Integrate Mindfulness with Couples Therapy: Practical Tools to Help Couples in Crisis

CPD

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Keith Miller, LICSW Related seminars and products

KEITH MILLER & ASSOCIATES COUNSELING

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Keith Miller, LICSW, is the director of Keith Miller & Associates, a large private practice specializing in couples therapy in Washington, DC. A certified Imago Relationship Therapist and certified Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapist, Keith is the author of Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy (2015). Keith is frequent guest on television and radio, he enjoys presenting complex topics with humor and down-to-earth familiarity. He writes a blog called Love Good and is author of numerous articles that aim to make it easier for couples to succeed at marriage and committed partnership. Keith is passionate about lowering the stigma couples face for going to therapy and is candid about how his own marriage of 15 years was saved by the kinds of couples therapy interventions he explains in this seminar. He holds a Masters in Social Work from Virginia Commonwealth University and practiced psychiatric community mental health many years. Keith’s undergraduate degree in religion and spirituality deeply shaped his belief in the interconnectedness of life and the possibility of transformation.

 

 

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Objectives

1. Assess when to use implicit or explicit mindfulness with couples.
2. Recognize how mindfulness can have both attachment and differentiation effects.
3. Demonstrate how to use mindfulness to de-escalate partners in conflict.
4. Describe the trade-offs between using solution-focused and mindfulness techniques.
5. Explain how mindfulness can help you troubleshoot client-resistance to common evidenced-based couples therapy interventions.
6. Integrate concepts of natural multiplicity (parts work) with couples.
7. Apply core mindfulness practices to your personal and professional life.

Outline

The Perfect Partners: Mindfulness and Couples Therapy

• Five core principles of mindfulness in action: video case review
• Brain, love, and how mindfulness heals both
• Reduce contempt, criticism, stonewalling and defensiveness
• Self-compassion and authentic selflessness
• Differentiation/integration between partners
• “Sacred” space, creativity, play

Five Key Skills to Mindfulness Couples Therapy

• Attachment and Differentiation
• Natural multiplicity (parts) to make sense of “irrational” feelings
• Courageous leadership from the center
• Respect the stress response
• The “inside-out” therapist

How to Use Mindfulness with Couples

• Three indicators for using meditative (explicit) mindfulness
• Conversational vs. strategic mindfulness
• MindLESS mindfulness and how to respond when mindfulness flops
• Experiential Exercise #1: Listening to your inner family of parts

Mindfulness Techniques for Couples

• Tracking the cycle
• You-turn
• Courageous communication
• Role playing
• Awareness and compassion for stress
• Self-soothing

State Awareness Techniques: Welcoming Complexity

• Differentiating parts from the whole
• Active observers of experience without automatic responding
• Six qualities of mindful awareness
• Guided imagery

Integrating Strategies from Couples Therapy Models with Mindfulness

• Imago Relationship Therapy
  • Demonstration: Using couples dialogue technique with mindfulness
• Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
  • Demonstration: Mindfulness with primary and secondary emotions
• Gottman Method Couples Therapy
  • Demonstration: Friendship-building exercise with mindfulness

Essential Attitudes of the Mindful Couples Therapist

• “Three R’s:” Respect, Restore and Resource
• Accepts leadership role of mediator with polarities
• Monitors self for stress and fear reactions to couple
• Relaxes self-judgment and fear
• Experiential Exercise #2: Using the 3 R’s when you’re frustrated with the couple

Target Audience

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