This course is designed for practitioners at an intermediate or advanced skill level. It will offer training to enhance the participants treatment of couples.  Common issues involved in couples’ patterns of dysfunction often include detachment and/or emotional hyper-reactivity.  Cognitive understanding of how dorsal vagal response plays a part in detachment is influenced by the work of Steven Porges (2009) and Deb Dana (2018) and will inform the diagnosis and treatment of couples. Treating emotional hyperactivity will also draw from the work of Porges and Dana to help couples to utilize their social engagement system to reduce excessive surges of sympathetic arousal that both accompany and trigger hyper-reactivity in the couple dynamic. This course will augment the existing knowledge and skills of participants with experiential practices designed to broaden their capacities of perception, reception and expression through the lens of seven channels of experience. We will focus on the explicit use of “I-statements” incorporating moment-to-moment tracking. (Mars, 2011, 2017) This course will offer didactic presentations about psychophysiology and affective neuroscience to show how the orbitofrontal, insula, limbic and anterior cingulate brain regions influence behavior in couple relating. (Craig, 2015 and Schore 2016, 2019) 
 Maps and schemas derived from Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) are integrated into the methods of Transformative Couples Therapy (TCT). The formulation of a diagnosis or problem definition will be drawn from analyzing communication patterns between couple members.  For example, we will note how each couple member’s use of defensive exclusion (Bowlby, 1982) interferes with empathy and collaborative communication (Beebe et al, 2020).  Training will focus on helping couple members to expand their repertoires of communication with each other.  Emphasizing positive gains is an essential aspect of TCT to both help couple members notice progress and integrate positive changes from session to session.  This follows the beneficial guidance of moment-to-moment tracking and skillful use of metaprocessing changes (Iwakabe, & Conceicao, 2016, Fosha, 2021) in order to integrate them into new positive habits in the couple’s patterns.  We will apply principles from Frederickson (2013) and others about the beneficial effects of positivity as a lens through which we can learn to perceive clinical interventions while viewing participants’ video-recorded sessions of couple treatment. 

Over the eight monthly group training sessions, the group members will practice the methods they are learning in the third hour of each session in a small group of four. A trained Experiential Assistant will guide and support the learning process.  As the course instructor, I will teach integrated cognitive and science-based instruction combined with clinical skills from my TCT sessions that are drawn from edited and captioned recorded clinical video.   Discussion, role-play demonstrations, experiential exercises, feedback and interactive learning will be part of the three-hour training sessions.
 

Psychiatrists, Psychologists, Psychotherapists, MFT's, Social Workers, Registered Counselors, Pastoral Counselors

1. Identify two ways to help establish a secure base in treatment.
2. Describe two ways to regulate emotional reactivity in both couple members.
3. Define how to detect the healthiest aspects of each couple member.
4. Describe two methods for couple members to process emotional experience to completion.
5. Define why affirmation of the value of the self and the other is important in couple treatment.
6. Explain how couple members can learn to melt defenses of intellectualization.
7. Describe how to process warded-off emotional experience.
8. Describe how to conduct meta-therapeutic processing after couples have reparative experiences.
9. Define the value of the core effect of surprise.
10. Describe what is important about integrating core affect through slowing down.
11. Define what is important about helping couple members develop skills to show more demonstrations of valuing in daily life.
12. Define three early signs of dorsal vagal response.
13. Describe two ways to regulate dorsal vagal response.
14. Specify how the frequency of incidences of dorsal vagal response can be reduced in treatment.
15. Distinguish three methods for engaging avoidantly attached patients in treatment.
16. Explain why a state of mindful awareness helps both couples and therapist in treatment.
17. Explain the value of increased awareness of bodily states in couple members.
18. Define what transformance striving is and how to identify it.
19. Describe the value of sensation in being aware of internal state.
20. Define two ways a therapist can use their vision to identify tension in couple members.
21. Define ways that awareness and skillful expression about energetic states can be helpful.
     

All times are in Pacific Time

8:00-8:10am: Orientation and opening three-minute Channels of Experience meditation.

8:10-8:20am: Check-in and discussion of each participant’s response to the meditation and any breakthroughs or questions about in treating their couples with Transformative Couples Therapy®.

8:20-9:00am: Didactic presentation and discussion of a slide deck about the TCT method and its application by David Mars, PhD or Lisa Gardner LCSW. Information will include details on how to use the TCT Fidelity Scales to guide clinical application of the method. Presentation will include how to regulate emotional reactivity in preparation for the clinical video example and how to evoke, metaprocess and stabilize the felt experience of love.

9:10-9:50am: Presentation and discussion of captioned clinical video. During and after the video sharing, the instructor will point out the examples shown that were just introduced in the didactic portion described above. Moments that highlight the use of the seven channels of experience will be emphasized to enhance participants capacity to track bodily indicators of moment-to-moment tracking to enhance whole body attunement.

9:50-10:05am: Break

10:05-10:55am: Preparation and transition into Breakout rooms for the Experiential Exercise to apply what they have learned. Participants will choose to be either role play couple members, role play therapist or witness. With the support of the Experiential Assistant, participants gain a direct experience of applying the TCT method.

10:55-11am: Regathering, closing discussion.

 

Februrary 20, 2025

Participants must have paid tuition fee, signed in, attended the entire seminar, completed an evaluation, and signed out in order to receive a certificate. Failure to sign in or out will result in forfeiture of credit for the entire course. No exceptions will be made. Partial credit is not available. Certificates available after satisfactory course completion at credits.education

 

This course is a synchronous interactive course

 

Transformative Couples Therapy® Experiential Skills Course, Course# 6112, is approved by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program to be offered by Credits.Education as an individual course. Regulatory boards are the final authority on courses accepted for continuing education credit. ACE course approval period: [dates]. Social workers completing this course receive 22 clinical continuing education credits. 

 

CA: Credits.Education is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists to sponsor continuing education for LMFTs, LCSWs, and LPCCs. Credits.Ecucation maintains responsibility for this program/course and its content.  Course meets the qualifications for 22 hours of continuing education credits for LMFTs, LCSWs, and LPCCs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.