Workshop on close relationships

 

1. Introductory Weekend

v Singles, both male and female

v Separated or divorced people

v Someone in a couple who prefers coming alone

 

v Following negative couple experiences, many people living alone become unsure of their ability to succeed in the future, and so become commitment-avoidant.

v Some persons in a couple which they feel as unsatisfying can't yet identify clearly and break their vicious circles in order to durably improve the quality of their relationships.

This workshop's overall goal is to build participants´ skills for forming and maintaining
high-quality close relationships.

Þ To accomplish this, we enable a half dozen men and women to revisit, in a secure setting and using a specially structured means of personal exploration, the roots of their own negative relationship patterns. The awareness coming from this experience helps alternative ways of managing their relationships really take hold.

What alternative ways ? 

Ø A new perspective on how couples function and how you might enhance yours :

• the meaning of initial attraction and how a couple develops afterwards
• the suffocation of symbiosis and how to get out of it
• having arguments – but differently
• getting through couple growth crises more easily
  

Ø Emotional communication "tools"  of the  Imago Dialogue which help to :

• really listen to everything that comes up in a difficult discussion
• handle annoyance, resentment and anger constructively
• create the safety necessary for intimacy
  

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Mini-workshop

Imago communication tools practice group

One half-day session per month

Participants : persons familiar with Imago tools, through either a weekend "Workshop on Close Relationships", or sessions of Couples Therapy with me, or our previous Continuous Group.

Purposes : reinforce on the practical level participants' newly learned relationship skills; suggest appropriate specific applications to each participant's personal life; organize ongoing group support for the changes which each participant undertakes.

Issues :

• the characteristics of my future partner
• what actually happens in my initial contacts  with a potential partner
• setting my limits
• my emotional reactivity : its meaning and how to cope with it consciously 

Commitment : a minimum of 5 sessions 

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Shorter workshops

Various modules distinctly shorter than the Weekend workshops:

A) half-day or full-day modules specifically for couples

B) half-day or full-day modules specifically for singles

Certain of these modules require no previous psychotherapy experience, whereas others are only open to people in psychotherapy, whether individually or in a couple.