The fundamental dilemma of all human relationships is this: Why is it so hard to give and receive love when we need to feel connected? Our survival directive is to cooperate and maintain our attachments. To better understand both dilemma and the solution, we will explore the “software” for both survival and connection with which we are born.

The pulse of both giving and receiving is vital to the experience of connection. If we block this in either direction, we become isolated and lose the experience of connection.

MAIN POINTS

In this course:

• Explore what the blocks are to giving love
• Explore what the blocks are to receiving love
• Learn how to resolve these blocks through videos, demonstrations, practice, lectures, physical movement, discussion, and written exercises.
• Learn about the way our unconscious images of relationship not only determine who we pick, but also how we play out the relational dance with each other
• Explore how this dynamic can manifest in emotions, spiritual connection, intellectual ideas, and experiences in our bodies.

Working Through Betrayal

In the face of a couple’s crisis, there are three different perspectives for the therapist to consider: The first perspective works for, and from, the ‘between’ of the relationship – the focus is on the interpersonal; the second, use relational neuroscience as a map for inner attunement; and the third, helps the therapist with his/her countertransference and use of “self.” The end point of all three perspectives is to provide the therapist with skills to assist couples in moving from Despair and Rupture to Repair and Connection. Using the principles of interpersonal and interpersonal attunement will give a map to working with couples in crisis. Having a clear navigational system that includes exploring countertransference reactions will ultimately enable us to effectively help couples heal and grow through crisis.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Participants will be able to:

• Describe the Imago-based model of interpersonal and inner attunement for working with couples in crisis.
• Explain the therapist’s role in establishing a safe and empathic structure when couples are polarized and in crisis.
• Utilize Imago processes to promote secure attachment and emotion regulation in an insecure, dis-regulated couple system.
• Describe and clinically use a relational neuroscience metaphor of the mind, The Wheel of Awareness, to expand Imago’s relational paradigm.
• Explain how the therapist’s countertransference when working with betrayal.
• Understand the potential for vicarious traumatization when working with crisis couples.

Working with Reactivity and Resistance

This course is designed to teach therapists how to use their own centered, embodied, and attuned presence to meet a couple or client where they are and bring the structure to them in an attuned, safe way.

As therapists we expect a little chaos. However, there are couples who just seem to challenge us every step of the way. Even when resistance and reactivity center on the dialogue itself, we can track energy with skill, empathy and compassion, moving couples toward connection, replacing negativity with positivity and affirmation. Through the use of video clips, role plays, demonstrations and didactic material we will create an interactive, fun and dynamic space to focus on our own inner attunement and ability to connect, thereby deepening our work. From an Imago perspective, anxiety is at the core of all relational challenges. Anxiety causes clients to react to their partner in unconscious, hurtful, and destructive ways, and it causes clients to be very resistant to the counseling process. Anxiety in the therapist also causes unconscious reactivity and resistance to the counseling process. This course challenges the traditional understanding of resistance and reframes it as an indication of something much deeper—Terror. Taught from the perspective of the relational paradigm and Imago Relationship Theory, this course employs a combination of interactive lectures, personal writing exercises, role play, and demonstrations. This course challenges the participants to identify their reactivity. It explores when and how that shows up in the counseling session sabotaging the entire counseling process. Course participants learn skills to determine their countertransference and stay consciously present with themselves and consciously attuned to their clients in session. This course explains the participant to model and teaches attunement, compassion, validation, and empathy in the therapy session to empower highly reactive couples to be their wounded healers and step into loving long-lasting, fulfilling love relationships. This course employs findings from the research in neurosciences, attachment theory, mindfulness, and Imago Relationship Theory. 

MAIN POINTS

• Learn to use the skills of dialogue to more effectively facilitate connection based on the developmental stages of the couple.
• Explore how the adaptive self or Self-of-The-Therapist can make certain couples more challenging for the therapist to remain attuned.
• Expand the use of the Parent-Child dialogue, deepening of the Appreciation dialogue, and understand how to work with the Core Scene.
• Recognize those couples who present a personal ‘challenge’ and how to use inner attunement and embodied presence, to stay present and available when challenged.
• Explore skills and interventions to assist couples to move toward each other to co-regulate, moving into greater safety and joy.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• Recognize and define couples who present a clinical challenge
• Define attunement and its clinical implications
• Learn the significance of anxiety
• Define the Relational Paradigm
• Review the unique role of the Imago Therapist and Faciliator
• Identify the facilitator's own personal reactive behaviors both inside and outside the office
• Review the importance of interacting in a dialogical manner with their couples
• Learn new and different applications of the validation step of the dialogue
• Name the role anxiety plays in the therapist and learn clinical skills for staying present when anxious
• Discuss and illustrate the importance of being the lead energy or leading with “empathic authority”
• Identify couples at the first four developmental stages
• Identify and review the developmental needs and how they present in adult intimate relationships
• Learn clinical attunement skills to target these relational needs of couples: Review the psychological journey’s importance in the relational paradigm
• Learn five interventions to support safe sending and five interventions to support attuned and connected receiving
• Learn sentence stems that support positive, forward moving growth with couples
• Review the psychological journey importance in the relational paradigm and its significance in attunement
• Identify the growth stages of an Imago Relationship therapist
• Review the Imago Feedback and supervision model
• Identify the five characteristics of an attuned, present Imago therapist
• Develop a personal growth vision for “what I will do to stay present and attuned to my couples”

