VAMFT Conferences

This workshop will detail a philosophy and methods of working briefly and effectively with people who have been traumatized. An array of new methods have shown that previous conceptions and methods of working with trauma are unnecessarily long-term and re-traumatizing. Through lecture, videotaped examples and handouts, participants will be equipped with new tools and ideas to work briefly, effectively and respectfully with even severe and long-standing traumas.

Contact hours: 6

Sustaining intimacy in a long-term relationship is a challenge for all of us, therapists and clients alike. While most people want to be in an intimate and sexually satisfying relationship these issues are often not explicitly addressed in couples therapy. The purpose of this workshop is to help therapists identify how and when to address these issues during the course of therapy and to gain a better understanding of how their own life experiences can affect how therapists manage these topics.

Most workshops focus only on what to do to make therapy effective. But we all know that mistakes are common in therapy and particularly in couples' therapy which Jay Haley once said is the most difficult of all therapy to do well. This workshop will have something for both beginning and experienced therapists, each of whom tends to make different mistakes. Since therapists destroy their most self-incriminating tapes, the best examples of bad couples' therapy, comes from films. Several clips will be shown and analyzed, along with gripping real case video of a woman pondering whether to her family or go off with her lover. The workshop will also describe how therapists' values about committment influence work with couples, for better or worse, and how we mess up so frequently (and could do better) with remarried couples.

This highly practical workshop will make your marriage and couples' therapy more effective, whatever your model.