This Core Training courses will present the theory and practice of Transformative Couples Therapy® through lively teaching from Dr. David Mars which includes inspiring video-recorded demonstrations of the work. Transformative Couples Therapy® is a body-oriented, affective neuroscience and attachment-based method. Core Training provides supervision and consultation for each group member's video-recorded session work to help participants learn to better track, inspire and affectively regulate two people at a time in couple treatment. The eight group members in each series will share their own clinical video to receive constructive support, reflection and guidance. Each participant will receive 40 minutes of focused attention each time they share their work.

The beauty of these Transformative Couples Therapy® Core Trainings is in the way we safely develop ourselves and our work with each other by using communication based on embodied witnessing through the seven channels of experience. This is a relieving alternative to "feedback" with it's inherent judgement, projection and often unsolicited offering of critique. Instead, we will use Process Language throughout each training session to build safety and develop optimal skillful communication for creating a secure base within ourselves and the group. We will use moment-to-moment tracking and body-based communication skills to increase your capacity to generate transformative outcomes for your couples.

These Core Training sessions will help participants to apply the Transformative Couples Therapy® model with a range of challenging clinical situations. "Unlikely transformations" is the theme of the teaching topics and the training videos selected. It is the couples who seem impossibly mired in their patterns of combined high reactivity, dissociation and low levels of positive responsiveness who the are our greatest teachers!

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

• Identify transformance strivings in session.
• Identify three ways to establish a secure base in treatment.
• Describe two ways to regulate emotional reactivity.
• Detect the healthiest aspects of each couple member.
• Utilize two methods for couple members to process emotional experience.
• Design a healing portrayal to treat relational trauma.
• Describe why affirmation of the self is important.
• Explain how clients can melt intellectual defenses.
• Find matching values in couple members.
• Describe how to process warded-off emotional experience.
• Conduct meta-processing in response to new positive experiences.
• Define the value of the core emotion of surprise.
• Integrate core affect through slowing down.
• Identify two ways to adapt treatment for an avoidant attachment style.
• Select opportunities to help couple members to feel and show more positivity.
• Utilize openings to soften defenses.
• Define three early signs of dorsal vagal response.
• Demonstrate knowledge of two ways to regulate dorsal vagal response.
• Specify how the frequency of dorsal vagal response can be reduced in treatment.
• Distinguish methods for engaging disorganized attachment patterns.
• Describe the course of a tough case in which an unexpected breakthrough occurred.
• Explain how a meditative state of mindfulness helps in treatment.
• Conduct a role play of meta-therapeutic processing.
• Explain the value of increased awareness in couple members.

9:00am-9:30am: Orientation and opening three-minute Channels of Experience meditation, check-in and discussion of participants’ responses to the meditation as a check in.

9:30am-11:30am: Presentation of a clinical video and didactic teaching demonstrating the theory and practice of Transformative Couples Therapy@ presented by David Mars

11:30-11:45am: Break

11:45am-12:45pm: A participant shares video of a session for supervision and supportive consultation

12:45pm to 1:45pm Lunch Break

1:45pm-2:45pm: A participant shares video of a session for supervision and supportive consultation

2:45pm-3:45pm: A participant shares video of a session for supervision and supportive consultation

3:45pm-4:00 Break

3:45pm-4:45pm: A participant shares video of a session for supervision and supportive consultation

4:45pm-5:00pm: Closure and Q and A, including metaprocessing this Core Training session

The cost for 65 Continuing Education (CE) credits will be $50. An email from Credits Education will be sent to all participants who complete the course.

This course will alternate between in-person sessions in Charlottsville, VA and live, online sessions.

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

CA: Credits.Education, #1032827, is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists to sponsor continuing education for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and LEPs. Credits.Education maintains responsibility for this program/course and its content.  Course meets the qualifications for 65 hours of continuing education credits for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and LEPs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.

 

All Other States: Most other states accept CAMFT approved courses for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and LEPs.  Check with your state board.