Hypnosis is an experiential method of "gift wrapping" ideas. With or without formal trance, hypnotic methods can be used in the assessment and intervention process of couples therapy.
Infidelity is not necessarily about sex, but about secrets and the violation of trust. In this workshop, Dr. Spring will map out the trauma of an affair (or other intimate wounds) and help partners think through whether and how to reconcile.
This workshop examines the cultural pressures that shape domesticated sex and the puzzling inverse correlation between greater emotional intimacy and the loss of sexual desire. It will demonstrate how to help couples draw pleasure from the hidden, the suggestive and the uncanny while also respecting their needs for safety and stability. Using case examples, we will explore how to grant the body its profound capacities for communicating in its own language.
How do you forgive a partner who is unremorseful or dead? Is forgiveness the only healthy, moral response to violation? When is forgiveness cheap? This keynote will help hurt partners overcome their hate and hurt, and help offending partners earn forgiveness.
For the first time in history, empowered women are asking for emotional intimacy in their relationships. Many men are coming up short leaving them unfulfilled, frustrated, bewildered and unloved. Traditional therapy sidesteps this basic asymmetry - Rational Empowerment Therapy addresses it. In this address, participants will be introduced to the art of relational empowerment. This radical new approach to intimacy and couples therapy will look at the five losing agendas that waylay good people from fulfilling their goals. This address also will introduce participants to the fundamental techniques of Terry Real's Relationship Turnaround, a method of producing quick, profound and permanent change in troubled couples.
Anthropologist Helen Fisher discusses the brain networks associated with romantic love to explain frustration, attraction, abandonment, rage, the despair response, love, addiction, stalking, love, suicide, and other phenomena associated with romantic rejection. She concludes that long term use of serotonin-enhancing antidepressants can jeopardize romantic love and attachment to a mate.
For the first time couple therapists can truly be scientific practitioners. We know more and more about the nature of the problem - marital distress and the nature of adult love. We also can specify which interventions work and how they work. We have maps, targets, directions and a way home.
Through stunning new brain imaging research, the ADD brain has been uncovered. Based on extensive research using brain SPECT imaging, Dr. Amen has been able to see where ADD resides in the brain and why it has such a negative impact on behavior, including relationships. This workshop will discuss the impact of ADD on relationships and give strategies to help cope with the major issues.
It is said that men are afraid of intimacy. Love-avoidant men don't know what intimacy is; what they fear is subjugation - being drained, used, entrapped. These men most often have histories of enmeshment with either one or both parents. That enmeshment can be positive (e.g. the caretaker} or negative (e.g. the scapegoat), but it always leaves the person with both shame and grandiosity.
The classic passive-aggressive person is a help-rejecting complainer who will not follow through with carefully crafted agreements and seems to be immune to targeted insights. They often end up with a despairing partner.