Recorded On: Friday, March 3, 2023 from 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM (EST)
Where: Zoom Communications
Presented by: Michelle Becker, MA, LMFT
*NOTE: Only Live Participants are eligible to received their 1.5 Hours Continuing Education Credits.
Session Description:
This webinar will introduce therapists to how to help couples activate their care systems and build a relationship based on kindness, especially how to develop and utilize skills rooted in kindness and compassion to foster secure attachment in their relationships. Focused on the role that mindfulness, common humanity, and kindness play in in fostering satisfying relationships, therapists will learn a simple practice to help couples see and appreciate the good in each other, and move out of the threat/defense system and into the care system where we feel safe, content and connected. Fostering these skills in couples can support the process of psychotherapy.
Generally speaking, couples come to therapy because things are going wrong in their relationship- or at least they don’t seem to be going well. Often couples are so distressed that all they can see is what is wrong with the relationship (and each other). Yet, according to Gottman’s research, couples need to have at least five positive interactions for every one negative interaction to maintain health in their relationship. When couples are so focused on what is wrong it can be challenging to help them see and appreciate what is already right in their relationship-- which was so easy for them to see earlier in the relationship, when things were going well. Being able to see and appreciate the good in each other and the relationship can help to provide enough safety to look at what isn’t going well without triggering a cycle of reactivity and despair rooted in the activation of the threat/defense system.
About Michelle Becker, MA, LMFT:
Michelle Becker is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, the developer of the Compassion for Couples program, and the founder of Wise Compassion- a company specializing in teaching compassion in various relational contexts. She is a teacher trainer, mentor and co-founder of the Mindful Self-Compassion Teacher Training, as well as a senior teacher of Compassion Cultivation Training, certified Daring Way Facilitator and a Senior Trainer at the University of California at San Diego Center for Mindfulness. She teaches and speaks on the topics of compassion internationally. You can listen to her podcast: Well Connected Relationships wherever you like to listen to podcasts or on her website. Her book Compassion for Couples: Building the Skills of Loving Connection, due out February 2023, is available here or wherever you like to buy books.