Dr. Fisher will present an fMRI study of intense romantic love, a primary mating drive, and the impact of this brain circuitry on human sexuality, human marital stability and therapy using SSRI antidepressants.
During the past five years, the field of neuroscience has given us an overwhelming amount of information related to couples therapy. It is now up to us as clinicians to integrate this knowledge into our practice. Join the challenge, as we use these exciting new facts to help couples move from the relational log-jam to lasting change.
Chronically angry, hostile, distancing and rigid couples are a clinical and personal challenge. In this workshop, you will learn to change the trajectory of therapy as soon as entrenched patterns are noticed, to stay out of their conflict, and stay calm in the middle of their storm.
Madanes will discuss some difficult cases and participants are invited to present their own cases for consultation and advice from Madanes. Emphasis will be on partner abuse, assessment and intervention, including cultural factors and community resources. A minimum of five to ten participants will have a chance to consult. The group will engage actively in exercises to demonstrate specific techniques.
Madanes will present strategies for preventing marital violence, from minor occurrences to severe violence. Participants will have a chance to consult with Madanes about their own cases.
This workshop discusses the brain circuitry of the three primary mating emotions: lust, attraction and attachment. It traces the evolution of these emotion systems and illustrates how their neural circuitry contributes to contemporary patterns of marital harmony and discord including adultery; divorce; stalking behavior; clinical depression due to rejection in love; and other issues brought to contemporary couples therapy.
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.
Anxiety and depression are fast becoming the leading causes of personal disability and the single greatest destructive force in relationships. Research indicates that when one person in a relationship is depressed, the divorce rate goes up nine times. Therefore, it is vital that therapists learn to recognize typical and atypical symptoms early in therapy. It also is imperative that symptoms of relational depression are recognized. Lecture, video, written exercises and demonstration will be used.
Some narcissists want to be adored without giving much in return. Others make outrageous demands. Couples therapists are continually challenged to remain centered and not get derailed by their defensive styles. In this workshop, we will discuss how to promote recovery and repair, how to confront and how to increase differentiation to sustain long-term change.
Since the 1990s our understanding of the brain and behavior has taken a giant leap forward. This lecture brings you the latest research on the biology of relationships, along with hopeful new treatment protocols. Dr. Amen shares new insights from the brain through case studies from his own practice with couples who have benefited from his imaging work.
For half a century, close to half of all American marriages crash and burn. Of those couples who stay together, how many do so happily and passionately? Why do so many men and women start off in love and end up in misery? Why is it that the field of couple's therapy has done far too little to alter these grim statistics? In this presentation, Terry Real will introduce a radical new couple's therapy approach that aims to empower the woman, and reconnect the man with a startling and liberating therapeutic truthfulness.
Couples therapy with challenging partners is a therapy of confrontation. You must be proficient at the nuances of gentle and forceful, but effective confrontation. You must oversee and control the confrontation between your clients, to ensure that it remains productive and positive. Learn to confront the partners, help partners confront each other, and manage yourself when they challenge you.
Cultural and religious differences provide the backdrop against which couples' issues of commitment, gender and child raising, as well as, family connectedness and cultural loyalty are played out. Mixed couples often face difficult decisions at key junctures in the life cycle. In this workshop, participants will learn to identify conflicts around culture and religion, tease out the cultural contexts of common couples' dilemmas, and help clients make informed choices about the role that group continuity, family tradition and cultural values will play in their lives.
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.
Madanes will describe the Stages of Alienation that can occur in a marriage. She will present twelve strategies to resolve the most common marital problems.