Transformative Couples Therapy® experiential Skills Course
22 CE available from APA and CAMFT - CE Also in Process from ASWB
Limited Scholarships Available
Wake Up Transformative Change in Your Most Challenging Couples: Join Our Exciting Monthly Training Series on Zoom!
Transformative Couples Therapy® Institute is excited to announce the second year of our Monthly Training Series, starting Tuesday, February 25, 2025. This series is designed for both new and returning participants, offering a dynamic blend of teaching, clinical video examples, and hands-on practice to help you navigate even the most challenging couples' dynamics.
Why Join?
Deepen Your Expertise: The first hour of each session will dive into the theory and practice of Transformative Couples Therapy®, providing you with powerful tools and techniques to help couples break through longstanding struggles.
Key Insights: In the second hour, you’ll watch "unlikely transformations" unfold through clinical training videos, featuring couples working through complex issues like high conflict, premarital therapy in a cross-cultural context, sexual and financial conflicts, issues of patriarchy and treating the complex dynamics of PTSD along with disorganized attachment. These clinical sessions with teaching points will give you valuable methods you can apply to the practice of Transformative Couples Therapy®.
Hands-On Application: The third hour of each session is where the magic happens. You’ll apply what you’ve learned in a live role-play with couples, guided by an Experiential Assistant. These interactive sessions in small breakout groups allow you to immediately integrate new skills in a supportive, safe environment.
Impactful Methods: You'll learn techniques like accessing the seven channels of experience and facilitating healing portrayals and more methods that help couples build and maintain a deep and lasting felt experience of love.
Earn CE Credits: Twenty-Two Continuing Education Clinical have now been approved by CAMFT with additional CE approval pending.
Who Should Attend?
This series is ideal for clinicians who have experience in AEDP, Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, EFT, or other attachment-based therapies. If you're passionate about helping couples transform and thrive, this training is for you: Psychiatrists, Psychologists, Psychotherapists, MFT's, Social Workers, Registered Counselors, Pastoral Counselors
Spaces are limited—don’t miss out on this opportunity to expand your expertise and make a lasting impact in your couples therapy work.
SESSION CALENDAR
Sessions begin February 25th, 2025Enrollment due date by February 2oth, 2025.
Eight monthly three-hour sessionsTuesdays 8am-11am PST$100 per three-hour session, total cost $800$750 paid in advance-
February 25, 2025
March 25, 2025
April 22, 2025
May 20, 2025
June 17, 2025
Summer Break
September 16, 2025
October 21, 2025
November 18, 2025
TRAINING OBJECTIVES
At the end of this program, participants will be able to:
Identify two ways to help establish a secure base in treatment.
Describe two ways to regulate emotional reactivity in both couple members.
Define how to detect the healthiest aspects of each couple member.
Describe two methods for couple members to process emotional experience to completion.
Define why affirmation of the value of the self and the other is important in couple treatment.
Explain how couple members can learn to melt defenses of intellectualization.
Describe how to process warded-off emotional experience.
Describe how to conduct meta-therapeutic processing after couples have reparative experiences.
Define the value of the core effect of surprise.
Define what is important about helping couple members develop skills to show more demonstrations of valuing in daily life.
Define three early signs of dorsal vagal response.
Describe two ways to regulate dorsal vagal response.
Specify how the frequency of incidences of dorsal vagal response can be reduced in treatment.
Distinguish three methods for engaging avoidantly attached patients in treatment.
Explain why a state of mindful awareness helps both couples and therapist in treatment.
Explain the value of increased awareness of bodily states in couple members.
Define what transformance striving is and how to identify it.
Describe the value of sensation in being aware of internal state.
Define two ways a therapist can use their vision to identify tension in couple members.
Define ways that awareness and skillful expression about energetic states can be helpful.
Course DETAILS
This course is designed for intermediate to advanced learners. Our target audience is Psychologists, Psychotherapists, MFT's, Social Workers, Registered Counselors, Pastoral Counselors.
