Description

Addiction Treatment and Couples Therapy: Using Emotionally Focused Therapy to Strengthen Sobriety – Michael Barnett

Even the most talented couples therapists are often unprepared to handle the explosive impasses and icy freeze-outs that present themselves when toxic addictive processes permeate already unstable relationships. The traditional “sledgehammer” approach of harsh, shame-based confrontation only tends to fuel the problem. And behavioral and insight-oriented interventions rarely get to the heart of the pain and shame at the root of addictive processes. Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), however, leverages an innate pull toward connection and belonging that motivates people to reach for their partner to regulate emotional pain, rather than reaching for substances. In this workshop, you’ll discover how to:

• Use micro-tracking to identify and make explicit the rigid negative attachment-based patterns that perpetuate relational distress in addictive relationships
• Systematically engage emotion to create bonding moments that support the addict in reaching out to their partner rather than their substance/behavior of choice
• Apply powerful attachment-based interventions as an effective alternative to the familiar modes of confronting denial that often fail and trigger relapse

• Discover how to use micro-tracking to identify and make explicit the rigid negative attachment-based patterns that perpetuate relational distress in addictive relationships
• Discover how to systematically engage emotion to create bonding moments that support the addict in reaching out to their partner rather than their substance/behavior of choice
• Discover how to apply powerful attachment-based interventions as an effective alternative to the familiar modes of confronting denial that often fail and trigger relapse

1. The Medical Model and Addiction
   1. Key Figures in Modern Treatment
2. Emotion Focused Therapy
   1. Emotion Focused Therapy for PTSD
   2. Definition of Trauma
   3. The Power of Treating Trauma Within the Context of the Couple Relationship
3. Neuroplasticity and Change
   1. Importance of Heightened Emotion in Change
   2. How Emotion is More Powerful than Cognition
4. Adverse Childhood Experiences
   1. Adverse Childhood Experiences and Addiction
   2. Attachment and Trauma is Key to Working with Addiction
   3. Importance of Context in a Person’s Life
5. Cycle of Trauma Attachment and Addiction
   1. How the Couple System Hijacks Attachment Fluidity
   2. The Relationship between Attachment and Emotion in Systemic Change
   3. How Partner’s Stress Strategies Become the Other Partner’s Negative Trigger
6. The Process of EFT
   1. Five Basic Moves of EFT
   2. Addressing the Addiction through Attachment Style
   3. Experientially Engage Client with the Underlying Emotion that Addiction Regulates