CC18 Workshop 02 - Diving into the Heart of the Work: How to Produce Deep Change Quickly in Troubled Clients - Terry Real, LICSW

Description: This workshop is on Relational Life Therapy (RLT), a model designed to help clients move beyond shame and grandiosity to build healthier relationships. The speaker shares techniques for confronting dysfunctional behaviors, exploring family-of-origin patterns, and teaching practical relational skills. A case study illustrates how leverage, accountability, and skill-building can shift even high-conflict couples toward repair and responsibility.

Syllabus Description: The secret to helping couples have a powerful, transformative experience in therapy is to get them to deeply explore---while in each other’s presence---their own character structure and family-of-origin trauma. For the therapist, this process involves six steps: arriving at the couple’s relational diagnosis, helping them articulate their repeating loops, getting the backstory of their childhood adaptation, imaginatively reparenting each inner child, loving confrontation, and helping each partner master new skills.

Educational Objectives:

1. Demonstrate understanding of the clear map of the repeating loop the couple is mired in.
2. Utilize their relational diagnosis to wake them up to their patterns of dysfunction and wish to connect.
3. Describe the dysfunctional family of origin backstory to a reparenting dialogue.
4. Discuss relational skills like having good boundaries, speaking up for oneself with love, and responding to criticism non-defensively with a generous heart.

*Sessions may be edited for content and to preserve confidentiality*