Join Us
In This Section
Recent Posts
NP0038: Who’s Afraid of Couples Therapy?
Welcome to our “Who’s Afraid of Couples Therapy?” This exciting series, back by popular demand, is based on our November/December 2011 issue on this topic and will explore the challenges of couples work.
What are the most effective strategies in working with couples? How can therapists structure therapy—particularly in the early sessions—so that couples leave with a sense of hope, rather than frustration? Can working with individuals who have serious issues in their relationships actually be detrimental to them? Find out the answers to these questions and much more. In this first session with expert couples therapists Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson, the creators of the Developmental Model of Couples Therapy, you’ll find out why clinicians often avoid working with couples and how you can better prepare yourself for couples therapy work.
How can therapists most effectively work with emotion in the consulting room—particularly when it comes to couples therapy? Learn with internationally known couples therapist Hedy Schleifer how to help create a nourishing connection between partners, define a role as therapist-as-guide, and much more. Schleifer, who’s pioneered the training of Imago Relationship therapists internationally, will go into how to use this theory in practice and how to best work with emotions.
What happens when partners in couples therapy have two different agendas in mind? Hear from expert William Doherty on this little spoken about topic. Learn how Discernment Counseling, an approach that helps couples clarify their feelings about the next step in their relationship, can help both clients and therapists.
Is it possible to rebuild trust and intimacy in a couple’s relationship after a partner has had an affair? How can therapists help? Hear from Esther Perel, author of the international bestseller Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence, on how to help couples after an infidelity and the role that cultural perspectives have in this emotional situation.
Explore this classic dynamic of couples therapy—an angry woman and a withdrawn man—that’s often confusing for therapists, with couples therapist Jette Simon. Learn more about what’s behind the feelings of anger and the behavior of withdrawing, and how clinicians can more effectively work with shame and fear of disconnection.
Hear an unconventional perspective on couples therapy from David Schnarch, who believes that the best way to help couples is to challenge partners to change their individual behaviors and attitudes. Schnarch’s direct, upfront approach to helping clients will illustrate a different viewpoint on effective couples therapy.
Join Marty Klein, a marriage and family therapist and certified sex therapist, us for a candid discussion about the assumptions that both clients and therapists often share that can get in the way of improving couples’ sexual relationships.
Discover with Kathryn Rheem how to respond effectively when clients express strong feelings in session. Based on Emotionally Focused Therapy, you’ll explore attunement and how to use your own emotions to help clients move beyond attachment injuries.
After the session, please let us know what you think. If you ever have any technical questions or issues, please feel free to email support@psychotherapynetworker.org.
Whole Psychiatry: Alternatives to Conventional Psychopharmacology with Robert Hedaya
Meds: Myths and Realities: NP0035 – Session 4
Is psychopharmacology is a 'go-to' in your practice? Join Robert Hedaya as he discusses how to treat the bodily systems that underlay many mental health issues while avoiding medication. After the session, please let us know what you think. If you ever have any technical questions or issues, please feel free to email support@psychotherapynetworker.org.Tough Customers: Is It Them or Us?
By Rich Simon As therapists, many of us practice in two different worlds. In the first, we see polite, well-behaved, articulate clients with solid values. They engage fully in therapy, talk cogently about their problems, listen attentively to our responses, make reasonably good-faith efforts to follow our suggestions, and sooner or later get better. No wonder we genuinely like these people! Does This Kid Need Medication? with Ron Taffel
Meds: Myths and Realities: NP0035 – Session 3
Do you feel like you could be a more effective therapist with your younger clients? Do you find it hard to determine when interventions--psychological and pharmacological--might be needed? Join Ron Taffel and learn to identify key diagnostic signs that indicate medications could be helpful when dealing with depression, anxiety, AD/HD, and affective disorders. After the session, please let us know what you think. If you ever have any technical questions or issues, please feel free to email support@psychotherapynetworker.org.
© 2013 Psychotherapy Networker
And as a matter of fact it is actually cognitive theory not psychoanalysis that comes closest to the essence of Buddhist psychology; "We are what we think. With our thoughts we create the world", the opening words of the Dhammapada, actually sound like a quote from a cognitive-behavioral manual.
However, there is no way around this truth: all these oft-compared - and linked - with Buddhism western therapy approaches are still firmly entrenched in the samsaric worldview, and as such, come short. Their concepts do not reach beyond the illusions of the senses and the ego; even if, naturally, there are glimpses, for the most part they don't even know what they are missing. Hence, basic incomparability.
In other words, the problem with applying Buddhist wisdom in contemporary Western psychotherapy is that it is not just another system of scholarly thought which can be mastered through reading books and articles, and attending presentations. And any effort treating it as such will come with severe limitations and distortions, even if yes, it is still possible and even useful to implement it on this level.
But such is the process of Dharma coming to the West, so be it, and let's be grateful and patient...
Very refreshing to have somebody challenge the hegemony of attachment-based therapy. The assumption that the (only?) way to heal "attachment wounds" is through corrective emotional experience of secure attachment recreated in the theraoeutic dyad and in the marital dyad is just a theory-driven assumption, not a scientific fact. In other words, why are we assuming that differentiation is only possible after secure attachment has been achieved and experienced? Just because somebody said, you can't skip develpmental steps? And even if that might be true in childhood, why are we assuming that the same rules apply to dealing with it in - somehow achieved - adulthood?
The idea that we can achieve security via trust in our significant others has an absurd angle to it, one which can hijack and destroy therapy (although I am not denying the validity of soothing, joy, and a ton of other benefits stemming from connection with others.) The famous question: "Will you be there for me when I need you, will you hold me tight?" can be only aswered, realistically and soberly, with "Are you out of your mind? How can I possibly promise such a thing? I don't know!"
My perspective as a therapist grounded in Buddhist philosophy, psychoanalytic thought as well as CBT (Third wave) allows me to see these perils quite clearly. But if we focus on differentiation, that will lead to connection in the intersubjective space of freedom and curiosity, rather than safety based on a fantasy about a perfect (or even semi-perfect) holding by another person. Yes there is security in interpersonal relationships - but it is security derived from developing a trusting relationship with oneself and respecting even enjoying other people's separateness. A lot (not only good sex) is possible in such space...