PRESENTED BY: MARK F. SCHWARTZ, Sc.D. See Bio >>
WHEN: FRI. OCT 18, 2024
WHERE: LIVE ON ZOOM!
COST: FREE
COURSE EVALUATION (TBD) >>
COURSE POWERPOINT TO BE POSTED SOON >>
CEs: 2.0 with the completion of the online Evaluation Form
2.0 CEs provided with the completion of an online evaluation form. This workshop provides 2.0 CEs. Application made to CEPA for specified hours of Continuing Education Credit for MFTs, LPCCs, LEPs, and LCSWs as is required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.
SUMMARIZED ABSTRACT
Avoidance refers to a tendency to evade intimacy with other people, but also to defend against certain feelings, impulses, memories and needs that arise internally (Lundy, 2023).
Avoidant individuals had to adapt to caregivers who were critical, absent, dismissive, and not able to mirror, by defensively excluding desire for closeness and comfort. Their real self was not mirrored, and the “false self” feels empty and hollow, not allowing for sufficient connection to self or others.
This livecast webinar focuses on treatment strategies that seed the development of the “real self” and a state of greater differentiation and integration, allowing one to live in harmony with one’s own feelings and needs. Application to couples therapy and complementation of different attachment strategies in pair-bonds will be described.
Individuals with avoidant, preoccupied, or disorganized attachment histories often bounce between avoidance of intimacy, in an effort to defend against certain feelings and needs, or strong feelings of dependency in what seems like a childlike state of making up for what they never received from their family. In both polarities, the individuals’ differentiation is often blocked by perceived abuse, neglect, loss, or abandonment.
The choice of a romantic partner is therein a pure example of “reenactment”—a disguised, unconscious attempt to resolve irreconcilable contradictions related to the self’s feeling damaged, defective, and unloveable, which is often related to caretakers not actually being capable of optimal parenting because of their own attachment difficulties.
WEBINAR OBJECTIVES
In this webinar, clinicians will learn state-of-the-art optimal therapy for providing anticipatory guidance for relational dysfunction and repair, related to the following:
- To use the lens of attachment theory to describe the common issues confronting couples.
- To describe interventions to deal with avoidance and anxious attachment couple dynamics.
- To discuss facilitation of using the couple’s relationship to facilitate the individual’s differentiation of self.
- To illustrate how working with individuals with the partner present facilitates couples intimacy.
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