Intensive Training in Pragmatic-Experiential Therapy for Couples (PET-C)
Date: Friday - Tuesday, May 23-27, 2008
Time: 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Location: Lewis & Clark, South Campus Conference Center:
Friday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday: Room SCCC 101
Saturday: Room SCCC 107
Non-credit: 30 CEU's
Cost: $1350 if postmarked or faxed by May 1st, 2008
$1450 after May 1st, 2008
Lodging: Lodging is available through our dorms on campus. If you are interested please complete a Short Term Housing form and submit it directly to Sandi Bottemiller, sjb@lclark.edu, 0615 SW Palatine Hill Rd MSC 132, Portland, OR 97219, with full payment (rather than just a $50 deposit). The form is online via this link, under the section titled, "Graduate Students."
 Build on your basic understanding of PET-C through five days of intensive training. Spend 30 hours with Brent Atkinson receiving personalized tutoring in the implementation of PET-C assessment and intervention. Learn the "ins and outs" of all the major PET-C methods and techniques by watching and discussing videos of Dr. Atkinson's work with couples, reviewing critical steps involved in specific interventions, engaging in skill-building simulations, and in thoughful reflection about your own emotional habits.
By the end of the week, participants will have developed or strengthened their ability to:
- Help each partner understand the degree to which his/her typical reactions during upsetting situations, and his typical style of interacting during non-conflict times, meet (or fail to meet) the prerequisites for relationship success (the specific attitudes and actions that are highly predictive of relationship success failure).
- Know exactly what each partner need to do to more fully meet the prerequisites for relationship success in any situation she/he faces.
- Help each partner realize that is in her/his own best interest to meet the prerequisites for relationship success (i.e., those who meet the prerequisites almost always get treated well by their partners).
- Cultivate a receptive state of mind in each partner so that she/he can receive this information non-defensively.
- Help partners begin to meet the prerequisites for relationship success during therapy sessions by creating internal shifts in each of them, then guiding them toward ways of relating that are highly predictive of relationship success.
- Help each partner recognize the automatic, deeply conditioned nature of his/her typical reactions during upsetting situations.
- Help each partner become more aware of the specific package or automatic reactions (emotional habits) that get activated when she/he gets upset.
- Help each partner realize the necessity of repetitive practice if his/her emotional habits are ever going to change.
- Design daily practices for clients that promote new levels of neural integration and recondition outmoded emotional habits.
- Help each partner develop strong motivation to engage in these daily pratices.
- Make personalized CD recordings for clients to use daily in their efforts to rewire their brains for more flexibility.
- Help clients learn to use digital voice recorders at home to build daily practices that reqire their emotional habits.
- Become more aware of, and better able to, shift your own internal states as needed: a.) when working as a therapist, and b.) in your own personal life.
Participants should be familiar with Dr. Atkinson's book, Emotional Intelligence in Couples Therapy: Advances from Neurobiology and the Science of Intimate Relationshps prior to beginning the intensive week of training. During the training, participants will learn how to use various digital technologies to strengthen you therapeutic impact. Learn how and when to generate personalized handouts and exercises for your clients, using the PET-C electronic CD workbook, Developing Habits for Relationship Succs. participants receive the same digital sound recorder (your to keep) used by clinicians at the Couples Research Institute to make personalized CDs for clients to use in their daily reconditionaing practices. Understanding that not all therapists feel confident with computer-related technologies, we'll walk you through the steps neccessary to make the kind of personalized CDs that have been useful to many PET-C clients. 
Brent Atkinson, Ph.D., is the principle architect of Pragmatic/Experiential Therapy for Couples, an approach that translates new scientific findings about the brain into practical methods for improving relationships. Dr. Atkinson is Director of Post-Graduate Training at the Couples Research Institute in Geneva, Illinois and holds a senior graduate faculty post at Northern Illinois University. Dr. Atkinson’s pioneering work has been the subject of dozens of professional journal articles, and has recently been featured in magazines and newspapers such as the Oprah Magazine, the Washington Post, Cosmopolitan Magazine, the Psychotherapy Networker, and others. A personable and engaging speaker, Dr. Atkinson is know for his ability to present complex scientific ideas in compelling and easy-to-understand ways. His seminars are packed with cutting-edge information, practical interventions, and handouts that can be given to clients.
The Couples Research Institute
Registration Flier (pdf) Transportation and lodging information
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