Brilliant at the Basics is a lively and interactive course of delving deeper into building our skills and deepening our processes of Dialogue. Stuck not using the Parent Child Dialogue (and all those other great processes?)… time to get unstuck!  Our goal is that you leave this training with an expanded understanding of how and why to use different interventions at different times, and to support you in being creative within the structure of the dialogue process. We will sharpen your use of sentence stems and doubling to increase connection, safety, and forward movement with your couples. Together we will clarify and deepen the essential theory pieces that help keep you calm and connected to your couples…yes, all your couples! As you master the Imago ‘Basics’ we will now add the skills to become ‘Brilliant’ and trust the depth of the Dialogue process even more. Please Join Us! 

MAIN POINTS

• Explore your beliefs about therapy and couples and their relationships.
• Fine-tune the mandate for the therapy in the first session and for evaluating progress according to the stated desires of the couple.
• Tools for deepening connection and "shallowing" affect are studied in more depth.
• Increase your presence in your work with couples.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• Deepen the dialogue process through advanced use of sentence stems, doubling, and focusing.

Apply integration of the four “meta theories” of Imago with the deepening tools.

Utilize the Parent-Child Dialogue and BCR processes.

Observe how, when, and why to best use each of the Imago processes.

Parts Work for Relationships

Ideally the trainee works with couples currently and has attended either the Keeping or Getting Workshop so they understand mirroring

The purpose of being alive is not to be forever happy. That is impossible. The purpose is to rock between the pain of the past and the promise of the present and be in the present more and more of the time, and to be able to share all that is inside us with those around us. – Geneen Roth

Come explore your shadow, how it works in relationships, and how we can integrate our missing selves in order to reclaim our full aliveness. This course is designed to go deeply into the ways your defenses and your character structure affect others. Another purpose is to grow your container so you can be big enough to hold all that life hands you and to help you rock between the joy and the sorrow of life.

In the role of therapist, we have a gift of distance. We care about the pain we see in others and we have the experience of being in the role of “the good parent.” We are rarely aware of the parts of yourself that reside in the shadow.

We try to accept our clients as they are. Although we can be challenged at times to accept specific traits or behaviors in our clients, it is much easier than accepting our partners, our children, our friends, and our colleagues. How bewildering it is to be loving, conscious, and empathic with clients and unconsciously mean-spirited to those we are closest! The parts of us that hide in the shadow and specifically in our role as therapist will deeply impact our personal relationships and at times painfully challenge our professional abilities.

Couples, individuals, and professionals in the Imago community are welcome to attend this course. No previous Imago training is required.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• Gain tools and insights to work with reactive patterns as they show up in clients and in one’s own behavior.
• Identify lost parts, distinguishing between denied, disowned… Identify self-defeating patterns and create new neural pathways, for clinical and personal application, through dialogues and exercises.
• Link defenses to messages and developmental stages.

Seks, sensualiteit en imago: Een reis naar het mysterie van seksualiteit en sensualiteit binnen het Imago relationele paradigma.

DAY 1 AGENDA

Day 1 focuses on what every Imago therapist needs to know about how to relate to the sexual issues our couples grapple with to determine what is appropriate for our office and what situations indicate the need to refer to a certified specialist in the field of sexuality. We look at an Integrated model of sexuality and the medical, psychological, and relational causes of sexual challenges in couple relationships. We also focus on the stages of arousal and the challenges associated with each stage. We practice doing a sexual assessment interview using three case studies to make an informed decision.

DAY 2 AGENDA

Day 2 looks at the sexual relationship through the lens of the Imago theory of the Psychological Journey – the unmet needs and adaptive strategies at each developmental stage. We explore how these adaptations play out in the bedroom in positive as well as conflictual ways. It provides therapists with a perspective for understanding what might be underneath the specific presenting issues and how we can use and adapt our Imago structure to support healing and growth in this sensitive area, going beyond verbal forms of dialogue into more tactile ways of connecting. We role-play couples challenged in their sexual relationship at the different developmental levels and how to work effectively with them. We will also examine our blocks and barriers in dealing with the topics of sex and sensuality in the office.

DAY 3 AGENDA

Day 3 looks at the Journey of Socialization and how the repressive social messages we receive can impact our sexuality. We practice Lost and Denied -self Dialogues to explore and grow back into these aspects of the Missing Self. We also explore a variety of Imago based practices and processes to enhance a couple’s sexual enjoyment and design the sexual relationship they both want to experience.