CC23 Workshop 05 - Deep Change: Working with Trauma in Couples Therapy - Terry Real, LICSW

This workshop introduces participants to a new form of couples therapy – one that does deep individual work in the presence of the partner. Most of us, when faced in couples therapy with one or both partners needing trauma work or work on their characters refer these individuals to individual treatment. RLT offers a combination of loving confrontation (Joining through the truth), educational coaching on relational skills, and inner child work that, taken together, produce quick, profound, and lasting change.

Any mental health professional or coach dealing with relational issues in his or her work. It is relevant to both couples therapists and individual therapists with a relational perspective. Anyone interested in how to integrate trauma work into couples therapy. Anyone wishing to go more deeply in their own clinical work.

Learning Objectives:

1. How to quickly identify and articulate the couple’s choreography, their dynamic, (Eg. The more she pursues, the more he withdraws.)
2. How to wake up dormant parts of the partners we work with – accountability, for example, or empathy through joining through the truth, the art of loving, highly empathic confrontation.
3. How to transition smoothly from the present difficulty to family of origin and early childhood, identifying and using resonances – repeating patterns in attitude or behavior.
4. How to bring the present-based, mature, Functional Adult part of the person into relationship with the Adaptive Child and Wounded Child parts of the person.
5. How to empower the individual to begin re-parenting his or her inner children – both nurturing and containing them.
6. How to bring the newly empowered partner back into the couple’s relationship with a creative, new position.
7. How to debrief with the witnessing partner, amplifying his or her experience of empathy and compassion.