This is a description.

Volatile couples come to couples therapy with a mixture of trauma, devastated dreams, and defensive attitudes. If you ask about their goals or how you can help, you will get a lot of complaints and pressure to fix their partner. Trying to understand their problems and asking about their goals can be a toxic start as their defensiveness and trauma get re-triggered. 30 years of seeing couples resulted in this innovative approach. You will learn how to have each person identify their role in the distress, accept accountability for self- change, identify personal growth changes that are a stretch, create the foundation to work as a team and do it all with a spirit of cooperation and positive strokes. In the first session, do all this and more.

The educational objectives are listed.

1. Skillfully assess the level of self and other awareness.
2. Delineate between conventional approaches of starting therapy with a softer, gentler approach that quickly fosters cooperation.
3. Describe ways of increasing motivation for self- change vs. partner change.

Session may be edited to preserve confidentiality.