Advanced Training
The Developmental Model of Couples Therapy:
Achieving Clinical Excellence with Difficult Couples
Objectives
- Identify couples stuck in symbiosis and describe developmental progress.
- Describe the skills needed for partners to evolve beyond hostility and Interrupt Rapid Escalation of Hostility.
- Define developmental trauma and demonstrate how it shows in couples therapy.
- Explore 5 ways that developmental trauma impacts self-differentiation.
- Distinguish between PTSD and developmental trauma.
- Describe the disorganization needed for development to evolve in a dyadic system.
- Delineate 6 aspects of partners’ developmental stalemate.
- Demonstrate and use gestalt 2-chair work.
- Describe the use of journaling to work with intergenerational trauma.
- Discuss how to structure sessions when both partners are angry.
- Describe how to recognize denied addiction.
- Discuss ways to educate couples about the genetics of alcohol addiction.
- Define 5 main types of trauma that affect couples relationships.
- Describe 6 ways shame appears in clients in couples therapy.
- Utilize the Initiator-Inquirer process to build self-capacities that improve clients’ emotions regulation.
- Discuss how to recognize each partner’s self-protective coping mechanisms.
- Utilize your assessment of life cycle stresses to normalize some of couples problems.
- Describe different possible goals for separated couples.
- Delineate what is involved in separating well and minimizing long-term negative impacts.
- Identify common emotional and self-capacities that are missing in partners who complain about poor communication.
- Identify intrapsychic conflicts and structure sessions to promote resolution of these conflicts.
- Describe why problem-solving does not work with couples in the stage of early differentiation.
- Delineate how to set goals with partners in the early differentiation stage that keep them working at their developmental edge.
- Defining confrontation as it is used in therapy and list 9 reasons why confrontation is necessary.
- Describe the sequence of effective confrontation.
- Explain how to develop a gentle but impactful confrontation.
- Identify the role of projection in maintaining symbiosis.
- Identify how a chosen goal can retraumatize one or both partners.
- Describe how to create homework assignments that push each partner’s development.