Transformative Couples Therapy® Core Training

Sponsored by: Transformative Couples Therapy® Institute

DATE(S): 10/10/26, 10/11/26, 12/12/2026, 12/13/2026, 2/13/2027, 02/14/2027, 4/10/2027, 4/11/2027, 6/12/2027, 6/13/2027
LOCATION: Charlottesville, VA and Live Online
PRESENTER(S): David Mars, PhD, LMFT and Mimi Steele, LPC 
 

Presenter

David Mars, PhD, LMFT and Mimi Steele, LPC

David Mars, PhD has developed the TCT method so therapists can help couple members relate to each other from their self-at-best, often beginning in the first session. This method cultivates healthy patterns of love and respect-based awareness to create positive changes in everyday living within the marriage. With Dr. Mars’ unique process, therapists evoke in couples bodily-felt awareness of specifically what they long for. And then couples receive the guidance to grow the necessary capacities to experience growing peace, love-based inspiration and stabile safety to love and be loved in a balanced way in their lives.

In the 1980 and 1990’s he developed an innovative treatment process that utilized highly sensitive computerized biofeedback with couples to reveal their unconscious bodily responses. This created a high capacity to track moment-to-moment psychophysiology and a heightened awareness of how valuable this skills are to effectively treat couples. In addition, as an Authentic Movement group leader and practitioner for over 30 years, he developed and teaches therapists and couples mindful alternatives to negative judgment. He has developed methods to transfer the above-named skills of attunement to therapists in all of the TCT training programs.

David Mars, PhD, MFT has presented workshops, courses, webinars, and online supervision worldwide for over thirty years. He was a Faculty member of the AEDP Institute for eleven of those years and is the developer of AEDP for Couples (AEDPfC). All of his offerings of training, supervision, writing and innovation are now based at the Transformative Couples Therapy® Institute of which he is the director and founder.

 

Mimi Steele, LPC helps partners understand the normal ups and downs of attunement and misattunement, learn and practice mindfulness and emotional regulation, how to heal ruptures and build deeper emotional and physical intimacy and trust. She have experience assisting partners repair their relationship after a breach of trust. If reconciliation is not possible, she helps couples through the separation or divorce process.

Mimi helps individuals experiencing depression, anxiety, relationship issues and loss. Focusing on strengths and resiliency, she teaches clients coping techniques, emotional regulation and conflict management skills to meet personal and professional goals. Clients learn to create healthier, more fulfilling relationships.

She helps parents set nurturing and effective boundaries and cope with stresses and challenges, and she works with couples, single parents and partners in blended families to help them create more peaceful and loving families.

 

Course Description

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!

 

Target Audience

Psychiatrists, Psychologists, Psychotherapists, MFT's, Licensed Professional Counselors, Social Workers, Registered Clinical Counselors and Pastoral Counselors.

 

Learning Objectives

  • 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.

 

Agenda

Saturday Schedule

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

 

Sunday Schedule

8:00am-8:30am: Orientation and opening three-minute Channels of Experience meditation, check-in and discussion of participants’ responses to the meditation as an opening check in.

8:30am-10:00am: Presentation of a clinical video and didactic teaching demonstrating the theory and practice of Transformative Couples Therapy@ presented by David Mars

10:00am-10:15am: Break

10:15am-11:15am: A participant shares video of a session for supervision and supportive consultation

11:15am-12:15 A participant shares video of a session for supervision and supportive consultation

12:15pm -1:15pm Lunch Break

1:15:pm-2:15pm: A participant shares video of a session for supervision and supportive consultation

2:15pm to 3:15pm A participant shares video of a session for supervision and supportive consultation

3:15pm to 4:00pm Closure and Q and A, including metaprocessing this Core Training session

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

 

Continuing Education Credits

65

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.

 

Delivery Method and Interactivity

This course is both live on zoom and in person, and interactive.

 
 
 

Continuing Education

Satisfactory Completion
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

Counselors/Marriage and Family Therapists
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: Many states accept CAMFT approved courses for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and LEPs.  Check with your state board.
 

Special Needs - If you require ADA accommodations please contact our office 30 days or more before the event. We cannot ensure accommodations without adequate prior notification.

Please Note: Licensing Boards change regulations often. If you have questions or concerns about this course meeting your specific board's approval, we recommend you contact your board directly to obtain a ruling.

 

Refund and Grievance Policy - Click here to see our Refund and Grievance Policy.

Attendance Policy and Certificate Delivery Information - Click here for information about receiving credits.

Cancellation Policy - You may end your enrollment at any time and receive a refund for the remaining sessions of the course. Questions or concerns may be communicated to David Mars, PhD by email at davidmarsphd@gmail.com. If you have a need for ADA accommodation, please contact davidmarsphd@gmail.com

Questions about Registration and Course Content? - Click here to contact Transformative Couples Therapy® Institute
Questions about Certificates and Accreditation? - Click here to Contact the CE Director