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 01 - Infidelity: What is the Essence of the Crisis and How Do Couples Move Forward? - Ellyn Bader, PhD, Marty Klein, PhD, Esther Perel, MA, LMFT, Jette Simon
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.
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
Overtly angry and passive-aggressive partners often present the most difficulty for therapists. They frequently demand intimacy, while being unable to create the conditions for intimacy to occur or be sustained. They require a high level of activity from you to structure treatment, manage hostility in the office and confront hypocrisies that keep their development stalled. Learn to increase your personal strengths to harness the enormous developmental potential that exists in these couples.
Using a developmental lens is powerful to lead couples to make sustained change. Learn to use developmental principles to assess what is wrong and to direct your treatment decisions. Recognize arrested differentiation and see differentiation in action. Videotapes and clinical case examples will be used throughout the workshop to demonstrate how to promote development in hostile and conflict avoidant couples.
This workshop probes the intricacies of love and desire—how they relate and how they conflict.. Participants will learn how emotional intimacy can inhibit sexual desire and why “good intimacy” doesn’t necessarily make for “good sex.” Through case material and video vignettes, we’ll explore how our emotional history: “how we were loved” shapes our erotic blueprints and expresses itself in the physicality of sex: “how we make love”. We will show how to break through erotic impasses and help couples balance the dual needs for security and freedom. This model applies to couples and individuals from all sexual orientations.