Wednesday

Intensives 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

From the Margin of Therapy to the Center Camille Lafleur, PhD Chélynn Randolph, PhD Lorin Kelly, PhD Tom Su, PhD

In this session, presenters will draw from both their personal and professional experiences to discuss practical ways systemic therapists can engage and center marginalized voices in the therapeutic process. Presenters will emphasize the difference between and importance of cultural humility and cultural competence, discussing the ways these aspects influence who they are as therapists, supervisors, and members of society. Participants will be challenged to think critically about the ways in which they center, highlight, encourage, and support marginalized voices. Presenters will also discuss ways to become active in networking as a way to find support and encouragement to continue growing as a therapist.

 

Learning Objectives:

• Based on the content of the session, I am able to differentiate between cultural competence and cultural humility.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to identify ways to articulate the importance of supportive networks for BIPOC CMFTs.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to identify practical ways to center marginalized voices and experiences in therapy, supervision, and society.

Get Yourself Together: A Practical Approach to Personal Development for Therapists

Diane R Gehart, PhD, LMFT

Although there is a lot of talk about self-care, there are few practical guidelines and even fewer candid discussions about the personal realities and challenges of being a family therapist. In this workshop, you will learn about mental health for mental health professionals, including how it relates to imposter syndrome and a six-part model for pursuing life-long personal development.

 

Learning Objectives:

• Based on the content of this session, I am able to describe rates of mental health issues among mental health professionals.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to identify how one’s personal life challenges may contribute to a sense of imposter syndrome.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to outline six areas of wellness that I can use to guide my personal development.

Systemic Individual Therapy: Therapeutic Change from the Perspective of Clients and Therapists

M. Selenga Gürmen, PhD

Yudum Söylemez, PhD

Elif Balcıoğlu, MA

This session will cover the experiences of both therapists and clients regarding how therapeutic change is experienced in systemic individual therapy which are revealed from our recently published research study. In our study, both therapists’ and clients’ experiences are investigated with semi-structured interviews using thematic analysis (TA). Results revealed three main themes for clients: “Sense-making the Problems Through Relational Awareness”, “Acceptance in Relationships”, and “Manifesting the Differentiated Self in Relationship”. Regarding therapists’ perspective, the results yielded three main themes: “Going Beyond One-to-one Relationship in Therapy”, “Increasing Relational Awareness”, “Shift in Clients’ Attitudes Towards Boundaries with Significant Others”. In the current session, these results will be discussed in the context of the systems theory literature, limitations, strengths, future research directions, and clinical implications.

 

Learning Objectives:

• Based on the content of this session, I am able to understand how systems theory can be applied to individual sessions.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to understand clients’ perspective in the therapeutic change process.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to understand therapists’ perspective in the therapeutic change process.

Homicidal Behaviors & Systemic Family Therapy

Jennifer Benjamin, PhD, LPC

Pinky Patel, LMFT

If you work with youth and their family, there is a great likelihood guns are accessible within their home and community. Just as likely, there was a death in their system caused by a gun (CDC, 2022). Although research on homicidal behaviors continues to be limited, it is clear suicide and homicide are co-occurring. Understanding the social ecology and culture of every family regarding acts of violence and how family members believe they should solve their challenges is a necessity when treating youth. Using a systemic family therapy lens, therapists can join with caregivers about their own behaviors and beliefs regarding guns and acts of violence. Therapist can reframe the youth’s life-threatening behavior as a relational challenge for the family to solve, and it starts in session. Participants will explore multiple recorded caregiver & family sessions during instruction.

 

Learning Objectives:

• Based on the content of this session, I am able to identify how social ecology informs beliefs and behaviors of caregivers towards guns & homicidal behaviors.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to Identify at least two factors related to targeted violent acts by a child.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to differentiate first and second order change when promoting relational change in the family system with a youth with homicidal behaviors.

