Training Session 2

Ellyn Bader, PhD Lies, Deception, Infidelity, and Jealousy: The Deep Pits that Destroy Couples’ Connection

Ellyn Bader, PhD, has specialized in helping couples transform their relationships. She is considered by many to be the preeminent expert in couples therapy training. Ellyn and her husband, Dr. Peter Pearson, are creators of the Developmental Model of Couples Therapy and directors of the Couples Institute in Menlo Park, California. Ellyn and Pete are pioneers in the field of couples therapy, being among the first to specialize in it. They literally “wrote the book” on the subject. Their textbook, In Quest of the Mythical Mate, is used in graduate training programs across the country and is in its sixteenth printing.

In this training session, we will explore:

• Why couples’ patterns of deception often begin innocently but end up destroying the love they once had, and how self-deception, conflict avoidance, and felony lies all undermine commitment and connection
• Delineating the four main types of lies
• Developing six types of confrontation to disrupt patterns of deception and facilitate differentiation

Training Session 4

Stephen W. Porges, PhD A moderated discussion of Stephen Porges’ work, including a discussion of the clinical application of Polyvagal Theory

Stephen W. Porges, PhD, is a distinguished university scientist at Indiana University, where he directs a laboratory in the Kinsey Institute investigating the biobehavioral effects of trauma. He is also professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Maryland.

He served as president of the Federation of Behavioral, Psychological, and Cognitive Sciences and president of the Society for Psychophysiological Research. He is a former recipient of a National Institute of Mental Health Research Scientist Development Award. He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers across several disciplines. In 1994, he proposed the Polyvagal Theory—a theory that links the evolution of the mammalian autonomic nervous system to social behavior and emphasizes the importance of physiological state in the expression of several behavioral, psychiatric, and physical disorders.

In this training session, we will explore:

• At the end of this presentation participants will be able to describe an explicit statement of Polyvagal Theory
• Illustrate how a Polyvagal perspective provides insights into clinical assessment and treatment
• Describe a face-heart connection that defines a social engagement system that links our bodily feelings with facial expression, vocal intonation, and gesture
• Explain that maladaptive behavior, including states of dissociation, may be an emergent property of an adaptive physiological state triggered by survival mechanisms

Training Session 6

Michele Weiner-Davis, LCSW It Takes One to Tango: Doing Couples Therapy with Individuals

Michele Weiner-Davis, LCSW, is an internationally renowned relationship expert, marriage therapist, and professional speaker. She is the author of seven books including the best-selling, Divorce Busting and The Sex-Starved Marriage. Michele is the director of the Divorce Busting® Center in Boulder, Colorado. Her work has been featured in most major newspapers, magazines, and on shows such as Oprah, 48 Hours, 20/20, The Today Show and many others.

In this training session, we will explore:

• Why the situation where only one partner is willing to seek relationship therapy should not discourage therapists, since it is possible to help clients effect positive relationship change singlehandedly
• A conceptual framework and a step-by-step strategy for conducting relationship-oriented sessions with one motivated spouse
• How to effectively work with the spouse who is determined to improve the marriage, even when the absent spouse wants out

Training Session 8

David Wallin, PhD The Impact of Who We Are on What We Do: Attachment and Enactment in Psychotherapy

David Wallin, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Albany and Mill Valley, California who has been practicing, teaching, and writing about psychotherapy for more than three decades. His most recent book, Attachment in Psychotherapy, has been translated into 10 languages. He has lectured on attachment and psychotherapy in Australia, Europe, Canada, and throughout the United States.

