Working with couples is both rewarding and challenging, largely due to the fact that couples’ issues are longstanding and complex. We all bring our family of origin history, our personality, and life experiences into our relationships, and as such therapists working with couples need to have a solid framework for understanding the nature of intimate relationships and their dynamics. In this half-day professional development workshop, the key relationship issues of differentiation, attachment, expectations, and emotions will be examined and a range of therapeutic strategies explored. The aim of this half-day workshop is to provide therapists with a solid framework for understanding couples work and key strategies to apply.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

Understand the dynamics of differentiation, attachment, expectations, and emotions

Identify and appreciate the interrelationships among these dynamics

Track introjects and emotions in the self-other dyad

Recognise how to apply therapeutic strategies to enable couples to move beyond stuckness and gain more loving attachment and relational balance.

Format

The workshop combines research, theoretical input, online exercises, and group discussion.

The workshop is appropriate for training and student counsellors, practising counsellors and psychotherapists, family therapists, counselling psychologists, and other mental health professionals.

About the Presenter

Professor Denis O’Hara is a well-known Australia academic and practitioner. He has a background in education, counselling, and psychology and is Director of the Hope Research and Practice Institute and Adjunct Professor of Counselling at Griffith University and the University of the Sunshine Coast. Professor O’Hara has researched extensively in the areas of hope studies and psychotherapeutic change, among other topics, and has published widely. He has written several books on the significance of hope in therapeutic change. He is an experienced teacher and presenter and enjoys providing professional development.

CPD Credits: A CPD certificate will be issued on completion.