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5-Day Intensive Training in Pragmatic-Experiential Therapy for Couples (PET-C)

 

August 1-5, 2008, Geneva, Illinois

 

Build on your basic understanding of PET-C through five days of intensive training at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon.  Spend 30 hours with Brent Atkinson, receiving personalized tutoring in the implementation of PET-C assessment and intervention.  You’ll learn the “ins and outs” of all of the major PET-C methods and techniques by watching and discussing videos of Dr. Atkinson’s work with couples, reviewing critical steps involved in specific interventions, engaging in skill-building simulations, and engaging in thoughtful reflection about your own emotional habits. 

 

By the end of the week, you’ll have developed or strengthened your ability to:

 

1.       Help each partner understand the degree to which his/her typical reactions during upsetting situations, and his typical style of interacting during non-conflict times, meet (or fail to meet) the prerequisites for relationship success (the specific attitudes and actions that are highly predictive of relationship success or failure).

2.       Know exactly what each partner needs to do to more fully meet the prerequisites for relationship success in any situation s/he faces.

3.       Help each partner realize that is in his/her own best interest to meet the prerequisites for relationship success (i.e., those who meet the prerequisites almost always get treated well by their partners).

4.       Cultivate a receptive state of mind in each partner so that s/he can receive this information non-defensively.

5.       Help partners begin to meet the prerequisites for relationship success during therapy sessions by creating internal shifts in each of them, then guiding them toward ways of relating that are highly predictive of relationship success.

6.       Help each partner recognize the automatic, deeply conditioned nature of his/her typical reactions during upsetting situations.

7.       Help each partner become more aware of the specific package of automatic reactions (emotional habits) that get activated when s/he gets upset.

8.       Help each partner realize the necessity of repetitive practice if his/her emotional habits are ever going to change.

9.       Design daily practices for clients that promote new levels of neural integration and recondition outmoded emotional habits;

10.   Help each partner develop strong motivation to engage in these daily practices.

11.   Make personalized CD recordings for clients to use daily in their efforts to rewire their brains for more flexibility;

12.   Help clients learn to use digital voice recorders at home to build daily practices that rewire their emotional habits.

13.   Become more aware of, and better able to, shift your own internal states as needed

§         when working as a therapist,

§         in your own personal life

 

It is assumed that participants will have read Dr. Atkinson’s book, Emotional Intelligence in Couples Therapy:  Advances from Neurobiology and the Science of Intimate Relationships prior to beginning the intensive week of training.  During the training, you’ll learn how to use various digital technologies to strengthen your therapeutic impact.  You’ll learn how and when to generate personalized handouts and exercises for your clients, using the PET-C electronic CD workbook, Developing Habits for Relationship Success.  You’ll receive the same digital sound recorder (yours to keep) that’s used by all of our clinicians at the Couples Research Institute to make personalized CDs for clients to use in their daily reconditioning practices. We understand that not all therapists feel confident with computer-related technologies, so we’ll walk you though the steps necessary to make the kind of personalized CDs that have been useful to many PET-C clients. 

 

Tuition:  $1100.  (Click here for a registration form, or contact Brent Atkinson brent@thecouplesclinic.com or 630-232-7457 x111)