Wednesday, November 11th
1:30 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.

Queerness as Global Systemic Logic

Anthony Pennant, LMFT

This session will present Multidynamic Relational Therapy (MRT) as a decolonial restoration of systemic practice, positioning Queerness and Ubuntu as relational epistemologies rather than marginal perspectives. The Five-by-Five architecture will be introduced alongside Ubuntu as a methodology for case conceptualization. The session will explore global resonances across South Asian, African, Latin American, and Indigenous healing traditions.

Neuronature Code in Practice: Quantum Biophilic Resonance Theory for Trauma-Shaped Nervous Systems

Anaia Keali'i-Jolie, LMFT, PsyD

This 90-minute session invites clinicians, supervisors, and leaders to examine ethical AI, emerging AGI-like systems, biotechnology, and ecopsychology as interlocking influences on the future of systemic mental health care. Through research highlights, case examples, and applied exercises, participants will gain practical tools for responding to advanced technologies without losing relational integrity, for recognizing how climate and environmental stress reshape family and community systems, and for using ecopsychology as a framework that reconnects mental health practice to the wider living ecosystem in which all care takes place.

Gray Divorce: A Therapist's Guide to Divorce Over Age 50

Linda Hershman, MS, LMFT

Gray divorce, or divorce after age 50, continues to increase in every country where divorce is legal. Therapists can expect to see more older couples seeking counseling as they consider how they want to spend their later lives. Participants will gain practical tools for working with older adults navigating divorce, including those who are deciding whether to stay or separate.

Find Your True Voice: Enhancing Communication in Therapy

Fred Moss, MD

This workshop will examine how authentic communication strengthens therapeutic alliance and improves outcomes across modalities. Participants will learn practical tools to enhance presence, deepen attunement, and support client expression while maintaining clinical structure. Risks, including boundary challenges and misalignment with structured models, will also be addressed.

3:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Interpersonal Neurobiology & Well Being in the Global Community

Deborah Armstrong, Ph.D., LMFT-S, RPT-S, REAT, REACE, CFP

Seema Mullick

This workshop will provide participants with a foundational understanding of Contextual Family Therapy and how conceptualizing issues in the LGBTQ+ community from this lens can grow thoughtful and relationally enlivened ways to engage with families, communities, and nations in these processes. The theory itself attends to four dimensions of living: facts, ‘personality’, interactional patterns, and relational ethics. The theory also explores intergenerational legacies, with concern for how what we do today may impact and leave its’ mark on those who follow us. The essential intervention involves what is called multi-directed partiality, where each person’s experiences are appreciated and given voice, whether or not they are present in the treatment room.  Deeply diving into oneself and the other is understood to arouse understanding (self and other) which leads quite organically to spaces for movement in what is causing disruptions and suffering.

Attachment-Based Supervision in EFT

Jeff Scott, LCSW

This workshop will present an attachment-based, experiential model of supervision grounded in Emotionally Focused Therapy. Emphasis will be placed on developing therapist self-awareness, emotional engagement, and the use of internal experience as clinical data. Deliberate practice strategies will support skill integration, therapist confidence, and systemic impact in clinical work.

Traumatic Stress and Wellbeing in Global and Indian Contexts

Mona Mittal, Ph.D, LMFT, MS-CI

Mudita Rastogi, MFT

Elizabeth Wieling

In an increasingly interconnected world where the boundaries between local and global realities are shrinking and trauma exposures are rising, presenters introduce modules developed to promote training on traumatic stress, ambiguous loss, trauma in children, parent-child relationships, families and communities, and vicarious trauma for providers working across global settings. Please note: All presenters contributed equally to this project.

Advancing Equity Through Systems-Based Supervision

Rebecca Brunson-Nsubuga, MA, LMFT, LCAS, CCS

Kristen Ellis

This workshop will examine how systems-based supervision can advance equity in crisis care for individuals of color. Grounded in family systems theory, participants will explore how supervisory relationships, bias, and system design influence clinical outcomes, and will identify strategies to structure supervision that promotes culturally responsive, relational, and equitable care in high-acuity environments.

5:30 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.

Sacred Sustainability Self-Care for Systemic Therapists

Shiricka Fair, PhD, LMFT

This workshop redefines self-care as a culturally informed, systemic practice rather than an individual task. Integrating family systems theory and South Asian perspectives, it explores how culture shapes burnout, boundaries, and resilience. Through experiential activities and case studies, participants develop sustainable, culturally aligned care strategies that support both therapist wellbeing and effective, ethically grounded clinical practice.

