Crucible Treating Extramarital Affairs Workshop

This workshop is now full.
For other workshops in this series, click here.
For information regarding future scheduling of this workshop, be sure to join our mailing list , or call (303) 670-2630.

Register Now!

Roughly 30 to 60% of married people in America engage in extra-marital affairs. Men are more likely to stray than women, but women's rates are gaining parity. Few things have greater long-term negative impact on relationships than affairs. Many couples divorce and those who stay together often struggle with the aftermath for years.

Therapists often find conventional ways of dealing with the hostility, volatility, distrust, and hurt feelings that accompany affairs don't really work, resulting in a long-lasting rupture in couples' intimacy and commitment. What do you do when the “betrayed partner” says:

• "How could you do this to me?!"
• "I need to be able to trust you!"
• "I need to know all the details!"
• "I’ll never forgive you!"

What do you do when the “adulterer” says:

• "I never meant to hurt you."
• "I already said I was sorry, what else can I say?!"

Over the last decades therapists have learned sexual problems are often unresponsive to straight-forward body-oriented treatment. It is important to address the systemic emotional processes that maintain sexual problems long after their original source is eliminated. Likewise, mere insight and talk-therapy is often ineffective in eliminating problems of sexual performance. People have to be physically and emotionally engaged doing new things. Couples’ co-existing relationship problems also must be addressed.

If you're a mental health professional treating couples and individuals coping with the aftermath of sexual or emotional affairs, this workshop is for you. Perfect for psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, licensed professional counselors, clergy, and coaches (and graduate students in these professions). Novel clinical strategies and sophisticated deconstruction of affair dynamics can help you succeed with your most entrenched and embittered couples.

Watch an exciting unrehearsed therapy session conducted by Dr. David Schnarch. Compare the responses you'd make with those of a master therapist. In the debriefing that follows, you'll have opportunities to ask questions and discuss your observations with the instructor.

Typically, our sexual dysfunction workshops are held in major metropolitan cities and attract several hundred participants. Enrollment for this special program, held in beautiful Evergreen Colorado, will be strictly limited to create a small group learning experience with more opportunities for interacting with Drs. Schnarch and Morehouse.

The new Crucible Treating Extramarital Affairs Workshop, conducted by Drs. David Schnarch and Ruth Morehouse, is a complete departure from conventional couple therapy. Coping with extramarital affairs presents powerful opportunities for personal and interpersonal differentiation— when handled outside the limitations of conventional attachment-based approaches. This cutting-edge workshop, rooted in differentiation and the 4 Points of Balance, emphasizes resilience rather than “woundedness,” and emotional autonomy rather than “betrayal.” You’ll learn to recognize and avoid the most common pitfalls in treating affairs. It will completely change your views on things you take for granted like:

• Commitment
• Re-establishing trust
• Decision to reveal details of the affair
• Making amends
• Forgiveness

In the Crucible^® Treating Extramarital Affairs Workshop, you’ll learn a treatment approach that helps people grow and mature in the process of effectively resolving affairs, and thereby reduces the likelihood of subsequent repetitions. Differentiation is the optimal way to approach extra-relational affairs, because affairs involve balancing the inherent tension between two sociobiological forces: We are a sexually gregarious species that also values pair-bonding. Differentiation, in this case, is your ability to tolerate, balance, and handle these two powerful drives.

You’ll also learn four key ingredients of a sophisticated systemic approach to affairs that will revolutionize your practice. These are four differentiation-based factors that potentiate affairs and other relationship problems:

1. Reflected sense of self—Common dependence on getting acceptance and validation.
2. Two-choice dilemmas—Natural forced-choice decisions permeating love relationships.
3. Borrowed functioning—Emotional fusion in relationships permits artificial inflation (and suppression) of emotional functioning.
4. Incongruous power hierarchy—The partner having the affair often has higher status than the resolute spouse.

Using the modern brain science of "mind-mapping" and interpersonal neurobiology, you'll learn how to develop a decisive picture of each partners' dynamics and how the affair played out in their relationship. You’ll be able to detect inaccuracies in partners’ self-report, construct more accurate conceptualizations, and maintain tighter pacing and leading in therapy sessions. The resulting greater accuracy and intensity allow thoroughly gridlocked couples to make progress, and makes the therapy itself an intimate process.

