In today’s hyper-modern, virtual world, everything seems to have changed. Traditional therapy approaches just don’t work as effectively as they used to.
Working for over 40 years in the heart of Silicon Valley, I’ve been developing creative ways to harness what we’ve learned about people and relationships, coupled with what we’ve learned about linguistics, culture, history, and how narratives are constructed.
The result is a set of powerful therapeutic tools that are counter-intuitive—which I’m happy to share. These techniques are NOT a rigid approach–you can adapt them to whatever kind of therapy you do. They will make your sessions more powerful, will motivate your clients to return, and will make therapy more enjoyable for you.
And yes, these methods work in the video settings we’re all now using.
Want CE credit for your license or AASECT?
All webinars are eligible—free!
Get Better Results & Enjoy the Work More:
21 Ways to Make Therapy More Effective
We don’t do therapy by formula, of course; we treat every individual and couple as unique. But over time, the best therapists have observed that certain ways of practicing our craft are more likely to get positive outcomes (and often more quickly, with less aggravation). What are these?
Some involve what we’ve learned about human emotion and decision-making, and how to use that knowledge to advance (or protect) the therapy. Others involve the therapeutic relationship itself—one of our most powerful clinical tools, which we want to make and keep as effective as possible. When we don’t work harder than our patients—and get better results, too—we generally enjoy our work more.
Topics include:
~ Using silence as clinical tool
~ Why we shouldn’t reassure patients who feel criticized or judged
~ Ending the “fight of the week” syndrome that hijacks couples sessions
~ Asking about patients’ lived experience instead of asking them “why?”
~ Questioning repetitive decision-making with disappointing results
~ The importance of a clear therapeutic contract—even when patients resist
Ozempic, Weight, & Identity—
A Guide for Mental Health Providers
Ozempic and related drugs now help people lose up to 20% of their body weight, with generally manageable side effects. As the price of these drugs drops, even more of our patients will take them.
How are these drugs (GLP-1 agonists) affecting couples and families? What about the self-image, decision-making, and sexual choices of individuals who finally lose weight after years of struggle and failure? How are the mates, children, friends, and co-workers responding to familiar people with suddenly unfamiliar bodies? And how are these slimmer people responding to others’ responses to them?
Some of the complexities these patients will face include:
~ More attention at work
~ The loss of eating as a couple’s recreation
~ New dynamics of sexual desire, energy, & loss (or gain) of inhibition
~ The envy of friends & family
~ Guilt or secrecy about using these drugs
~ The loss of one’s lifelong identity
Therapists and healthcare professionals need to address the emotional and systemic effects of these new weight-loss drugs. Rather than waiting for patients to raise these issues, we must be prepared to ask lots of questions about their challenges—and help them navigate the complex answers.
20 Common Mistakes Most Therapists Make—
And What You Should Do Instead
Psychotherapy with individuals or couples is extremely difficult—more difficult, in fact, than any one of us can completely understand.
This webinar distills my 44 years of clinical experience—some 50,000 sessions—into a practical, challenging program about common mistakes that therapists of all orientations make. Those mistakes involve the structure of the therapeutic relationship; the routine ways in which therapists practice; and vulnerabilities in the person of the therapist.
Some of the vectors of our recurring mistakes involve:
* The power dynamics in the therapeutic relationship
* The necessity of tolerating patients’ discomfort
* Awareness of how our needs affect the therapy
* Confronting cultural pressures & assumptions
* Misunderstanding what our actual job is
I’ll discuss common mistakes like these–why they’re common, why they’re mistakes, and what you should do instead:
* Letting patients direct the information-gathering process
* Not noticing or challenging narratives of powerlessness
* Mollifying patients’ guilt or shame
* In couples counseling, not interrupting the fight of the week
* Implying that our empathy comes from shared experience
* Reassuring patients they’re normal
This just may be the most practical webinar I’ve ever offered.
Working With Infidelity:
After An Affair, Who Owns The Relationship?
