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. We’ll use clinical videos and transcripts to identify and disrupt deception. You’ll learn to successfully confront the evasiveness, hypocrisy and avoidance that keep couples developmentally arrested and differentiation failing.
BT12 Short Course 35 – An Integrative and Creative Approach Working with Couples Achieving Lasting Solutions – Bruce Gregory, PhD and Birgitta Gregory, PhD
This short course will focus on the treatment of couples from the perspectives of symptoms, rigid, dysfunctional behavior patterns, and narcissistic defenses. An integrative approach utilizing creativity and humor will be presented, incorporating CBT, psychodynamic, Ericksonian, Jungian and existential perspectives. Validation, sequencing, containment and questions that facilitate accountability will be highlighted in the context of empowering clients on a variety of levels.
BT12 Workshop 34 – Cognitive-Behavioral Techniques with Couples – Frank Dattilio, PhD, ABPP
This workshop focuses on the specific use of cognitive-behavioral strategies as an adjunct to the many treatment modalities of couples’ therapy. It offers a basic overview of the theories of cognitive-behavioral therapy, particularly as it applies to couples. Participants will learn firsthand techniques and strategies for working with difficult couples and how to integrate these strategies with their respective modes of treatment. The presentation is followed by a videotape that demonstrates the implementation of techniques and interventions.
BT12 Workshop 31 – It Takes One to Tango: Doing Couples Therapy with Individuals – Michele Weiner-Davis, MSW, LCSW
That only one partner is willing to seek relationship therapy should not deter therapists since there is much that can be accomplished. In fact, there are occasions when working with only one partner is preferable. This workshop will explore these situations and offer therapists a conceptual framework for conducting relationship oriented sessions with one partner present.
BT12 Workshop 32 – Rethinking Couples Therapy: A Radical Approach to Love, Sex and Infidelity – Esther Perel, MA, LMFT
Couples therapists are typically discouraged from seeing partners separately lest power imbalances, allegiances, or secrets further divide the couple. What’s lost in this approach? 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 environment to work creatively with infidelity.
BT12 Workshop 41 – Mating in Captivity: Reconciling Attachment, Security and Erotic Desire in Couples – Esther Perel, MA, LMFT
Based on Perel’s bestseller, Mating in Captivity, this bold take on intimacy and sex grapples with the obstacles and anxieties that arise when our quest for secure love conflicts with our pursuit of passion. We will tackle eroticism as a quality of aliveness and vitality in relationships extending far beyond mere sexuality, and consider how the need for secure attachment and closeness can co-exist with the quest for individuality and freedom.
BT12 Workshop 44 – Betrayed: Helping Couples to Heal from Infidelity – Michele Weiner-Davis, MSW, LCSW
If you work with couples, you’re no stranger to infidelity. And because healing from infidelity is challenging, it behooves us to have a clear roadmap of the territory. In this workshop, we’ll go over an array of post-affair issues, including ways to deal with intense emotions, whether to discuss the details of the betrayal, how to begin rebuilding trust in the aftermath of the discovery, whether to have clinical ultimatums about ending affairs, how to handle setbacks, and how to deal with residual feelings for the affair partner.
BT12 Clinical Demonstration 10 - Assessing a Couple’s Developmental Stage & Selecting High-Impact Interventions - Ellyn Bader, PhD
Learn to quickly identify a couple’s developmental stage. Assess each partner’s role in maintaining arrested development and create an effective treatment plan that emphasizes “teamwork”.
BT12 Conversation Hour 10 – Rethinking Couples Therapy: A Radical Approach to Love, Sex, and Infidelity – Esther Perel, MA, LMFT
Educational Objectives:
Learn the philosophies of various practitioners and theorists.