The three day Crucible^® Treating Extramarital Affairs Clinical Workshop addresses the thorny details of treating affairs you don’t learn in school. For example, it shows you how to:

1. Handle volatile “trust issues” that always surface in therapy in entirely new ways.
2. Use the Crucible 6-Step Intervention Strategy to create isomorphic, multi-systemic clinical impacts.
3. Construct crucibles of personal development for both partners that enhance differentiation and reduce emotional fusion and borrowed functioning.
4. Work with clients having unrelenting conflict, or who are on the verge of divorce, or who have previously failed in treatment.

This innovative approach offers unique interventions that resolve the aftermath and help couples grow through the process. You will learn about “Collaborative Alliances”, which provide the core of couples’ new relationships, and a framework for understanding where their relationship as a whole went wrong. Resilient collaborative alliances are rooted in differentiation, so the whole treatment approach fits together. This rapid-paced approach allows couples to achieve core personal and relational change, and come out stronger than before.

The Crucible^® Treating Extramarital Affairs Clinical Workshop also addresses the person of the therapist and the many difficult issues of:

• “Value-laden” vs. Value-blinded therapists.
• The need for clinical sensitivity.
• Liberalism, conservatism and the therapist’s personal values.
• Therapist’s personal history.

This workshop is offered at the intermediate level of postgraduate training.

This workshop will be recorded for teaching and training purposes. Workshop participants agree to be anecdotally recorded during their participation in the workshop.

Please note all times are approximate. Everyone benefits from the freedom to pay more attention to some aspects more than others. This may alter the time devoted to each topic.

For a complete list of learning objectives, please contact The Marriage and Family Health by email, phone or letter.

Join us for one workshop or the entire series in beautiful Evergreen, Colorado. Although Evergreen is just 35 miles from downtown Denver, it is a world apart in ambiance and easy access to the wonderful Colorado Rockies. Walk around Evergreen Lake, stroll through our art galleries, listen to music at the famous Little Bear Saloon, or hike our verdant nature trails. The Bears Inn and Highland Haven are ideal places to book lodging within a few minutes from our workshop location. Contact us for additional hotel sites.

David Schnarch, Ph.D., ABPP is the founder of the Crucible and Passionate Marriage Approaches to human relationships. He is the author of four books including Constructing the Sexual Crucible, Resurrecting Sex, Passionate Marriage and Intimacy and Desire: Awaken the Passion your Relationships. Dr. Schnarch received the American Psychological Association 2013 Outstanding Contribution to Professional Practice and two years earlier was awarded the AAMFT Outstanding Contribution to the Field of Family Therapy. He was also the first recipient of the American Association of Sex Education, Counseling and Therapy (ASSECT) "Professional Standard of Excellence" Award. Come learn for yourself why David Schnarch is considered one of the innovative thinkers in the field of couple and family therapy.

Ruth Morehouse, Ph. D. is a licensed psychologist and a certified sex therapist with AASECT (Diplomat) and Co-Director of The Crucible Institute and Marriage and Family Health Center. In this capacity she has conducted workshops and supervised and consulted with therapists for the last 20 years throughout the United States and around the world. She has a special interest in working with women’s issues, families coping with medical problems and helping step-parenting and blended families. Ruth previously served two terms as Vice President for Practice for the Society of Couples and Family Psychology, Division 43 of the American Psychological Association and was elected President-Elect of this same division for 2016.

We are offering special prices for these one-time unique events. Fees are less than 50% of normal charges for our workshops. Take advantage of them as soon as possible because enrollment is definitely limited. Fees include coffee and beverage breaks. Lunch is not included.

Please Note: this workshop will be video-taped in its entirety. Most of the video-taping emphasis will be on the presenters, however, we would love to have you be a part of this video. This could include such things as group shots of the audience, you as a member of the audience asking questions to presenters or interacting with other participants, or perhaps making comments on material presented. If you attend this workshop, as a member of the audience you will be included in the video-taping of this workshop. As part of the registration process, all attendees will be asked to sign a release (click here to view u0026amp; print) allowing us to video tape you as a part of the workshop and to use the video tape solely at our discretion for future training/educational/ informational programs. Before completing your registration, please review completely the release and be sure you are comfortable with signing the release. If you do not want to be in this workshop as it is being video-taped, then this workshop is not for you. You can check our website periodically to find other workshops offerings that do not include videotaping.

