The secret to helping couples have a powerful, transformative experience in therapy is to get them to deeply explore, while in each other’s presence, their own character structure and family-of-origin trauma. For the therapist, this process involves six steps: arriving at the couple’s relational diagnosis, helping them articulate their repeating loop, getting the backstory of their childhood adaptation, imaginatively reparenting each inner child, loving confrontation, and helping each partner master new skills.

During this two-day workshop, Terry Real will take participants through the steps of his Relational Life Therapy (RLT). work. He created this model and has fine-tuned it over the past couple of decades to help countless couples reconnect, reunite, and rekindle love that has been damaged or lost. He will teach attendees his “Six Steps of Relational Life Therapy ”:

1. Forming a relational diagnosisWhere is the couple stuck?
2. Articulating and giving feedback to the couple on the repeating loop they are mired in.
3. Joining through the truth. Utilizing the art of lovingly confronting the client in a way that leaves him or her feeling more trusting and closer to the therapist.
4. Moving through stance into family of origin. Where did the client learn this? How did this person’s particular Adaptive Child come into being?
5. Imaginatively bringing the client’s younger Adaptive Child into the room to dialogue with the Functional Adult part of the Self, thus separating or, “unblending” them. Relational health comes when clients are equipped to love their inner parts and not foist them off on their partner to look after.
6. Rebuilding and reconnecting. Understanding how the therapist can amplify progress, cut through both shame and grandiosity and reconnect closed hearts, even in the face of great hurt, anger, or skepticism. This final step is about rebuilding the relationship, remembering the partners who they are to each other, easing defenses and aggressive behaviors, helping them learn to cherish one another.