Bill Doherty and Steven Harris, Family Social Science professors and co-directors of the Couples on the Brink Project, will hold a free workshop for therapists on Friday, Dec. 9, 10 a.m. – noon via Zoom.

“Seeing Beyond the Person in the Room: Couple Sensitive Individual Therapy” is their response to research released earlier this year that discovered how individual therapists sometimes undermine couple relationships.

“Most clinical conversations about couple relationship problems occur in individual therapy, not couples therapy,” says Doherty. “But individual therapy models offer little guidance for how to address relationship problems.”

 The result is that therapists may inadvertently support their client’s view of the partner or inappropriately diagnose the never-seen partner.

“A one-sided narrative of a complex relational problem doesn’t help the client and can undermine the relationship,” says Harris. “Even couples therapists can make the same mistakes when doing individual therapy.”

This workshop will share new research on this topic conducted by the Couples on the Brink Project and provide specific tools and guidelines for helping individual clients in the context of their relationship, while avoiding common traps when therapists are seeing just one member of a couple.

No continuing education credits are provided but participants are encouraged to apply to their board for CE approval.

The workshop is free however registration is required. Please register using this form. A Zoom link will be sent prior to the workshop.