Imago

MODEL

Two Day Workshop "Getting The Love You Want"

Our approach to working with couples is grounded deeply in the work that was created by Dr. Harville Hendrix, author of the internationally acclaimed book entitled: Getting The Love You Want. We also draw from the work of other professionals such as Dr. John Gottman, esteemed researcher on relationship issues; and Dr. Daniel Siegel, interpersonal neurobiologist.

Therapy/counseling with couples or individuals is usually done in fifty or seventy five minute sessions. Occasionally longer sessions are scheduled in order to “go deeper” into the issues being dealt with. Leo usually does these sessions but, at times, Peggy will see the woman in a relationship alone as a way to offer guidance to male/female issues.

Over our more than 20 years of working with couples, we have increasingly come to believe that attendance at the twenty hour workshop Getting The Love You Want significantly supports and accelerates the therapy/counseling process. Though the workshop stands alone as a way for couples, in therapy or not, to learn theory and skills of healthy relationship, it is our experience that the group learning moves couples toward positive change in a way that individual counseling alone cannot achieve as quickly.

All of our individual and group work is based on several primary principles:

• When individuals select each other as partners in a marriage or committed relationship, they do so from an unconscious agenda to complete the work of childhood. Most parents are unable to meet all of the natural needs of their children. In courtship, blooming adults are seeking a partner who is felt to be perfectly qualified to fulfill those unmet needs.
• When the ecstasy of romantic love inevitably subsides, a kind of struggle emerges between two people who live in "different worlds." Each partner is striving for fulfillment and completion, and it is natural to seek that satisfaction in intimate, committed relationships. Brain science has recently proven that our neurological system is literally shaped and formed out of our experiences during childhood. The completion and continual evolution of that system, our brains and thus our minds, depends upon our ongoing experiences with the primary people in our lives.
• In order to accomplish this completion and fulfillment through our relationships, we need to have specific skills and a commitment to the challenges of bridging our different “worlds” in a way that is non-critical, compassionate, and cooperative. We cannot accomplish this task without the foundation of a deep friendship.