Working Deeper: Counter-Intuitive Ways to Enhance Psychotherapy & Couples Counseling

We all want our work to be deeper and more effective. This workshop highlights common clinical practices that keep therapy from being as long-lasting and psychologically sophisticated as possible.

Regardless of your theoretical orientation or experience in the field, this workshop will refocus your ideas and give you fresh insights on managing a wide range of individuals and couples. Topics include:

• Why reassuring patients they're "normal" can undermine their growth
• Why most situations described as "communication problems" aren't
• Becoming more conscious of how we don't trust our patients
• How we collude with couples' power struggles--and what to do instead
• Becoming more conscious of our assumptions about love, intimacy, and how people change
• Talking about religion, faith, and God (when clinically appropriate) without blushing--regardless of your personal beliefs
• Becoming more conscious of our stereotypes about gender, age, and lifestyle
• How to use language to communicate with clients' unconscious--to better support the thinking we're helping them develop
• Understanding the difference between empathy and colluding with victimhood--and conveying the difference to clients
• Why existential issues are crucial in therapy; how we collude with clients to avoid dealing with them, and how to help clients resolve them
• The limitations of "normal therapy," and how to get beyond them
• Decoding the DSM as a political and cultural artifact
• Understanding presenting problems by seeing them as unconscious solutions
• Are there questions we should simply never ask?
• Helping patients understand the fundamental meaninglessness of sex