YOUR REGISTRATION IS NOT CONFIRMED UNTIL YOU RECEIVE NOTIFICATION WE HAVE RECEIVED AND APPROVED YOUR WORKSHOP AGREEMENT u0026amp; CONFLICTS OF INTEREST DISCLOSURE FORMS (AVAILABLE HERE) and your VIDEOTAPE RELEASE FORM (AVAILABLE HERE). After completing payment, please print these pages, sign, and fax to our office at (303) 670-2392 or email to [email protected].

Register Now!

• This program is sponsored by the Marriage and Family Health Center (MFHC, also doing business as the Crucible Institute).
• MFHC is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. MFHC maintains responsibility for this program and its content. This workshop earns: 21 CE credits for Licensed Psychologists.
• Marriage u0026amp; Family Health Center (MFHC) has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 5870. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. MFHC is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs. This workshop earns 19.5 NBCC Clock Hours.
• MFHC is also an approved provider of the Texas State Board of Social Worker Examiners (TEXAS SW), and this workshop earns 19.5 CE Credits
• This program meets the requirements of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT) and is approved for 19.5 CE Credits. Completion of this program does not ensure or guarantee AASECT certification. For further information please contact [email protected].
• CE Credits are $15.00 per certificate requested. If you need CE credits, you must take responsibility for checking to see if we have approval for your agency or licensing board. We have participants coming from all over the United States and outside the United States. Thus, we cannot guarantee CE credits for every State or Agency. Many professional organizations will accept the CE Credits from parallel organizations, but it is your responsibility to confirm status with your professional organization. The variations of the exact amount of CE hours depend on each Agency’s policy regarding breaks.

• Within 30 days of workshop start date, 50% refund
• Within two weeks of workshop start date, 25% refund
• No refund less than 10 days prior to start date

• Series Overview
• Sexual Desire Clinical Workshop (February 26 -28, 2016)
• Sexual Dysfunction Clinical Workshop (April 1- 3, 2016)
• Treating Intimacy Problems Clinical Workshop (May 20 – 22, 2016)

This workshop is now full.
For other workshops in this series, click here.
For information regarding future scheduling of this workshop, be sure to join our mailing list , or call (303) 670-2630.

Register Now!

Roughly 30 to 60% of married people in America engage in extra-marital affairs. Men are more likely to stray than women, but women's rates are gaining parity. Few things have greater long-term negative impact on relationships than affairs. Many couples divorce and those who stay together often struggle with the aftermath for years.

Therapists often find conventional ways of dealing with the hostility, volatility, distrust, and hurt feelings that accompany affairs don't really work, resulting in a long-lasting rupture in couples' intimacy and commitment. What do you do when the “betrayed partner” says:

• "How could you do this to me?!"
• "I need to be able to trust you!"
• "I need to know all the details!"
• "I’ll never forgive you!"

What do you do when the “adulterer” says:

• "I never meant to hurt you."
• "I already said I was sorry, what else can I say?!"

Over the last decades therapists have learned sexual problems are often unresponsive to straight-forward body-oriented treatment. It is important to address the systemic emotional processes that maintain sexual problems long after their original source is eliminated. Likewise, mere insight and talk-therapy is often ineffective in eliminating problems of sexual performance. People have to be physically and emotionally engaged doing new things. Couples’ co-existing relationship problems also must be addressed.

If you're a mental health professional treating couples and individuals coping with the aftermath of sexual or emotional affairs, this workshop is for you. Perfect for psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, licensed professional counselors, clergy, and coaches (and graduate students in these professions). Novel clinical strategies and sophisticated deconstruction of affair dynamics can help you succeed with your most entrenched and embittered couples.

Watch an exciting unrehearsed therapy session conducted by Dr. David Schnarch. Compare the responses you'd make with those of a master therapist. In the debriefing that follows, you'll have opportunities to ask questions and discuss your observations with the instructor.

Typically, our sexual dysfunction workshops are held in major metropolitan cities and attract several hundred participants. Enrollment for this special program, held in beautiful Evergreen Colorado, will be strictly limited to create a small group learning experience with more opportunities for interacting with Drs. Schnarch and Morehouse.

