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.
The brain is involved with everything we do, especially our relationships. In this fun presentation Dr. Amen will discuss different areas of the brain involved in relationships, what they do, what happens when things go wrong and how to improve them. You are a better marital therapist when you understand the brain.
Jay Haley once said that couples work is the hardest kind of therapy. This presentation will identify the most common screw-ups therapists make in couples therapy, and demonstrate ways to avoid them. There will be some-thing for both beginning and experienced therapists, who tend to make different mistakes.
There are multiple reasons for affairs. We will examine the benefits of affairs and why affairs can actually stabilize a marriage. In particular, we will focus on how couples can turn the crisis into an opportunity. This is a multicultural therapeutic approach for working with extramarital relations.
Gridlocked perpetual conflicts often destroy relationships. They repeatedly surface, causing partners endless pain, fear, even trauma. Yet every couple faces them. In this address, Dr. Julie Gottman describes a dyadic therapy method that uncloaks the dreams, history and fears beneath partners’ issues while fostering greater compassion and connection in the couple. An edited film will be shown to demonstrate this intervention.
We have all been taught that our romantic partner should end our misery and make us feel happy and alive. When he or she doesn’t we wonder if they’re the right one. Yet, for most of us, no partner is capable of keeping our heads above the pools of pain and shame we bring to intimate relationships. Only we can drain those pools and become the primary caretakers for the young, needy parts of us that are drowning in those pools. Once this inner trust is achieved, we can love our partners courageously and unconditionally because we don’t need them to always do the heavy lifting of our spirits.
CC11 Topical Panel 03 – Couples and Divorce: How Do You Assess When Separation/Divorce Make Sense or Does it? – Lilian Borges, MA, LPC, William Doherty, PhD, and Julie Gottman, PhD
BT12 Workshop 33 – Brief Therapy for the Treatment of Anorexia – Camillo Loriedo, MD, PhD
Anorexia and Bulimia Nervosa will be presented in the frame of the Extreme Polarities Theory, and examine why, in some families, eating disorders develop and there is continuity among opposite forms of disturbances. Principles of intervention, as well as specific techniques will be presented, including the clinical applications (and advantages) of direct and indirect hypnosis.