Emergence of Stay-at-Home Fathers in India

Srinithi Sridhar, MS

This session uses findings from stay-at-home fathers in India to examine how masculinity operates within families and how family systems shift when caregiving and breadwinning move outside traditional gender roles. It highlights how non-traditional family structures can unsettle expectations around power, identity, labor, and parenting, while also creating space for new relational patterns, meanings of masculinity, and forms of family functioning.

What Happens Between Us: EFT-Informed Experiential Supervision

Eleanor Riesen, PhD

Aditi Mehra, M.Sc.

This workshop will introduce an EFT-informed approach to clinical supervision grounded in attachment and experiential principles. Emphasis will be placed on safety, collaboration, and therapist internal experience as pathways to growth. Video examples will illustrate supervisory processes across cultural and power differences, with opportunities to practice interventions and reflect on relational and ethical complexities.

Affirming LGBTQ+ Clients: Core Skills for New MFTs

Dr. Jeannelle, PhD, LMFT-S

Beginning MFTs are trained to think systemically. Yet most graduate programs offer little preparation for LGBTQ+ clients. This workshop shows participants how foundational skills they already possess (joining, genograms, and circular questioning) apply directly to LGBTQ+ families. Participants leave with inclusive intake practices, tools for recognizing minority stress in session, and confidence to engage this community immediately.

Thursday, November 12th

1:30 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.

Healing Troubled Relationships Through Action

Suparna Majumdar, PhD

Psychodrama is a powerful experiential method of psychotherapy that uses guided dramatic action to explore and resolve personal and collective issues in family systems. It brings the inner world into a tangible, three-dimensional space, allowing participants to gain insight, practice new behaviours, and achieve emotional catharsis. Its history is deeply intertwined with the life and vision of its founder, Dr Jacob Levy Moreno. In a world often dominated by digital interaction and passive consumption, psychodrama offers a unique, embodied, and relational path to understanding, growth, and authentic human connection. It continues to evolve, proving itself as a dynamic and vital approach to psychotherapy and human development. Dysfunctional patterns in couples and/or family members are seen when they don’t know how to communicate effectively, leading to the development of fears which they “ACT OUT”. Action therapy modes help to uncover unconscious fears or beliefs and encourage participants to express the blocks to their growth by encouraging new in-depth skills of relating.

Anchored in Awareness: MRP-Informed Self of the Therapist Training

Cadmona A. Hall, PhD, LMFT, FT

Kiran Arora, PhD

This 90-minute workshop equips clinicians and educators with a working framework for integrating the Multicultural Relational Perspective (MRP), developed by Hardy and Laszloffy, into SOTT-oriented training. Attendees will gain conceptual grounding and practical strategies for facilitating identity-based reflection with trainees.
The MRP distinguishes itself from traditional multicultural approaches by encouraging perpetual curiosity about culture as a dynamic, fluid force shaping relationships and clinical work. Trainers are called to examine their own dominant and subjugated selves before guiding trainees through similar exploration. Key principles include relational and both/and thinking, developing trainees' multidimensional self-concept, addressing power and privilege dynamics, and recognizing the distinction between cultural awareness (cognitive) and cultural sensitivity (affective).
The workshop includes structured self-reflection, dyadic dialogue, and large-group discussion. Contradictory evidence is addressed, including risks of emotional labor burden, role boundary erosion, and evaluation inequity. Ethical considerations are woven throughout.

Systemic Therapy in Times of Systemic Upheavals

Tatiana Glebova, PhD

Arpita Lal, PhD, LMFT

Systemic family therapists have a key role in empowering relationships as a vital resource of resilience in times of systemic upheavals. This presentation will offer clinicians a unique perspective to see consequences of social injustices for relational injustices and methods of addressing them in clinical practice from the contextual therapy perspective.

Systemic Inclusive Framework: Integrating Global Contexts Locally

Mudita Rastogi, PhD

The Systemic Integrative Framework (SIF) (Rastogi, 2020) emphasizes an integration of a global perspective and 3rd order thinking. Knowledge from the Global Mental Health (GMH) movement helps systemic family therapists practice in more inclusive and culturally sensitive ways. The SIF accounts for the impact of sociopolitical events such as war, mass trauma, and climate change. Case material will help participants apply this framework while tapping into the larger community. appreciating local knowledge, validation of different perspectives, listening to stories of resilience, and/or advocacy.

3:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

The Book of Many Chapters: The Re-identification Process

Jenifer James, PhD

The story was written and the future was defined... or was it? After age 50, couples expect to experience grief and loneliness related to widowhood. However, there has been a surge in gray(silver) divorces, causing intergenerational impact. This presentation focuses on mental health experiences of older adults experiencing divorce. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Family Systems Theory will showcase ways to help clients redefine the next chapter.