In this training session, we will explore:

• No less than the patients we try to help, therapists can be gripped by nonconscious attachment patterns that diminish our freedom to feel, reflect, imagine, and relate
• How to loosen the grip of such patterns by focusing on the enactments that inevitably arise where the history of therapist and patient interlock
• Removing barriers to therapeutic effectiveness while also opening a “royal road” to the awareness and integration of previously dissociated experience, not only in the patient but in the therapist as well

Training Session 10

Diane Poole Heller, PhD Co-Mindfulness, Compassion, and the Courage to Connect: Cutting-Edge Corrective Experiences that Restore Secure Attachment Capacities

Diane Poole Heller, PhD, developed DARe: Dynamic Attachment Re-Patterning Experience, which provides a safe haven for therapists internationally to understand and heal their own attachment adaptations as well as restoring Secure Attachment functioning for clients. Using co-mindfulness, she creates somatic and relational clinical applications of Corrective Experiences aimed at excavating core wounds from implicit memory—wounds that are locked in the body unconscious—toward explicit memory to facilitate recognition and integration. Diane also emphasizes interventions that deeply nourish the Secure Attachment System.

In this training session, we will explore:

• Why attaining Secure Attachment skills today increases resiliency in mitigating PTSD, facilitates brain integration, ensures a deeper authentic presence with self and others, fosters an "all of us" (versus "us and them") global perspective, and enhances our natural state of love and compassion
• Demos showing the DARe work in action, demonstrating that the caring presence of the therapist is essential
• Several experiential exercises you can use immediately in your life and practice. These include: Kind Eyes Gleam Beam; Welcome to the World; Self-Other Balancing; Receiving One Percent More; and Untangling Fear and Shame from the Need to Bond in the more Complex Dynamic of Disorganized Attachment

Training Session 12

Esther Perel The Double Flame: Reconciling Intimacy and Sexuality

Esther Perel is recognized as one of the world's most original and insightful voices on couples and sexuality across cultures. She is a celebrated speaker sought around the globe for her expertise in emotional and erotic intelligence, work-life balance, cross-cultural relations, conflict resolution, and identity of modern marriage and family. She is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, an AASECT-certified sex therapist, a member of the American Family Therapy Academy, and of the Society for Sex Therapy and Research. Her recent TED talk on infidelity has received over two million views within three months.

In this training session, we will explore:

• Why loss of desire is the prime sexual complaint that leads to relational unhappiness, infidelity, and even divorce.
• How love and desire relate, but also conflict. We will consider how the need for security and closeness can coexist with our quest for separateness and freedom
• Eroticism as a quality of aliveness and vitality in relationships extending far beyond a repertoire of sexual techniques, frequency, and performance

Training Session 14

Dan Siegel, MD An Interpersonal Neurobiology Approach to Trauma and Its Treatment

Daniel J. Siegel, MD, is currently clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center. He is also the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute, which offers online learning and in-person lectures that focus on how the development of mindsight in individuals, families, and communities can be enhanced by examining the interface of human relationships and basic biological processes.

Dr. Siegel is an author who has published extensively for the professional audience. He serves as the Founding Editor for the Norton Professional Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology, which contains more than three-dozen textbooks. Dr. Siegel’s books include Mindsight; Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology; The Developing Mind, Second Edition; The Mindful Therapist; The Mindful Brain; Parenting from the Inside Out (with Mary Hartzell, MEd); and the New York Times bestsellers The Whole-Brain Child (with Tina Payne Bryson, PhD), Brainstorm, and his latest, No-Drama Discipline (with Tina Payne Bryson, PhD). He has been invited to lecture for the King of Thailand, Pope John Paul II, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Google University, and TEDx.

In this training session, we will explore:

• An interdisciplinary view that draws on a wide range of sciences to explore how trauma impacts the developing mind
• By viewing the mind as arising from both neural processes in the body—the embodied brain—as well as from interactions within relationships, we can see how trauma within families in the form of neglect or abuse can shape the ways in which the brain develops and the mind arises
• The impact of trauma on the regulatory functions of the brain—the circuits that shape affect, attention, and behavior as well as the epigenetic molecules that control gene expression—will be reviewed
• Ways in which therapeutic interventions can harness the power of neuroplasticity, or how the brain changes in response to experience, will be discussed. At the heart of healing is integration that enables differentiated regions to be linked to one another.