CC13 Workshop 02 - When Society Loses Control: Attachment, Trauma, and a Developmental Process of Couple and Family Addiction and Recovery - Stephanie Brown, PHD
What is the process of “normal” couple and family recovery in the context of cultural loss of control? We will define addiction as a traumatic disorder of attachment for individuals and the family. We will review the Family Recovery Research Project, with an emphasis on the couple, outlining the stages of active addiction and recovery and the key themes and tasks of development that arise, along with the implications for couples therapy at every stage when the culture remains chronically stressed, chaotic and FAST.
This bold take on intimacy and sex grapples with the obstacles and anxieties that arise when our need for secure love conflicts with our pursuit of passion. We will tackle eroticism as a quality of vitality in relationships extending far beyond mere sexuality and show how reconciling these two competing needs is at the heart of sustaining desire over time. We will address paradoxes of desire and how social forces inhibit erotic expression; attachment history and the erotic blueprint.
This workshop focuses on couple therapy with highly disorganized partners and couples. Special attention will be paid to the importance of strong therapeutic frame (rules) and therapeutic stance (goals). Highly disorganized partners and couples will be viewed through the lens of attachment theory, regulation theory, and neurobiological development.
All couples and couples therapies struggle with issues of mixed loyalties. At any given moment, do I choose my own fulfillment as an individual or do I yield to the needs of the relationship? Is it a zero-sum game in which one partner wins and one loses – and if not, how else can we think about it? This keynote address introduces a model integrating both attachment and differentiation in couples therapy through the idea of enlightened self-interest – taking care of yourself by taking care of the relationship – as well as a model of healthy sacrifice, which is missing in our contemporary, Narcissistic culture.
Price:
$29.00Base Price - $59.00 Sale is $29.00price reduced from Base Price - $59.00
The psychobiologically oriented couple therapist understands that the intersubjective, phenomenological process operating in primary attachment relationships relies heavily on fast acting implicit memory systems. Because of this phenomenon partners in a relationship rarely know what they are doing or why, and so they confabulate meaning in the absence of real understanding. Additionally, partners in couple therapy maintain hidden agendas and use deception in order to protect themselves from loss.
Price:
$29.00Base Price - $59.00 Sale is $29.00price reduced from Base Price - $59.00
Now that you understand the neuropsychology of attachment, how are you going to use it in a session where one partner is yelling at the other for abandoning him/her who is in turn trying to take refuge under the coach? Learn how to put theory into practice using an experiential approach to explore old neural circuitry around attachment and build new pathways. We will be using the present moment and mindfulness integrated into therapy to slow things down and rewire the brain.
Attachment theory posits, along with those healthy ones, the ‘securely attached,” two important types of troubled groups – those with “anxious,” and “avoidant,” attachment styles. Said in plain English, this amounts to pursuers and distancers. But the pursuer/distancer dynamic has been a central concern to couples and family therapy since it’s inception in the nineteen-fifties. This workshop will look at some of the many ways this dynamic has been thought of and treated – from recursive feedback loops, to “love addiction/love avoidance,” to attachment styles and beyond.
Affairs can have a devastating impact on couple relationships. Emotionally Focused Therapy provides a powerful way to intervene when there has been an affair. This workshop provides a typology of different types of affairs and treatment strategies for each type. Using video and case demonstration, participants will learn how to identify, manage, and bring healing and safety to couple relationships when there has been an affair.
Price:
$29.00Base Price - $59.00 Sale is $29.00price reduced from Base Price - $59.00