Loyalty, Duty, and Fairness Across Cultures

Manijeh Daneshpour, PhD

This presentation will examine how loyalty, duty, and fairness shape relationships across cultures using a contextual therapy framework. Clinical strategies will be presented to address guilt, obligation, and relational imbalance. Cultural and systemic risks, including power differences and the imposition of individualistic values, will be discussed to support ethical and culturally responsive practice.

Supervisors' Clinical and Ethical Duty in the Age of AI and Social Media

DeAnna Harris-McKoy, PhD, LMFT

Regardless of our feelings towards AI and social media, it seems both are here to stay. Supervisors want to guide supervisees in the proper use of both. However, what are supervisors’ legal and ethical obligations in regard to supervisees' AI and social media usage? This workshop will discuss research and legal and ethical considerations and provide tools for supervisors.

5:30 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.

Becoming an Authentic Clinician: Integrating Self, System, and Skill

Shari Short, LMFT

This workshop will explore self-of-the-therapist development within a systemic framework and its impact on therapeutic alliance. Participants will examine family-of-origin influences, recognize and manage countertransference, and apply strategies to strengthen clinical effectiveness, ethical boundaries, and professional sustainability grounded in evidence-based and trauma-informed practices.

Navigating South Asian Couples' Dynamics in Therapy

Shalini Dayal, MS

Urvashi Malhotra, M. Phil.

Shobha Managoli, M. Phil.

The panel presents a culturally attuned model that goes beyond current western models to equip therapists working with South Asian couples to conduct a comprehensive assessment and provides tools for intervention for couples dealing with loyalty conflicts, maternal enmeshment, sexual intimacy challenges and culturally shaped beliefs about gender roles in the context of modern influences.

Black Mama Blues: Reclaiming Joy in the Perinatal Experience

Racine R. Henry, Ph.D, LMFT

This workshop will present sociohistorical factors regarding the journey of the Black perinatal experience, the mitigating factors that can further improve and further threaten Black maternal health, and interventions to be used in clinical settings. Participants will learn what impacts Black perinatal experiences, strategies to combat Black maternal deaths, and how to inspire joy for Black mothers pre- and postpartum.

Rethinking Impostor Syndrome: A Systemic Perspective

Astha Sachania, LMFT

This workshop will reframe Impostor Syndrome as a systemic, relational experience rather than a personal flaw. Participants will examine systemic, relational and cultural factors that shape self-doubt, explore adaptive functions of impostor feelings, and practice strategies to respond with curiosity, self-compassion, and professional growth while maintaining accountability and effectiveness in clinical and professional settings.

Friday, November 13th

10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Global Systemic Narratives: Media and Clinical Practice

Katheryn Whittaker, PsyD

This workshop will examine podcast-based narrative as a tool for systemic practice, using media and storytelling to access themes of attachment, identity, and relational dynamics. Participants will learn to translate narrative engagement into clinical insight while addressing risks such as misinformation and reduced structure, supporting culturally responsive and globally accessible care.

Intervening in Mass Trauma using EFCT with Indian Couples

Sarayu Chandrashekar, MS

Mamatha Shetty, PhD

Mudita Rastogi, PhD

In this experiential workshop, participants will learn how to use Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy within the Indian context and with Indian couples across the diaspora to help couples wherein one partner has a history of having experienced mass trauma through the use of case studies and small group discussions.

Working with First and Second Generation Immigrants

Srinithi Sridhar, MS

April Ilkmen, PhD

This session examines how racial microaggressions affect immigrants differently across generational statuses. Drawing on Internalized Oppression Theory and microaggression frameworks, it highlights introjection as a process through which oppressive messages can become internalized and shape thoughts, emotions, and behavior. The session explores how first-generation immigrants may respond through survival and adaptation, while later generations may face more conflict around identity, belonging, and cultural expectations. Through concepts, case examples, and interactive strategies, the workshop helps participants recognize immigration-related microaggressions and respond in culturally responsive ways that support healing, resistance, and psychological well-being.

No Wooden Nickels: Presenting your Authentic Self to avoid Burnout

Latonya Stephens, PhD, LMFT

When working with couples, some mental health workers struggle with being authentic in their personality while being professional.  The stress of being the perfect therapist can cause one to present “wooden nickels” or show up in sessions with a “mask”.  If therapists find a therapeutic concept that agrees with their life standards and personality, the therapeutic space can promote healing.

1:30 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.

