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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Explore this classic dynamic of couples therapy—an angry woman and a withdrawn man—that’s often confusing for therapists, with couples therapist Jette Simon.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! 
| Clinicians Digest Jan/Feb 2007 - Page 5 |
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What Works with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) exists in a hazy, difficult to treat niche, with little consensus on the best approach to use to curb its intermittently debilitating fatigue, muscle pain, headaches, insomnia, depression, anxiety, impaired work and social life, and deteriorating memory and concentration. Medications, vitamin or herbal supplements, psychotherapy, or a combination of approaches have been tried with varying success. Now better guidance is on the way. Britain's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which develops treatment guidelines for the government's National Health Service, will issue its official CFS treatment guidelines in April, and the study it commissioned finds that cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and a careful exercise program are the most effective treatments. The study also finds that the adverse side effects of the most commonly used medications outweigh their limited efficacy. That's important news, because most people go to physicians for relief of CFS, rather than to a therapist. Through the years, NICE's decisions on treatment guidelines have been characteristically free of pharmaceutical-industry influence. Its revised guidelines for treating depression in young people, for example, recommended therapy as the primary treatment and warned about the links between certain SSRI antidepressants and youngsters' suicidal thoughts. These guidelines helped influence the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to finally place stronger warnings on some antidepressants. The CFS study in the October Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine reviews nearly 70 CFS treatment studies and finds "disappointing results" across the board for medications. For instance, cortisone injections alleviate fatigue, but have no positive effect on anxiety, depression, or sense of well-being and, given the side effects, don't appear to be a good choice. Nasal cortisone, which has fewer side effects, doesn't work, and neither do dexamphetamines or antidepressants. Melatonin improves sleep, vitality, and mood, but seems to worsen body pain, and so forth. By contrast, CBT significantly improves people's moods and lessens pain and fatigue by teaching people such things as identifying early signs of discomfort and pacing themselves accordingly, adjusting their expectations of their capabilities, reducing perfectionism and self-criticism, learning relaxation techniques, and accepting that CFS isn't a character flaw but a genuine condition with physical and emotional components. For younger people, a combination of individual and family CBT also works well. For people with less severe cases of CFS, supervised exercise programs which gradually increased physical effort help improve energy far more than meds, though the study cautions against unstructured, vigorous exercise. The study also looks at vitamin supplements, such as B-3, essential fatty acids, and magnesium, and finds some evidence of efficacy, but calls for better designed research on them. Because its physical symptoms usually bring people to physicians before therapists, people with CFS are likely to try treating it with meds before therapy. When the official NICE guidelines appear, that may change, at least in Britain, but perhaps in the United States as well.
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