Can Dementia Care be Person-Centered, Family-Framed, and Age-Friendly? The Clinical Challenge of Practicing within Divergent Care Paradigms

Carol Podgorski, PhD, MPH, MS

Can Age-Friendly Health Systems promote care of persons with dementia that is both “person centered” and "family framed"? There is strong momentum for the expansion of Age-Friendly Health Systems (AFHS) across the United States. There are currently over 3,000 healthcare entities registered as participants in the AFHS initiative. AFHS organizations adopt the evidence-based 4Ms framework (what Matters, Medication, Mentation, and Mobility) to improve health outcomes and prevent harm to patients in every healthcare setting. The evidence base on AFHS outcomes is positive but limited at this point, and there has been little attention given to reconciling patient care preferences with the preferences and capacity of the patient’s family to honor patient wishes. This presentation will provide an overview of AFHS principles and practices, how they relate to person-centered dementia practices, and the extent to which the patient’s family is considered in this care model. These approaches will be compared with the family-framed approach to dementia care. The second part of the presentation will address how the type of care setting, payers, and healthcare disciplines influence models of dementia care. The third segment will delineate opportunities for systemic, relational therapists to introduce models for effective family engagement and integration of family caregiver needs into AFHS practices.

 

Learning Objectives:

• Based on the content of this session, I am able to provide a general overview of the similarities and differences among person-centered, family-framed, and age-friendly models of care.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to describe how the care settings and profession-specific perspectives influence how models are adopted.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to explain how a relational, systemic perspective can be applied to find the intersection and confluence among care models.

Affirming Supervision via the AAMFT LGBTQIA Affirming Guidelines Evan Thomas, PhD Sheila Addison, PhD

This session will use the Clinical Guidelines for LGBTQIA Affirming Marriage and Family Therapy to suggest ways to create a more affirming and social justice informed supervision style. The presentation will review the five pillars that comprise the Guidelines, connecting each to concrete steps that a supervisor can take to create a more inclusive space. Presenters will share their experience implementing the Guidelines and describe the impact that the Guidelines have made on their supervision styles. Participants will gain an understanding of the importance of the Guidelines and how the Guidelines can help MFT supervisors create a more inclusive relationship with their supervisees.

 

Learning Objectives:

• Based on the content of this session, I am able to understand the importance of the Clinical Guidelines for LGBTQIA Affirming Marriage and Family Therapy.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to use the five pillars of the Guidelines to help create an affirming supervision experience.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to identify opportunities for developing my supervision style in order to be more inclusive and affirming.

Keys to Success: Working Systemically with Conflictual Families after Separation and Divorce

William Northey, PhD

Does the idea of working with conflictual parents post-divorce send shivers down your spine? Worse, have you worked with parents who were so venomous and vindictive that you vowed never to work with a family going through divorce again—especially if there were lawyers involved? The parents who cannot co-parent effectively post-divorce often engage in interactions that are hostile, caustic, and potentially damaging to their children, yet they seem unable to get out of their own way. If any group of parents are in desperate need of the skills of an MFT it is these families, yet these are the ones that keep us up at night or worse report us to the licensure board. The key to helping these families are deeply rooted in systemic family therapy and when the appropriate interventions are used reducing conflict and improve collaboration are achievable goals.

 

In this session, you will be given the keys to unlock and disrupt the conflictual interaction patterns in which these cantankerous families engage. Challenges presented in intervening systemically with parents engaged in conflictual and harmful post-divorce interactions and successful systemic methods to assist high-conflict couples that will benefit children will be explored.

 

Learning Objectives:

• Based on the content of this session, I am able to Distinguish common problems experienced by high-conflict families.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to Explore family-systems approaches to assist high-conflict families.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to Apply effective systemic techniques in assisting high-conflict families.

Striving to Build an Integrated Systemic Family Service in Primary Care Network in England

David Humphreys, PhD, MSc

Sian Stanley, MB, MS, MRCGP

Ed Anthony, BSc Hons

Intensives 1:45 p.m. – 3:15 p.m.