The new Crucible Treating Extramarital Affairs Workshop, conducted by Drs. David Schnarch and Ruth Morehouse, is a complete departure from conventional couple therapy. Coping with extramarital affairs presents powerful opportunities for personal and interpersonal differentiation— when handled outside the limitations of conventional attachment-based approaches. This cutting-edge workshop, rooted in differentiation and the 4 Points of Balance, emphasizes resilience rather than “woundedness,” and emotional autonomy rather than “betrayal.” You’ll learn to recognize and avoid the most common pitfalls in treating affairs. It will completely change your views on things you take for granted like:

• Commitment
• Re-establishing trust
• Decision to reveal details of the affair
• Making amends
• Forgiveness

In the Crucible^® Treating Extramarital Affairs Workshop, you’ll learn a treatment approach that helps people grow and mature in the process of effectively resolving affairs, and thereby reduces the likelihood of subsequent repetitions. Differentiation is the optimal way to approach extra-relational affairs, because affairs involve balancing the inherent tension between two sociobiological forces: We are a sexually gregarious species that also values pair-bonding. Differentiation, in this case, is your ability to tolerate, balance, and handle these two powerful drives.

You’ll also learn four key ingredients of a sophisticated systemic approach to affairs that will revolutionize your practice. These are four differentiation-based factors that potentiate affairs and other relationship problems:

1. Reflected sense of self—Common dependence on getting acceptance and validation.
2. Two-choice dilemmas—Natural forced-choice decisions permeating love relationships.
3. Borrowed functioning—Emotional fusion in relationships permits artificial inflation (and suppression) of emotional functioning.
4. Incongruous power hierarchy—The partner having the affair often has higher status than the resolute spouse.

Using the modern brain science of "mind-mapping" and interpersonal neurobiology, you'll learn how to develop a decisive picture of each partners' dynamics and how the affair played out in their relationship. You’ll be able to detect inaccuracies in partners’ self-report, construct more accurate conceptualizations, and maintain tighter pacing and leading in therapy sessions. The resulting greater accuracy and intensity allow thoroughly gridlocked couples to make progress, and makes the therapy itself an intimate process.

The three day Crucible^® Treating Extramarital Affairs Clinical Workshop addresses the thorny details of treating affairs you don’t learn in school. For example, it shows you how to:

1. Handle volatile “trust issues” that always surface in therapy in entirely new ways.
2. Use the Crucible 6-Step Intervention Strategy to create isomorphic, multi-systemic clinical impacts.
3. Construct crucibles of personal development for both partners that enhance differentiation and reduce emotional fusion and borrowed functioning.
4. Work with clients having unrelenting conflict, or who are on the verge of divorce, or who have previously failed in treatment.

This innovative approach offers unique interventions that resolve the aftermath and help couples grow through the process. You will learn about “Collaborative Alliances”, which provide the core of couples’ new relationships, and a framework for understanding where their relationship as a whole went wrong. Resilient collaborative alliances are rooted in differentiation, so the whole treatment approach fits together. This rapid-paced approach allows couples to achieve core personal and relational change, and come out stronger than before.

The Crucible^® Treating Extramarital Affairs Clinical Workshop also addresses the person of the therapist and the many difficult issues of:

• “Value-laden” vs. Value-blinded therapists.
• The need for clinical sensitivity.
• Liberalism, conservatism and the therapist’s personal values.
• Therapist’s personal history.

This workshop is offered at the intermediate level of postgraduate training.

This workshop will be recorded for teaching and training purposes. Workshop participants agree to be anecdotally recorded during their participation in the workshop.

Please note all times are approximate. Everyone benefits from the freedom to pay more attention to some aspects more than others. This may alter the time devoted to each topic.

For a complete list of learning objectives, please contact The Marriage and Family Health by email, phone or letter.

Join us for one workshop or the entire series in beautiful Evergreen, Colorado. Although Evergreen is just 35 miles from downtown Denver, it is a world apart in ambiance and easy access to the wonderful Colorado Rockies. Walk around Evergreen Lake, stroll through our art galleries, listen to music at the famous Little Bear Saloon, or hike our verdant nature trails. The Bears Inn and Highland Haven are ideal places to book lodging within a few minutes from our workshop location. Contact us for additional hotel sites.