Cellphone records, email passwords, intimate details of when & where—after an affair, does one person gain the right to whatever information they want? And even if they do, is demanding such information wise? Who decides if—and what—the children are told?
Supporting the dignity and humanity of BOTH parties gives a couple the best chance to reconcile, should they want to. The idea that the Betrayer has to beg forgiveness for an undefined time period and accept whatever relationship the Betrayed demands is a disservice to both parties. And it typically leads to client dropouts or treatment failure.
Successful treatment of infidelity cases must also involve the Betrayer’s clear insights about the emotional, psychological, and practical reasons for breaking their promise of fidelity.
In three fast-moving sessions, participants will learn fresh ways of looking at affairs, fidelity, and sexuality—so that they can better evaluate patients, sort out individual and relationship issues, and help people heal from the experiences of powerlessness, disorientation, grief, rage, and damaged self-esteem that are common on both sides of betrayal.
This 12-hour comprehensive course is designed to meet substantial requirements of the AASECT and SASH credentialing processes. You can also earn 12 CEs (APA, NASW, LPCC, AASECT, etc.) by attending all three sessions (partial credit is not available).
If It’s Not “Sex Addiction,” What Is It?
And How Do You Treat It?
The sex addiction movement addresses fundamental human issues: lust, desire, guilt, fantasy, decision-making, and the relationship of love & sex. The answers generated by this model, however, have important limitations—and for many people, sex addiction treatment is disastrous, contradicting the best practices of psychotherapy and couples counseling.
We will examine how patients’ seemingly out-of-control sexual behavior may really involve:
- medicating their depression, anxiety or anhedonia
- acting out (unconscious) hostility
- fear of getting too close to a primary partner
- attempting to remain in a low-sex or no-sex relationship
- unresolved conflict with religious values
- an arousal disorder, recurring sexual dysfunction, or disturbing sexual preference
When we realize that almost every patient who regrets their sexual decision-making is not out of control—is not “addicted”—we’re free to use our best psychotherapeutic tools. So how can we best diagnose and successfully treat these patients?
We’ll also look at the new narrative of porn addiction—is there really such a thing? What are better ways to evaluate—and treat—patients who use porn self-destructively? And what do we do with couples when one partner is obsessed with the other’s porn watching?
What Do I Do Now?:
When We Feel Resentful, Bored, or Powerless in Session
More than we like or expect, we periodically find ourselves not knowing what to do in session—while feeling resentful, bored, confused, or powerless.
Rather than being surprised when this happens, we should expect it. These feelings are baked into psychotherapy and couples counseling—regardless of anyone’s clinical orientation. We’ll look at the architecture of the therapeutic relationship, which provides clues about what to do when we don’t know what to do.
We’ll discuss approaches that include wrestling with our own boundaries; having really clear therapeutic goals (which many patients will challenge); predicting that couples will gang up on us; and sharpening our skills at identifying, challenging, and reframing patients’ narratives.
Sexual Issues In Couples Therapy:
Practical Skills for Common Problems
Whether the presenting problem involves infidelity, desire differences, sexual dysfunction, or questions about kink or non-monogamy, we deal with couples’ sexuality every week. Here’s a 15-hour course to enhance your effectiveness in this difficult but rewarding area.
In 4 fast-moving, thought-provoking sessions, you’ll learn practical information and skills, involving issues like:
- What is NOT a sexual problem?
- Helping couples navigate one partner’s porn use
- Common therapists’ myths about sex that reduce our effectiveness
- Helping couples when one partner wants sex more than the other, or wants activities that the other partner doesn’t
- Helping couples when their sexuality is impacted by religious beliefs, or by trauma, the aging process, or health issues
- Working with couples who don’t want to discuss sex—but REALLY need to.
This 15-hour course is designed to meet substantial requirements of the AASECT and SASH credentialing processes. You can also earn 15 CE’s (APA, NASW, LPCC, AASECT, etc.) by attending all four sessions (partial credit is not available).
When Porn Is The Issue:
Working With Couples & Individuals
We’re seeing more and more couples in conflict over one partner’s porn use.