Systemic Family Therapy Research is a Team Sport: Why Researchers and Practitioners Both Need to be on the Team Richard B. Miller, PhD Lenore McWey, PhD Keeley Pratt, PhD Amber Vennum, PhD

There has been a historical divide between systemic family therapy researcher and systemic family therapy therapists—two groups belonging to the same national organization, yet living in seemingly different worlds. This is unfortunate because systemic family therapy researchers and therapists have the same goals: to improve clinical processes and outcomes so that therapists can provide the best possible care to those in distressed relationships and those suffering. The truth is that therapists need clinical researchers in order to provide quality care, and researchers need therapists in order to do their best research. Indeed, researchers and therapists are all on the same team.

This session will discuss the need for therapists and researchers to work together as members of the same team. Following, it will provide practical suggestions about how clinical researchers and therapists can best work together to improve the quality of clinically relevant research that will improve the quality of care that therapists provide.

 

Learning Objectives:

• Understand why clinical researchers and therapists have traditionally engaged in “parallel play” as members of AAMFT, with little interaction between the two groups.
• Understand the importance of systemic family therapy researchers and therapists uniting their efforts and becoming members of the same team.
• Learn practical ways for clinical researchers and therapists to play well together on the same team in order to improve the quality of clinically relevant research and improve the quality of care that therapists provide.

A New Understanding of Maternal Jealousy

Rosjke Hasseldine, MS MBACP (Accredited)

Mothers being jealous of their daughter’s educational and career opportunities, choices and freedom, youthful beauty, loving relationships, to name a few examples, is one of the most complicated dynamics to understand between mothers and daughters.

 

And because mothers rarely admit to being jealous of their daughters, it can be hard to detect.

 

The reasons why mothers are jealous of their daughter is largely misunderstood! And this lack of understanding is causing its presence to be unrecognized and misdiagnosed. And causing mothers and daughters to suffer in silence with unnecessary shame, guilt, hurt, and anger.

 

In this learning session, Rosjke Hasseldine, a pioneer in understanding the dynamics between mothers and daughters, will present a new understanding of maternal jealousy. She will expose why maternal jealousy is a common dynamic between mothers and daughters today and teach you how to detect hidden jealous feelings in a mother’s critical, unsupportive, controlling, or emotionally distant behaviors. Rosjke will also share a mother-daughter case study, where she detected the presence of maternal jealousy and empowered the mother and daughter to heal this harmful dynamic.

 

In this learning session, Rosjke will discuss –

 

1. A new, socio-cultural, and political understanding of what causes maternal jealousy, and why maternal jealousy is so common today.

2. Why shrouding maternal jealousy in blame, shame, and guilt does little to explain what causes it and heal it.

3. How the Mother-Daughter Attachment® Model explains the root causes of maternal jealousy and how to heal it.

4. All the nebulous ways maternal jealousy expresses itself.

5. A case study that illustrates how to understand and heal maternal jealousy.

Learning Objectives:

• After the learning session, I have a greater understanding of what causes a mother to be jealous of her daughter.
• After the learning session, I can more easily detect when a mother is jealous of her daughter.
• After the learning session, I have a deeper systemic understanding of dynamics between a mother and daughter.

How an Unhealed Betrayal (Even if It Happened Decades Ago) Is Impacting Your Health, Work and Relationships

Debi Silber, PhD

Betrayal can create a “psychological earthquake” where our world is compartmentalized into before and after “it” happened. It shakes us up, wakes us up and has us reevaluating what we’ve been doing and how we’ve been living. How can that crisis (even if it happened decades ago) impact our health, work and relationships? How can it also be the opportunity to reveal your greatest gift? Dr. Debi Silber, founder of The PBT (Post Betrayal Transformation) Institute; a transformational psychologist, health, mindset, personal development expert and multiple international bestselling author will show you how.

 

Learning Objectives:

• Based on the content of this session, I am able to explain how betrayal is a different type of crisis that requires a different way to heal.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to share the collection of symptoms (physical/mental/emotional) so common to betrayal it’s known as Post Betrayal Syndrome.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to teach the proven and predictable 5 Stages from Betrayal to Breakthrough we’ll go through if we fully heal from betrayal.

