AEDP for Couples Conference: Transforming Historical Trauma to Build a Secure Loving Relationship

an AEDP Conferece at the Interdiscipliary Center, Herzliya, Israel, co-sponsored by the School of Psychology at IDC and Israeli Association for Couple and Family Therapy

with David Mars, Ph.D. and Karen Pando Mars, MFT

This is a Two-Day Conference of All-Day Workshops Sunday & Monday, November 15^th & 16^th
with a Third Day on Tuesday November 17th  of Four Breakout Workshops

Day 1: Sunday, November 15th, 2015  9 AM to 5:30 PM

AEDP for Individuals and Couples: Transforming Emotional, Physical and Sexual Abuse

Karen Pando-Mars will open the workshop by laying the groundwork for treating individuals with AEDP.  She will show vivid clinical videotape that illustrates the quantum change that results from AEDP’s relational, experiential and metaprocessing interventions.  These harness the powerful opportunity of each present moment and set a new foundation for healing trauma and develop a true and secure sense of self.

David Mars will teach the theory of AEDP for Couples and demonstrate through clinically rich videotape how this somatically-based method catalyzes couples to move from discord, and even from the brink of divorce, to the solid ground of earned secure attachment.

Powerful and unique aspects of AEDP for Couples include:

(i) from the get-go, the emphasis on the experience of felt love as a key agent of change in couples work;
(ii) the use of the self of the therapist in transformative work with severely and chronically traumatized couples; and
(iii) the focus on healing attachment trauma in the couple as well as in both individuals within.

You will witness how dyadic, experiential and attachment based AEDP work comes to life as all dyads in the room are engaged: husband and wife, therapist and husband, therapist and wife.  The AEDP for Couples therapist helps clients to realize the healing potential of their relationship.

Day 2: Monday, November 16th, 2015 9 AM to 5:30 PM

Metaprocessing the Transformation of a Couple’s Relationship

(Attendance at the Day 1 Workshop is a required preparation for Day 2)

David will build upon the foundation of day one to elaborate and demonstrate the method of AEDP for Couples with more intensive videotape of clinical work.

David will facilitate the audience of therapists as they metaprocess the impact of witnessing the couple’s transformational treatment sessions.  Participants will have many opportunities to practice the skills and somatic tracking used to treat couples.

You will learn to:

• Regulate the anxiety, anger and revenge impulses of couple members as they arise while evoking spontaneity and authenticity
• Use AEDP healing portrayals in couple treatment
• Build the somatic awareness needed to somatically track two people at once
• Construct bridges to the different ways each couple member somatically perceives, receives and expresses

Day 3: Tuesday, November 17th, 2014. 9:30am to 4pm.

Limited attendance workshop organized by the Israeli Association for Couple and Family Therapy at Beit –Yehushua

Break-out Training Modules

9:30 AM to Noon with Karen Pando-Mars, MFT: Tailoring AEDP Interventions to Each Attachment style

Karen will illuminate the distinct configurations of secure and insecure attachment styles through the comprehensive grid she has developed.  Through lecture and videos of clinical work, she will demonstrate how to tailor specific interventions to motivate patients by attuning to their needs and strengths based on their attachment style. When dismissive defenses generate distance, Karen will address ways to build connection. When patients become preoccupied, Karen will show how to help them focus internally and respond to their own experience.  With AEDP, establishing a secure base provides the essential foundation for transformation.  When treatment is informed by the nuanced changes in attachment style presented in each moment, we can strengthen this base and mobilize quantum change.

9:30 AM to Noon with David Mars, PhD: Using the Four States of AEDP for Couples to Generate a Safe and Secure Base Throughout Treatment

We will start with examples shown in video clips of early treatment sessions and practice how to:

• Build foundations for later transformative shifts beginning in the first moments of the initial session of couple treatment
• Find the experience of felt love and building on this within and between sessions.
• Discover key methods that encourage couple members methods to speak to each other with productive vulnerability and openness in every session

1:30 to 4 PM with Karen Pando-Mars, MFT: Harnessing Transformance Drives and Recognition Processes to Guide and Motivate AEDP treatment.

