Boosting Progress and Reducing Dropouts: The Critical Role of Enactments in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy
Boosting Progress and Reducing Dropouts: The Critical Role of Enactments in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy
Description:
Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFCT) is a collaborative couples and marriage counseling model based on adult attachment theory and is widely heralded as one of the most successful approaches to creating loving relationships and lasting bonds. In EFCT, enactments are used to guide clients experientially through responding to each other in new and more vulnerable ways. Many therapists find themselves avoiding enactments as they can feel awkward or laden with “land mines” that seem to produce more conflict. This training will address why enactments can seem to fail, how to work with blocks to a successful enactment, and why enactments are essential both to the actual progress of EFCT and to the couple’s felt sense of progress that keeps them engaging in therapy.
Friday Lunch Series presentation from noon to 1 pm. 1 CE for Maine psychologists, social workers, and counselors. Regular registration price is $30.
Learning Objectives:
As a result of engaging in the presentation, attendees will be able to:
Describe the purpose and importance of enactments in couple therapy.
Understand the function of enactments in keeping couples engaged in therapy.
Anticipate and work with blocks in couple therapy enactments.
Presenter Bio:
Andrea Medaris, Psy.D. began researching romantic relationships during her undergraduate education at Mount Holyoke College in 2011, where she studied the effect of new relationship intensity on memory. She continued this fascination throughout graduate school at William James College, completing her doctoral dissertation on the phenomenon of passionate romantic love and, in her elevator pitch, “why it makes us act like fools.”
During her postdoctoral fellowship at Psychology Specialists of Maine, she began training in Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy, and quickly resonated with the model and eventually became exclusively focused on couple therapy as a vehicle for incredible change and transformation, as well as treatment for developmental trauma. She became certified as an EFCT therapist and supervisor, and is now one of only two certified EFCT supervisors in Maine.
In 2023, Andrea created the PSM Center for Relationships, which aims to increase availability and accessibility of couple therapy in Maine, both by training new couple therapists and by offering lower-cost options such as bi-annual couple workshops, educational courses, and a free relationship-focused newsletter. The PSM Center for Relationships also now offers a year-long immersive residency to train therapists in EFCT.