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TREATING COUPLES CONFERENCE 2011

WORKING WITH COMPLICATED FAMILIES

October 21-22, 2011
Lafayette Hill, PA 19444

Keynote Speakers: Brendan Greer, MD, MBA & Stephen Treat, DMin, LMFT

Agenda | Workshop Descriptions | Location, Fees & CE Credits | Registration Form

Working with complicated families pose tremendous challenges for therapeutic work, since they tend to create a highly charged and chaotic atmosphere around themselves, even in sessions with experienced therapists. Of course, not only are their own interactions out of control, but the loss of control often threatens to spill over into any attempt to work with them therapeutically. This extended lecture-presentation will look into the intertwined roles of interpersonal dynamics and neurobiology in emotional and behavioral reactivity. Through a combination of discussion, presentation, and case reviews, working with complicated families will become less a frightening force of nature and more the target of specific therapeutic approaches aimed at easing the dysfunctional reactivity of the clients and increasing the efficacy of the therapeutic work with them.

Friday, October 21
The presenters will discuss multiple issues, dynamics and narratives of families which nurture an enmeshed, reactive, and "complicated" environment. The dialogue will include care issues of attachment and complexes, systemic forces in the family interaction and medical precursors to chaos.

The underlying concepts to several systemic schools of thought as well as insight into the affective disorders, personality disorders and medical conditions will be examined. "Complicated" dynamics will be explained through these concepts and applied systemically in the family.

Participants will:

1. Increase clients' understanding of the origins of highly conflictual behavior in their family and in their neurobiology.
2. Guide clients to make specific and helpful changes in highly conflictual behavior and/or to cope better with the behavior of their partners.

Saturday, October 22
The therapist use of self with the family, joining with every family member, applications of multilateral impartiality will be shared. The character sense of self-reactivity, presence, and "game" of the therapist will be discussed as a point of intervention.

This section will discuss and further summarize specific interventions, the structure of therapy, dual role and boundaries with the enmeshed reactive family. In an interactive process, best practices will be discussed with all of the conference participants.

Participants will:

1. Help clients better cope with their own anxious, fearful, or hostile reactive emotions.
2. Be more aware of the role that their own anxiety or other reactive emotions play during sessions.
3. 3. Increase their own sense of therapeutic control in sessions with highly conflictual clients.

For more information about the conference, please contact contact Gina Neri, at 215-382-6680 ext. 3124.