Transformance is the term Diana Fosha coined to name the motivational drive towards health and wellbeing.  By noticing and fostering transformance drives as they appear in our patients, we can help them access positive, new experiences that energize change and activate self-righting tendencies.

Recognition is the registering of a match between something inside and something outside.  Such moments of meeting become a guide that affirms the knowing that is at the core of the sense of self.  Through videotape illustrations, we will see how focusing on recognition brings vitality, deepens trust and stabilizes the disequilibrium that is triggered by opening to deep level change.

1:30 to 4:00 PM with David Mars, PhD: Using the Seven Channels of Experience‫ to Treat Infidelity in Couples

This short workshop will give experiential opportunities to practice methods of decreasing shame and creating healing alternatives to dissociation and dysregulated emotion such as rage, revenge and dissociation

We will begin with short video clips of sample sessions and practice how to:

• Slow interactions down and shape embodied I statements that express internal reflection and regulated experience
• Bring shock and shame into Core Affective experience that moves toward completion and understanding
• Construct a felt experience of safety by privileging transformance drives and the longing for constructive resolution and deep level healing of both current and prior trauma

Meet the Presenters

David Mars, M.F.T., Ph.D.

David Mars, Ph.D. is the developer of AEDP For Couples. He has specialized in the somatically focused treatment of couples and groups for four decades, as an innovator in developing process-oriented, somatically, and empathically focused couple treatment. David has trained, supervised and consulted with Dr. Diana Fosha, the originator of AEDP since 2005.

David develops and presents training seminars and workshops nationally and internationally that focus on the AEDP for Couples model.  He is the lead supervisor of the AEDP for Couples Core Training.  He teaches at AEDP Immersion Courses, the Essential Skills Program and leads two ongoing AEDP for Couples supervision groups.  He is one of the founders of AEDP West. David is also on the adjunct faculty of the California Institute for Integral Studies in San Francisco where he infused AEDP into his teaching of courses on the Clinical Relationship.

David’s style as a presenter is described as inspiring, warm and deeply personable.   He quickly evokes trust from his audiences, which ushers in a deep level of transparent exchange of ideas and points of view about how therapists can more effectively treat the historical trauma and deprivation that underlies marital dysfunction.  Perhaps most importantly, participants are moved to apply what they learn in these training programs, due to the depth of experience they take in while witnessing videos, live demonstrations and engaging in experiential practices.

Karen Pando-Mars, MFT

Karen Pando-Mars, MFT, is a licensed psychotherapist in San Rafael, California. She was irresistibly drawn to AEDP in 2005 and captivated by the depth and breadth of its transformational model. She immersed herself in training and consultation with Dr. Fosha and three years of core training with Dr. Frederick. Ms. Pando-Mars is one of the founders of AEDP West, Co-Director of the Center for Transformative Therapies in San Rafael, and currently is a supervisor for the Bay Area Core Training. She presents AEDP trainings around the San Francisco Bay Area and offers individual and small group supervision to psychotherapists. She is known for her warmth and approachability, and her ability to create safety in the supervisory relationship. Ms. PandoMars' long-time interest in deepening connection between self and other has been grounded through AEDP's precise tracking of attachment principles and related neuroscience, and this influence is woven throughout her work with individuals, couples and groups. Licensed since 1989, her background in somatic and experiential therapies includes Focusing, Process-Oriented Psychotherapy, Sandtray, EMDR, and Authentic Movement. She was a founder of The Sandtray Network and a contributing editor of its journal. As adjunct faculty at Dominican University, in San Rafael, California, she taught AEDP as the overarching theoretical model in her Alternative and Innovative Psychotherapies course.

Fee and Credits

• Details coming soon

Registration Coming Soon

This program is eligible for CE Hours of continuing education credit through our co-sponsor R. Cassidy Seminars. To view the CE accreditation statement click here.  CE Credits are included in the course fee. For our cancellation/refund policy click here.

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