Healing the Healer: Therapists Seeking Mental Health Services

Mudita Rastogi, PhD

William P. Russell, MSW, LCSW

Racine R. Henry, Ph.D

Allen Sabey, Ph.D

“Healing the Healer: Therapists seeking mental health services” will focus on the circumstances and experiences of mental health professionals who decide to pursue their own therapy. The panelists are seasoned practitioners and faculty and will bring their own professional and personal experiences to this workshop. They will attend to three areas in a conversational format:

 

·       How do mental health professionals recognize that they need to seek services for themselves and/or their family members? While therapists might be well-trained to assess mental health concerns among their clients, this does not always translate to a clear or smooth process of self-awareness when they are in need of help themselves. In particular, students and new professionals may need guidance to consider pursuing services by their educators and supervisors. How can we better recognize our own and our students’ mental health needs? 

·       What challenges do mental health professionals face when they decide to pursue therapy? These can range from the cost of services to locating a therapist that one does not know. This issue of access is particularly difficult for minorities who have an even smaller pool to choose from. How do DEI issues impact some therapists seeking their own therapy? 

·       Finally, what are the advantages and pitfalls of providing psychotherapy services to other mental health professionals? How might therapists tailor their skills and sessions to meet the needs of those with whom they share this profession?

 

Participants will leave the workshop with insights related to the pre-therapy considerations of mental health professionals, highlights and challenges they face during the therapy process, and tips on navigating these as an educator, supervisor, and therapist.

 

Learning Objectives:

• Based on the content of this session, I am able to recognize some of the situations under which therapists are likely to, or ought to attend to their own mental health.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to identify the challenges faced by therapists when seeking therapy for themselves or their family members.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to focus on skills that are necessary when providing therapy to other mental health professionals.

Bringing Family Therapy to Trans Youth

May Ragna Fianna, LMFT

Trans youth experience rates of assault, mental illness, homelessness, and suicide attempts many times more than their cisgender peers. But one factor protects trans children from these outcomes: family support. After nearly a decade of experience, I share my hard-learned lessons for working with families of trans youth using family systems theory.

 

Learning Objectives:

• Based on the content of this session, I am able to name risk factors affecting trans youth.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to translate family systems theory for use with trans youth.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to understand the lived experiences of trans youth and their families.

Decolonizing Sexuality in Marriage and Family Therapy

Anne Mauro, LMFT, DHS, CSE, CST-S

This presentation will provide attendees with an introduction to the effects of colonization in North America on modern day American human sexuality. This course will explore historically relevant events and trends that created lasting, and at times, detrimental consequences on our sexualities. Together we will examine historical sexual traumas and learn how we as therapists and counselors have the potential to uphold harmful hierarchical binarisms through westerncentric cisheteropatriarchal practices.

 

Learning Objectives:

• Based on the content of this session, I am able to describe at least two historical sexual traumas that have impacted American sexuality.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to understand the impact of colonization on modern-day American sexuality.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to analyze power dynamics within the therapeutic relationship and address issues of privilege and marginalization.

ACEs and Protective Factors: An Ethical and Systemic Lens

Angela Lamson, PhD, LMFT

Betül Küçükardalı Cansever, MS 

Intensives 3:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Journey into the Wild: Transition of Families Living with Type One Diabetes 

Allison Pinkerton, LMFT

Understand and appreciate the complex transitions that Type One Diabetes brings to the family. The chronic illness can be an emotional burden of management to families.. This involves simultaneous grief, blame and anxiety while receiving a large amount of information to keep a person alive and safe. As a result, family life style and routines are shifted; priorities change. From bed times to meal times the family unit changes. The constant-ness of the disease impacts parent stress and interpretation of their child. The process of the family becomes constant learning and adjusting to the multi aspects of the human body and stages of development. Families vacillate in social comparisons, but continue to show the same trends of grief. Families need to be seen for their process which is complex. Treatment needs to recognize the individual family, building a relationship to their perspective of diabetes, within their family. 