David Schnarch, Ph.D., ABPP is the founder of the Crucible and Passionate Marriage Approaches to human relationships. He is the author of four books including Constructing the Sexual Crucible, Resurrecting Sex, Passionate Marriage and Intimacy and Desire: Awaken the Passion your Relationships. Dr. Schnarch received the American Psychological Association 2013 Outstanding Contribution to Professional Practice and two years earlier was awarded the AAMFT Outstanding Contribution to the Field of Family Therapy. He was also the first recipient of the American Association of Sex Education, Counseling and Therapy (ASSECT) "Professional Standard of Excellence" Award. Come learn for yourself why David Schnarch is considered one of the innovative thinkers in the field of couple and family therapy.

Ruth Morehouse, Ph. D. is a licensed psychologist and a certified sex therapist with AASECT (Diplomat) and Co-Director of The Crucible Institute and Marriage and Family Health Center. In this capacity she has conducted workshops and supervised and consulted with therapists for the last 20 years throughout the United States and around the world. She has a special interest in working with women’s issues, families coping with medical problems and helping step-parenting and blended families. Ruth previously served two terms as Vice President for Practice for the Society of Couples and Family Psychology, Division 43 of the American Psychological Association and was elected President-Elect of this same division for 2016.

We are offering special prices for these one-time unique events. Fees are less than 50% of normal charges for our workshops. Take advantage of them as soon as possible because enrollment is definitely limited. Fees include coffee and beverage breaks. Lunch is not included.

Please Note: this workshop will be video-taped in its entirety. Most of the video-taping emphasis will be on the presenters, however, we would love to have you be a part of this video. This could include such things as group shots of the audience, you as a member of the audience asking questions to presenters or interacting with other participants, or perhaps making comments on material presented. If you attend this workshop, as a member of the audience you will be included in the video-taping of this workshop. As part of the registration process, all attendees will be asked to sign a release (click here to view u0026amp; print) allowing us to video tape you as a part of the workshop and to use the video tape solely at our discretion for future training/educational/ informational programs. Before completing your registration, please review completely the release and be sure you are comfortable with signing the release. If you do not want to be in this workshop as it is being video-taped, then this workshop is not for you. You can check our website periodically to find other workshops offerings that do not include videotaping.

YOUR REGISTRATION IS NOT CONFIRMED UNTIL YOU RECEIVE NOTIFICATION WE HAVE RECEIVED AND APPROVED YOUR WORKSHOP AGREEMENT u0026amp; CONFLICTS OF INTEREST DISCLOSURE FORMS (AVAILABLE HERE) and your VIDEOTAPE RELEASE FORM (AVAILABLE HERE). After completing payment, please print these pages, sign, and fax to our office at (303) 670-2392 or email to [email protected].

Register Now!

• This program is sponsored by the Marriage and Family Health Center (MFHC, also doing business as the Crucible Institute).
• MFHC is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. MFHC maintains responsibility for this program and its content. This workshop earns: 21 CE credits for Licensed Psychologists.
• Marriage u0026amp; Family Health Center (MFHC) has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 5870. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. MFHC is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs. This workshop earns 19.5 NBCC Clock Hours.
• MFHC is also an approved provider of the Texas State Board of Social Worker Examiners (TEXAS SW), and this workshop earns 19.5 CE Credits
• This program meets the requirements of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT) and is approved for 19.5 CE Credits. Completion of this program does not ensure or guarantee AASECT certification. For further information please contact [email protected].
• CE Credits are $15.00 per certificate requested. If you need CE credits, you must take responsibility for checking to see if we have approval for your agency or licensing board. We have participants coming from all over the United States and outside the United States. Thus, we cannot guarantee CE credits for every State or Agency. Many professional organizations will accept the CE Credits from parallel organizations, but it is your responsibility to confirm status with your professional organization. The variations of the exact amount of CE hours depend on each Agency’s policy regarding breaks.

• Within 30 days of workshop start date, 50% refund
• Within two weeks of workshop start date, 25% refund
• No refund less than 10 days prior to start date

• Series Overview
• Sexual Desire Clinical Workshop (February 26 -28, 2016)
• Sexual Dysfunction Clinical Workshop (April 1- 3, 2016)
• Treating Intimacy Problems Clinical Workshop (May 20 – 22, 2016)