To help us work more deeply with such cases, this workshop focuses on treating intrapsychic conflicts, power struggles, and existential issues relating to porn use. We’ll look at how one or both partners may be acting out body image issues, and why “porn addiction” is not a helpful concept.
We’ll explore how conflict about pornography is often used to avoid confronting a sexual relationship’s deficits. And we’ll look at various sexual issues—such as desire, arousal, and masturbation—that should be raised when working with these cases.
Sexual Intelligence: Empowering People To Create Sex That Works
Patients typically want sex to be simple, natural, and spontaneous—but it isn’t.
We can’t make sex natural or spontaneous, but we CAN make it less complicated. We can empower people with the emotional, communication, and practical tools they need. And we can help them reshape their narratives, developing ideas about sex that involve adequacy, pleasure, intimacy, and fun.
Despite social factors—including religion, our sex-negative culture, and Hollywood and porn—we can help people face their personal issues: WHY they’re afraid or angry about sex, WHY they won’t communicate with their partner, WHY they fear their fantasies and preferences, WHY they’re afraid of failing in bed. And why they are SO embarrassed or ashamed.
Sexual Intelligence: A New Approach to Sexual “Function” & Satisfaction
What do most men & women say they want from sex? Pleasure and closeness. But during sex, most people typically focus on how they look, smell, and sound; obsess on what their partner is thinking; try to manage distracting thoughts; and most of all, their “performance.”
That leads to precisely what so many people fear: sexual “dysfunctions” like erection, orgasm, or desire problems. To enhance intimacy and satisfaction, improving our genital “function” is the exact wrong approach. Better friction doesn’t create what people really want from sex: a sense of relaxation, self-acceptance, & connection. The innovative Sexual Intelligence Approach does.
Intakes & First Sessions
First sessions are about gathering information to understand what a given client or couple needs, and generating a tentative treatment approach. Our initial plan is developed on the run, designed to provide the experiences, information, perspective, and relationship we believe the client needs.
The goal of a first session is to have a second session. How do we find the right balance—providing enough therapy to launch our therapeutic alliance without scaring people away by doing too much therapy?
Sex, Love, & Intimacy
Have sex, love, and intimacy changed? Most people still want some combination of all three. Technology gives us the illusion that we’re connected to more and more people—but our clients seem more comfortable relating to their devices than to each other. Sex seems more awkward than playful. Relationship rules appear to have changed–but no one seems to know what they are.
Here are therapeutic approaches that help people explore what they want from relationships. What makes them hesitate to pursue what they want? What stories do they tell themselves that keep them stuck? And what assumptions do we therapists have that limit our own clinical effectiveness?
Working with Couples
There’s SO much going on in couples sessions: power dynamics, contrasting narratives, cultural assumptions, old wounds, the lack of agreements about household routines—not to mention our own counter-transference.
In this program we’ll examine the architecture of couples, and of couples therapy. What are the building blocks that every successful couple needs—and how do we help people develop them? What are some reliable techniques we can use with couples who won’t cooperate, or when we get stuck?
For each webinar you will receive:
- Video presentations you can watch at your convenience–as many times as you like
- Powerpoint slides used during webinar
- Ideas, interventions, and home assignments you can use IMMEDIATELY
- CEUs (APA, MFTs, LPCs, Nurses, AASECT) upon completion of evaluation
Yours to keep—to watch, listen, and share with your students or colleagues.
RESULTS:
More powerful sessions
Fewer client dropouts
More client referrals
Dr. Marty Klein is a California-Licensed MFT and Sex Therapist. The author of 7 books about sex and relationships, he trains psychologists & physicians across the US & Europe. Audiences call his seminars thought-provoking, practical, and entertaining—so you’ll be laughing while you learn. For more about Marty, see www.SexEd.org.
“Marty Klein liberates and provokes—and illuminates the way to change our sexual experience for good.”
–Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity
“To improve your sex life, read Marty Klein’s book Sexual Intelligence.”
—Psychology Today