Navigating the Rapids: Power, Culture, and Difference in Family Therapy

Level 1 // Navigating the Rapids: Embedding Power, Culture, and Difference in Multisystemic Attachment Therapy

Thursday September 19, Wednesday September 25, and Tuesday, October 9th

11 CEU’s are available for $25 additional for LCSW’s, MFT’s and Psychologists

Price: $375/ $325 Early Bird (Scholarships and group discounts available. Please email questions@eft-lifeline.com for more information, or to express interest in future trainings!

Once when Sue Johnson described EFT as Bowlby, Minuchin and Rogers sitting down for tea, how many noticed that the guest list for tea included only White, cis, hetero-passing men? We wondered how EFT would have developed had Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Cesar Chavez, Thich Nhat Hanh, Carolyn Attneave and others been invited to a different sort of party. We believe that EFT -- from the outset -- would then have better explained how encounters with power, culture, and difference in the world lead to negative cycles in relationships, and offered us even more nuanced tools in Stage I and Stage II to help clients support one another to achieve fuller connection, attachment injury repair, withdrawer re-engagement, and pursuer softening.

In attachment, we strive to meet our clients where they are. We do that by attuning with nuanced attention. And yet, so much of the encouragement in our community to date to “just bring it up” is not very nuanced! Maybe we withdraw from doing so (or pursue clients with our model, as currently taught) when we sense that this very lack of nuance might hurt people, might injure. We fear to get messy; we freeze; we want to know *how*. In this training, we will offer theory and practice around four foundational skills: working with extradyadic factors; offering holding; recognizing when differences involve power; and repairing ruptures both interpersonally and systemically.

We have heard from the community that more experiential learning with concrete examples and videotape facilitate learning and growth. Please join us for an experiential training where we will embed culture, context, and difference into the EFT model and begin to integrate theory, practice, and “self of human” work to more effectively support our clinical skills. We call “self of human” the aspect of “self of therapist” that is about power, culture, and difference in the therapy room. A portion of the proceeds from this training will be used to create scholarships to increase representation of historically and contemporaneously excluded populations in our field.

In Level 1 of this training, we will:

Demonstrate how to better situate family therapy in context -- differentiating context from content -- to more fully attune to our clients’ experiences

Propose a model for how extradyadic factors (not just race, but also faith, culture, orientation, gender, neurodivergence, etc.) fit within an attachment frame

Explore how Whiteness influenced the way attachment family therapy has been created and taught, and how we can apply it to those for whom Whiteness hits differently

Explicate how our community has caused harm and can "stop the bleeding" for our Black, Indigenous, POC and Queer colleagues and clients

Practice attuning, engaging, and responding when oppression and cultural differences come between partners &/or beteen clients and therapists

Show how these extradyadic factors related to power, culture, and difference can lead to negative cycles, withdrawer reengagement, and pursuer softening with clients

Provide an experiential introduction to the Self of Human (SOH) work necessary to provide ethical care when power and difference arise in the therapy room.

In Level 2 of this training, we will:

Practice stepping into processes of accountability and repair when microaggressions occur between partners or between clients and therapists to increase trust and intimacy

Provide space for clinicians from historically and chronically excluded populations to explore their countertransference and learn resourcing and tools for when microaggressions in the room come towards us

Own the Self of Human (SOH) work necessary to provide ethical care when we as therapists are experiencing ourselves shifting between our privileged and non-privileged parts in the therapy room

Further practice attuning, engaging, and responding when oppression and cultural differences come between partners &/or between clients and therapists

Better understanding what the goals for these conversations is within the couple and what a stage 2 process for cross cultural couples can look like.

Practice guiding clients through attachment injury repair, withdrawer reengagement, and pursuer softening with respect to oppression and view of world

In diversity the idea of “walking the talk” is important. In our community, Friday-Saturday trainings are the norm, but overlook that our Jewish and single parent community members may be burdened by those times. To honor that, we will offer this training on a variety of weekdays. This allows parents who would need a sitter on the weekend (or who cannot sacrifice 16 hours of income in one week) to attend, and also gives our very flexible Monday and Friday clients a break from rescheduling! We are very open to feedback about future trainings to ensure they are accessible to all who are wanting them. Please email us at questions@eft-lifeline.com.

Alliant International University is approved by the American Psychological Association to Sponsor continuing education for Psychologists, LMFTs and LPCs in states that honor APA units for LPCs, and approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing Provider # CEP17538, for 11 Contact Hours. Those seeking CE credit under the BRN must retain this certificate for a minimum of 4 years. Alliant International University maintains responsibility for this program and its content.