[Audio] CC13 Workshop 18 – Rethinking First Sessions with Agony Couples – Peter Pearson, PhD

Description:

Volatile couples come to couples therapy with a fearsome mixture of trauma, devastated dreams, and defensive attitudes. If you ask about their goals or how you can help, you quickly get intense cross complaints, and pressure to fix their partner. Simply trying to understand their problems and  asking about their goals can be a toxic beginning as their defensiveness and trauma get re-triggered. This innovative approach is the result of 30 years of seeing couples and searching for a better beginning. In this workshop you will understand how to have each person identify their role in the distress, accept accountability for self-change, identify personal growth changes that are a stretch, create the foundation to work as a team and do it all with a spirit of cooperation and positive strokes. Do all this and more in the first session.

Educational Objectives:

1. Skillfully assess the level of self and other awareness.
2. Delineate between conventional approaches of starting therapy with a softer, gentler approach that quickly fosters cooperation.
3. Describe ways of increasing motivation for self- change vs. partner change.

*Sessions may be edited for content and to preserve confidentiality*