, interdependence, or we may bequeath to our children and grandchildren a hot, mean, largely toleration world.
How can we relationship experts stand by in “neutral” silence – when we have something so critical to say, to teach?
Experiential techniques can reach the heart of the matter sooner as it focus more on process and less on content but couples sometimes can resist engaging in it preferring to stay on the storytelling of the last argument. This workshop will present ways to circumvent the “blame game” using experiential techniques with a “twist” that will make sessions come to life, bringing more fun, and emotional impact to the sessions, and making it memorable.
Dr. Giammattei will present the underlying framework that therapists who work with transgender or gender-expansive (TGE) couples need to understand to provide gender-affirming treatment. He will share ways to explore your own hetero/cis-normative beliefs around coupling and how these influence the models you choose, the questions you ask, and the interventions you use. While TGE couples experience many of the same issues as other couples, we will explore the minority stress and unique stressors that impact these issues in profound ways. Dr. Giammattei will use experiential exercises and clinical vignettes to discover and utilize the basics of the gender-affirming approach to couple therapy.
Regardless of the model of couple therapy used, being a gender-affirming couples therapist requires both an understanding of your own gender narratives, the hetero/cisnormativity in your models, as well as the key issues that may impact couples where one or more partners is TGE.
Therapists and counselors need training and tools to intervene with relationship issues where there are sexual dilemmas. After an overview of clinical concepts, this course will offer skills to help therapists and counselors address concerns around intimacy, helping individuals and couples to improve their intimate relationships.
These topics may trigger countertransference and projection for the therapist and couples can face frustration and repeat patterns that lead to destructive behaviors both individually and with a partner. We will the basics of the integrative sex therapy model and touch upon trauma, desire issues and recovery from affairs and how these unique issues impact treatment.
Based on clinical practice, research and case examples, we will cover interventions and techniques that foster effective, ethical therapeutic relationships for clients struggling with intimacy issues.
Couple therapists often expend too much energy by failing to take up acting out in couple therapy. Therapists are working too hard because they fail to notice acting out by one or both partners and deal with it appropriately. Acting out should not be rewarded with doing therapy. Rather, acting out is a sign that the therapist does not have a therapeutic alliance with the couple and must use specific tools necessary to address it as soon as it arises. A therapeutic alliance means that the couple and therapist remain fully collaborative, cooperative, and on task. The task of couple therapy is to focus on the relationship, not on the therapist or partner on partner. The couple therapist must use supportive confrontation of the couple system itself (avoiding partners directly) in order to gain a therapeutic alliance. In this workshop, attendees will learn how to spot signs of acting out and practice — through demonstrations — various interventions.
As with any approach, couple therapy must have a clear vision toward which the couple can navigate. We may call this the therapeutic goal or therapeutic narrative. The clarity by which the therapist holds this vision and expects the couple to meet this goal largely determines therapeutic success. We might ask the couple before us, “Why are you a couple?” “What’s the point of your relationship?” “Who or what do you both serve?” Most partners will say, “We love each other,” or, “We have children,” or, “We have similar things in common.” This speech focuses on what predicts long term success in adult romantic relationships. We will discuss how purpose and shared vision sets the stage for meaningful, long-lasting relationships, and how a lack of purpose, shared meaning, and shared principles of governance (guardrails that protect partners from each other) is a predictor of accumulated, psychobiological threat and eventual dissolution.