When the Community Is the Client: Collective Trauma, Systemic Care, and Queer Survival in Kenya

Melissa Kioko, Licensed Psychotherapist, Founder, Mindful Psychotherapy Services, Nairobi, Kenya

Systemic therapy has expanded the unit of treatment from the individual to the family. In contexts of collective trauma, the relevant system is often a whole community carrying shared wounds, or a group whose safety depends on networks that the traditional therapy room was never built to hold. Drawing on clinical experience across humanitarian response, government rehabilitation settings, and LGBTQ+ community mental health work, this session offers a framework for treating community itself as a clinical unit, relevant to disaster response, collective grief, and marginalized populations under sustained social or legal threat. The session grounds this framework in its sharpest current example: providing queer-affirming systemic care in Kenya, where queer identity remains criminalized and formal training pathways in affirming practice are limited. Presented as a learner's honest account, this session draws on original research being conducted with Kenyan systemic and mental health practitioners ahead of the summit, alongside the presenter's own clinical experience, to translate global solidarity into what community-level systemic care actually requires on the ground, and to invite collaboration, mentorship, or resourcing from the international systemic therapy community.

Supervision of Early Career Psychotherapists: The Seven Eyed Model

Mamatha Shetty, PhD

Irawati Joglekar, MA

Zohra Master, MA

Professional psychotherapy supervision in India will be explored through the experiences of early career psychotherapists—their need for support, clarity, and growth in practice. Drawing on interviews with 20 psychotherapists analysed through the Seven-Eyed Model, the workshop will help participants reflect on supervision, the therapy relationship, and the wider family, cultural, institutional, and relational systems shaping therapeutic work.

Challenges of Systemic Supervision for Couples Therapists in India

Varsha Suresh, MS

Malavi Madhusudan, MS

Sarayu Chandrashekar, MS

Psychotherapy supervision is a signature pedagogy of the mental health field and serves a normative, formative and restorative function for the supervisees.  It helps clinicians hone their clinical skills while also managing risk and ensuring the quality of care they provide to their clients. Due to the lack of professional regulatory and licensing bodies in India for psychotherapists, many Indian clinicians, including newly-trained therapists, engage in therapeutic practice without ongoing supervision post graduation. Clinical supervision is often seen as a luxury and not a necessity of practice. Within the larger domain of clinical supervision, systemically-oriented supervision for clinicians doing couple and family work is a particularly scarce commodity. 

In order to address that gap in practice, in this workshop, the presenters will discuss some of the unique challenges of providing systemic supervision in India and offer some clinical recommendations for supervisors working with supervisees doing couple therapy to enhance the effectiveness of the supervisory process. Some of these challenges include the scarcity of formal training in supervision (particularly systemic supervision), supervisory approaches that are overly focused on client pathology or on individual therapy models, lack of regulations and ethical codes for supervision; and logistical challenges such as inadequate supervision fees, to name a few. Additionally, the presenters will explore concerns specific to couples therapy supervision in India such as the need for supervisors and thereby therapists to understand the legal complexities surrounding marriages/divorces in the Indian Marriage Act, dynamics in the familial system of the couple such as enmeshment with family members, issues with in-laws etc. 

This workshop will be structured experientially, covering existing problems and case examples. Clinical recommendations and strategies will also be included to enhance dialogues about creating accessible systemic couple therapy supervision to therapists in India.

Religious Trauma in Couples: Systemic Considerations

Kimberley M. Welk, MSMFT, LMFT

Religious trauma, often overlooked, shapes couple dynamics through conflict, disconnection, and value incongruence. This session offers a systemic framework for assessing how internalized beliefs influence intimacy, power, and roles. Emphasis is placed on belief divergence, pursue-withdraw patterns, and emotional regulation, while distinguishing trauma from normative spiritual struggle and maintaining cultural humility in clinical practice.

Research Discussions

3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Strength-Based Perinatal Genograms in Maternal Health Care

Jamie Banker, PhD

Yulia Kovrihina, BA

This is a systemic treatment tool - This approach situates perinatal mental health within the family system, emphasizing relational patterns, roles, and intergenerational influences. The genogram process facilitates shared storytelling, revealing how family dynamics shape vulnerability and support. Adding a strengths-based step highlights resilience, attachment bonds, and existing resources, shifting the narrative from deficit to balance. It also enhances collaboration between partners and family members, reinforcing connection during a transitional period. Clinicians are better able to assess relational risk and protective factors, while interventions can target both distress and strengths within the broader system.

Stress and Compassion Among Vietnamese Coupled Queer Individuals

Khoi Nguyen Anh Le, PhD, LMFT

Hieu Phan, BA

Minh Nguyen, BA

The proposed presentation is embedded within the Systemic-Transaction Model of Stress (STM), developed by Guy Bodenmann (1997), based on Bertalanffy's General System Theory and Lazarus's Transactional Model of Stress. STM argues that stress is a mutual phenomenon rather than an individual experience. Stress experienced by one partner may activate stress responses in the other, which subsequently requires both persons to reciprocally manage stress together. At other times, both partners may face and handle a stressful event concurrently. Additionally, Gibert (2020) also considers compassion as an interpersonal construct and a form of coping in the midst of stress.