This course begins Tuesday, April 4th. Click here to go to our course registration page.
Couples work is challenging. Often we don’t understand what’s happening with one or the other member of a couple, and we can become confused or even frustrated. Although every move every person makes is perfectly understandable — if we can see it from the proper angle — we’re often slow to find the angle.
Although the hallmark of experiential therapy is facilitating deeper, present-moment client experiencing, one of the hardest things to learn is the precise timing of when the therapist should make this move: Deeper experiencing in relation to what? Everything is not of equal clinical value. The ability to create the map as you explore, grasp the dangers and pitfalls, appreciate clients’ hope and pain, and know exactly when, where and how to intervene, is essential.
Over years of working with couples, we develop a sort of library of understandings that helps us swiftly follow our clients’ experiences. The “swiftly” part is even more important in couples work than in individual work, lest we inadvertently alienate one or both of the people before us.
Also, of course, we’ll continue the study of how to facilitate deeper experiencing.
If the Experiential Couples Therapy course teaches the basic theory and practice of this exciting approach, this advanced course dives into the nitty gritty moments of the work, the most challenging episodes that arise in the process. This courses will help you develop an advanced starter kit of individual and relational understandings that could save you years of trial and error in couples counseling.
When: Eight Tuesdays, from 9:00am to 12:15pm. Here are the dates:
- April 4th, 11th, 18th, 25th,
- May 2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd.
Where: 615 Congress Street, Suite 423, Portland, Maine, 04101
Trainer: Tom Kubasik, LCPC, NCC
Registration:
- Students or Conditionally Licensed: $595
- Fully licensed: $745
Click here to go to our course registration page.
Learning Objectives:
This course will help clinicians to:
- Create an environment where both members of the couple feel heard and understood.
- Work quickly to find a focus that works for both parties.
- Get to the problems beneath the problems.
- Facilitate change through powerful enactments.
The Eight Meetings:
Meeting : Doubling down on client experiencing through accessing both the pain and the growth tendency.
Meeting 2: Revealing rather than “papering over” conflicts. Keeping it peaceful in session.
Meeting 3: Finding the Session Focus & Shaping the Session.
Meeting 4: Understanding vs. Agreeing & “That Make No Sense” vs. “I Don’t Understand”
Meeting 5: Turning Client Frustration into a Clinical Goldmine.
Meeting 6: Who’s Turn Is It? Working on behalf of both clients at all times.
Meeting 7: Advanced explorations of the Enactment.
Meeting 8 Advanced Explorations of Injury and Repair.