Ethical Non-Monogamy: How to Navigate the Murky Waters of Trust, Jealousy, and Passion

Angela Skurtu, LMFT

In this training, clinicians will take a journey exploring honesty, lies, trust, jealousy, passion, and variety. Ethical non-monogamy is becoming a more common clinical challenge. In this training, clinicians will learn how to help people who are currently practicing non-monogamy or who are considering shifting their relationship style to ethical non-monogamy. Clincians will learn two models for opening up relationships-the engineering model and the exposure model for managing jealousy. One unique aspect of the training is that the trust building exercises are ones that can easily be used to help couples in monogamous couples as well. Join us as we cover helpful skills for ethically non-monogamous clients.

 

Learning Objectives:

• Based on the content of this session, I am able to identify specific core areas clients can use to build trust in both non-monogamous and monogamous relationships.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to examine honesty and lies in practical ways with clients in order to help them establish accountability and respectful communication.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to use the engineering model and the exposure model to help clients navigate various emotions that come up as a result of ethical non-monogamy.

Teletherapy Training and Education in Systemic Practices

Jaclyn Cravens Pickens, PhD, LMFT

Aaron M Norton, Doctorate In MFT

To meet the changing needs for today’s therapists and clients, this workshop will discuss ways to innovate training and education in systemic teletherapy guided by research. Attendees will be able to develop instructional and supervisory practices to increase competency in systemic teletherapy practices by MFTs.

 

Learning Objectives:

• Based on the content of this session, I am able to explain specific regulatory and educational requirements for teletherapy training and education.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to describe at least three training and education activities to help MFTs develop competency in systemic teletherapy.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to identify practical steps for engaging in continued teletherapy training for myself as well as to help supervisees or graduate students in MFT programs.

Reentry in America: Redemption, Resilience, and Relationships

Amy A Morgan, PhD, LMFT

The vast majority (i.e., 66%-77%) of incarcerated people will be re-arrested (i.e., recidivate) during their reentry process. Research has historically focused on predictors of recidivism through a pathologizing lens, but far less is known about mechanisms of resilience and “what works” in promoting desistance. Funded by the AAMFT Research & Education Foundation, this session will present findings from a research study examining the role of resilience and relationships among desisting, formerly incarcerated people as they find their way home to families and communities of origin. Particular focus will be given to the development of redemptive identity narratives, which may promote positive reentry scenarios. Clinical implications for working with formerly incarcerated people or legal system-involved families will be discussed based on the findings of this study.

 

Learning Objectives:

• Based on the content of this session, I am able to describe the psychosocial needs of formerly incarcerated people during the reentry period.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to describe a redemptive identity as it relates to desistance and reentry.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to name 2-3 clinical implications for working with the legal system involving people and their families

Bisexual+ Intimacies: The Myths, The Joy, and Everything In Between Mary R Nedela, PhD, LMFT

This session will explore relational experiences of people who identify as sexualities along the bi+ spectrum, including anyone who is physically, intellectually, or romantically attracted to more than one gender. The presenter will discuss common myths of bi+ identities as well as a review of past and recent literature regarding their relational experiences. Specifically, the presenter will include information gleaned from studies on 1) disclosure experiences to family, friends, and romantic partners, 2) managing bi-negativity in romantic relationships, and 3) what bi+ couples want clinicians to know about working with them in therapy. Opportunities will be given to self-reflect and critically deconstruct common approaches to providing treatment to bi+ individuals, couples, and families.

 

Learning Objectives:

• Based on the content of this session, I am able to identify common myths regarding bi+ individuals.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to describe the ways bi+ individuals navigate their relationships with family, friends, and romantic partners.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to provide affirmative therapeutic practices to bi+ individuals and their partners.