Cancellation policy: You may end your enrollment at any time and receive a refund for the remaining sessions of the course. Questions or concerns may be communicate by email to davidmarsphd@gmail.com. If you have a need for ADA accommodation, please contact davidmarsphd@gmail.com
David Mars, PhD, the presenter for this course, holds a PhD in Psychology, is licensed as an MFT, and has taught Transformative Couples Therapy® to psychotherapists since 2008. He is the developer of the method and taught it as a faculty member of the AEDP Institute for eleven years. He is the director of the Transformative Couples Therapy® Institute has been treating couples in private practice for over forty years. Click here for a more complete bio.
There are no conflicts of interest or external commercial support related to this course or any course offered by the Transformative Couples Therapy® Institute.
MEETING Agenda
ALL TIMES ARE IN PACIFIC TIME
8:00-8:10am: Orientation and opening three-minute Channels of Experience meditation.
8:10-8:20am: Check-in and discussion of each participant’s response to the meditation and any breakthroughs or questions about in treating their couples with Transformative Couples Therapy®.
8:20-9:00am: Didactic presentation and discussion of a slide deck about the TCT method and its application by David Mars, PhD or Lisa Gardner LCSW. Information will include details on how to use the Fidelity Scales to guide clinical application of the method. Presentation will include how to regulate emotional reactivity in preparation for the clinical video example and how to evoke, metaprocess and stabilize the felt experience of love.
9:10-9:50am: Presentation and discussion of captioned clinical video. During and after the video sharing, the instructor will point out the examples shown that were just introduced in the didactic portion described above. Moments that highlight the use of the seven channels of experience will be emphasized to enhance participants capacity to track bodily indicators of moment-to-moment tracking to enhance whole body attunement.
9:50-10:05am: Break
10:05-10:55am: Preparation and transition into Breakout rooms for the Experiential Exercise to apply what they have learned. Participants will choose to be either role play couple members, role play therapist or witness. With the support of the Experiential Assistant, participants gain a direct experience of applying the method.
10:55-11am: Regathering, closing discussion.
COURSE COMPLETION REQUIREMENTS:
Participants must complete all sessions to be awarded CE. Or as an alternative, CE can be applied for and awarded after each session by prior arrangement via Heisel and Associates. Contact for details.
Cameras on Zoom must be left on, with only brief exceptions. A post test must be completed prior to CE being awarded. Attendance will be taken and documented each session. No specific assignments are required, other than reading the course materials sent out before we meet each session. Any questions can be addressed to davidmarsphd@gmail.com. To attend this live, interactive course you must have access to a working computer, a room with sufficient privacy to protect the confidentiality of couple members whose clinical work is shown and internet connectivity sufficient to maintain a stable connection to Zoom.
At the end of the whole course, CE can be applied for via this link. If you know you will miss a session, you can receive CE for each session individually as you go along at this link. Just establish an account and then you are ready as the course precedes.
This course is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists to sponsor continuing education for MFT’s, Social Workers and LPCs. Credits.Education Provider # 103282 maintains responsibility for this program/course and its content.
Transformative Couples Therapy® Experiential Skills Course is also pending approval by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program to be offered by Transformative Couples Therapy® Institute as an individual course ASWB # 6112. Regulatory boards are the final authority on courses accepted for continuing education credit. ACE course approval period: February 25, 2025 to November 19, 2025. Social workers completing this course receive 22 clinical continuing education credits.
Heisel and Associates, Provider Number 1253, is approved to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Organizations, not individual courses, are approved as ACE providers. State and provincial regulatory boards have the final authority to determine whether an individual course may be accepted for continuing education credit. Heisel and Associates maintains responsibility for this course. ACE provider approval period: 5/3/2023 to 5/3/2026.
Heisel and Associates has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP #6603. Programs that do not quality for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Heisel and Associates is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.
This course has been approved by Heisel and Associates, an NAADAC Approved Education Provider, for educational credits. NAADAC Provider #111326, Heisel and Associates is responsible for all aspects of the programs.
Heisel and Associates is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Heisel and Associates maintains responsibility for these programs and their content.