Gay men face unique challenges regarding intimacy, communication and personal autonomy. Hiding due to being gay along with being raised male, creates a dynamic of distancing as the norm. The goal of psychotherapy is to accept and verbalize vulnerabilities in a context of safety, encourage revealing oneself for the sake of self-acceptance, and to learn how to receive nurturance from others. This workshop will define the art of how to gain connection while maintaining autonomy. There will also be an emphasis on sexuality and how specific attachment styles effects choices related to safety, security and risky sexual practices.
In the old way of thinking, couples were depicted as a communication system that could be improved with relational skills or as interacting psychopathologies needing treatment by a mental health professional. In the new way of thinking, couples are a system of mutually reinforcing interactions that create anxiety or safety, wounding or healing. They also are the source of culture and the fulcrum of social transformation. What happens in the couple happens in the culture; what happens in the culture happens in the couple.
Our natural sexual setpoint explains a lot about arousal, desire and intimate satisfaction. We will explore this issue with research, facts and humor, with the objectives of understanding the effects of estrogen on desire and the effects of testosterone on desire.
This bold take on intimacy and sex grapples with the obstacles and anxieties that arise when our need for secure love conflicts with our pursuit of passion. We will tackle eroticism as a quality of vitality in relationships extending far beyond mere sexuality and show how reconciling these two competing needs is at the heart of sustaining desire over time. We will address paradoxes of desire and how social forces inhibit erotic expression; attachment history and the erotic blueprint.
Rituals have been used for thousands of years to help people move through difficult developmental times, to move on from problems and stuck places and to grieve and leave trauma behind. In this session, you will discover the two types of rituals that can help couples resolve their issues effectively.
What do you do with couples who are split on trying to working on their relationship or calling it quits? They are often poor candidate for traditional couples therapy but they are idea candidates for "Discernment Counseling," a creative way of working with couples our therapy models are not designed for. We will discuss the difference between couples therapy and discernment counseling.
Too little acknowledgment will lead to alienation of one of both partners in couples therapy, but too much acknowledgment without a compelling invitation to move on from conflict, blame and the past to new possibilities won’t work either. Learn how to maintain that delicate balance and let the couple teach you when to use which method.
CC13 Workshop 02 - When Society Loses Control: Attachment, Trauma, and a Developmental Process of Couple and Family Addiction and Recovery - Stephanie Brown, PHD
What is the process of “normal” couple and family recovery in the context of cultural loss of control? We will define addiction as a traumatic disorder of attachment for individuals and the family. We will review the Family Recovery Research Project, with an emphasis on the couple, outlining the stages of active addiction and recovery and the key themes and tasks of development that arise, along with the implications for couples therapy at every stage when the culture remains chronically stressed, chaotic and FAST.
Why has depression been seen as a “woman’s disease”? Depression is not unwomanly, but many feel it as unmanly—setting up what Real calls, “compound depression.” Men, he says, feel ashamed of feeling ashamed, depressed about being depressed,” causing them to hide it, and causing those around them—even medical professionals—to shy away from confronting the condition. Even more important, however, is the fact that many men express depression differently than women. Real will speak of “covert depression” which lies at the core of many of men’s typical “bad behaviors.” like drinking, workaholism, withdrawal, and anger.