Couples Counseling: Building Communication Skills

Most couples enter therapy with a specific vision of their problems. They may describe themselves as having “anger problems,” “sexual incompatibility” or “trust issues”. A skillful therapist will explore how the clients’ framing of their situation is keeping them stuck–and how they might change that. While looking at the most common topics in couples therapy, Dr. Klein will show you how to identify the powerful client narratives that keep couples stuck in their dysfunctional patterns.

This training will describe the features of a productive therapeutic environment, and describe how to create an effective therapeutic alliance. And we’ll look at examples of both appropriate and problematic therapeutic goals: that’s why rather than asking patients about their “problems,” the best therapy starts with “So what would you like to accomplish in our work together?”