Spirituality of Choice

Daniel Stillwell, PhD, LMFT

Autonomy and agency are integral to the MFT profession, the code of ethics, and most theories of change. Treatment itself assumes health and growth are not only possible but moral goods that can be intentionally implemented by professionals in the right contexts with consenting and willing clients. And as professionals in a society which privileges knowledge and experience, part of our role is to help clients develop their own meaning making regardless of whatever external loci of control they bring into sessions with them. Most religious and spiritual traditions make claims about truth that are typically understood to be absolute. These might be about the nature or personhood of deities, the role of individual or collective humanity, or the foundations of the world and reality itself. In the US, almost half of people say faith is very important to their day-to-day life. This significant dimension of clients has often been neglected from training and care in systemic psychotherapy settings. This presentation will walk through how to more effectively empower autonomy and agency into therapeutic spaces with regard to spirituality and religious belief systems. Through the reduction of shaming dichotomous judgment and towards taking ownership of personal expectations and values, clients are more able align their choices with faith traditions in the ways that work for them. Part of the effect of this intervention is to differentiate the person from the dogma, the decision from the demand. This allows professionals from all/no faiths to work more ethically and effectively with the whole person and client system.

 

Learning Objectives:

• Based on the content of this session, I am able to facilitate clients on how to move from external to internal locus of control.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to articulate the ways religion and faith traditions can be chosen.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to integrate spiritual meaning making into secular, clinical contexts.

Systemic School-Based Family Therapy in the Digital Age

Kathleen C. Laundy, PsyD

Kim Welk, LMFT

Anne Rambo, PhD

Eileen Klima, LMFT

Erin Cushing, LMFT

The FTS TIN team will discuss how technology has helped school based mental health practitioners stay connected throughout the pandemic, provided services to underserved clinical populations, and has served high school students and professionals build global response teams for humanitarian crises. This presentation will describe the evolution of school-based mental health services and utilization of telehealth platforms as well as ongoing challenges facing school based mental health services and how to successfully navigate some of these difficulties.

 

Learning Objectives:

• Identify how technology has met a variety of school-based mental health (SBMH) service needs.
• Explain how the success of SBMH using telehealth depends upon multi-systemic relationships.
• Discuss challenges and successes of SBMH’s intersection with technology and current trends in schools.

Rebuilding Relationships: Reunification in Family Therapy

Ashley Landers, PhD, LMFT

Family separation by immigration, parental incarceration, child maltreatment, and adoption continues to draw increased media attention across the United States (U.S.). This workshop will introduce the complex experiences of reunifying families in the U.S. context. The process of reunification can be challenging for many children, parents, and families. Common misconceptions create barriers for reunifying families. It is critical that MFTs understand the unique experiences and challenges embedded in the process of reunification. Reunification is an inherently relational process (i.e., reunification occurs between two or more members of a family system). A family systems approach to reunification is needed, particularly one that attends to the process of reunification for the family system as a whole, as well as the parent, child, and sibling subsystems. The context and culture around family separation will be explored. This interactive workshop will provide MFTs with a deeper understanding of the process of reunification. Implications for MFTs working with reunifying children, parents, and families will be examined. Particular emphasis will be placed on the role of MFTs in assisting in the reunification process. By examining current reunification research and the application of family therapy models to reunifying families, this workshop will offer guidance to MFTs to better serve reunifying families. Participants will learn culturally sensitive family therapy approaches and practices, which may be implemented to respectfully serve reunifying families. Practices that honor and respect the relational process of reunification require a shift in focus from the individual (e.g., parent or child) to the family system. Pressing issues related to the sociopolitical and cultural context surrounding the separation, family resources, and the process of reunification will be considered. Findings from current research will be highlighted.

 

Learning Objectives:

• Based on the content of this session, I am able to describe the complex sociopolitical and cultural context of family separation and its impact on children, caregivers, and the family system.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to identify culturally sensitive family therapy approaches and practices to working with reunifying families.
• Based on the content of this session, I am able to demonstrate the application of family therapy models to reunifying families.