"What Are We Even Arguing About? Adlerian Case Conceptualization for Couples Therapy"

This workshop offers a dynamic Adlerian approach to disrupt recurring conflicts in couples by mapping their competitive dynamics and providing practical tools for fostering mutual respect and connection, benefiting both clients and practitioners' personal relationships.

Description

Ever feel like your couples are having the same fight on a loop—no matter how many skills you offer? This workshop introduces a dynamic, Adlerian approach to understanding and interrupting those stubborn cycles. By integrating lifestyle investigation with a modified Emotionally-Focused "Infinity Loop" model, we’ll show you how to map the competitive dynamics that keep partners stuck—and how to guide them toward mutual respect and connection.

Combining conceptual depth with immediately applicable tools, this training will help you see each partner’s underlying goal, their strategy to reach it, and the interactive choreography that keeps disconnection alive. Through demonstration, discussion, and collaborative mapping, you’ll leave equipped to help your couple clients make sense of their patterns—and rewrite them with courage and cooperation.

And don't be surprised if you start seeing your own relationships in a new light. This isn’t just theory—it’s a practical, clarifying lens that can deepen your understanding of partnership, both on and off the clock.

 

5 CE NBCC ONLY

League of Extraordinary Adlerian Play Therapists (LEAPT) has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7402. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. League of Extraordinary Adlerian Play Therapists (LEAPT) is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

Agenda

9:00 am - Start

11:00 am - Break 15 min

1:00 pm - Break 15 min

2:30 pm - End 

Objectives

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

  1. Describe the core Adlerian concepts of lifestyle, meta-goals, and movement, and explain how they apply to couple dynamics.
  2. Explain how to use a lifestyle-based case conceptualization model to identify the underlying patterns of movement in each partner’s relational strategies.
  3. Describe  a modified "Infinity Loop" model to explain illustrate how individual lifestyles interact to create competitive cycles in couples' conflicts.
  4. Demonstrate collaborative mapping techniques that help clients understand and shift from competitive to cooperative relational strategies.
  5. Define the Adlerian principles of encouragement and social interest to support reorientation in couples toward mutual respect and connection.