Couples, because they come from different background and have different understandings, often use the same words to mean different things, leading to unnecessary conflict. This workshop will provide a simple, but powerful method to quickly resolve couples conflicts using action talk.
Through case examples, Esther Perel will show how to effectively engage such issues as intimacy, sexuality and infidelity by creating separate spaces where each partner can explore his/her feelings and experiences along with larger relationship dynamics. We will show how to navigate privacy and secrecy, honesty and transparency, stage interventions around sexual impasses, and structure a safe and flexible therapeutic environment to work effectively with infidelity.
Sex addiction destroys trust in relationships, traumatizing the partner, the sex addict, and the family system. Relational trauma left untreated will have both parties and the entire system crumbling. Attunement, communication, and empathy (ACE) are the three pronged stool that supports the long, and sometimes arduous, journey to restoring trust. The goal is to recognize the signs of relational trauma in both parties, and compare the difference between relational trauma and co-dependence
Everybody lies. Some lies are loving and harmless. But, others are enormously destructive. Couples’ patterns of deception often begin innocently but end in couples destroying the love they once had. Self- deception, conflict avoidance and felony lies all undermine commitment and connection. Learn to identify and disrupt deception, confront evasiveness and hypocrisy and facilitate differentiation.
While we love those deep, intimate conversations that bring us close together and join our spirits, what role does difference play in passion? Come explore this and other questions related to relational happiness. We will identify two empathic systems, and understand the role of dopamine in intimate relationships.
How to work with partners who are leaning in difference directions about staying together and trying therapy. Learn core techniques and see a video demonstration of how to work confidently with these challenging couples. You will learn the key pathways offered couples in Discernment Counseling.
Why does great sex so often fade for couples who claim to love each other as much as ever? Why doesn’t good intimacy guarantee good sex? When you love , how does it feel and when you Desire how is it different? Loss of Desire brings many people into our offices. It is the prime sexual complaint that leads relational unhappiness, infidelity and even divorce. For the most part, sexuality has been relegated to sex therapy and couple therapy has been a desexualized practice. Yet, love in our digital age puts sex at the center of couples’ lives.
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.