Please be aware that the schedule reflects the Eastern Time Zone. The event platform will reflect the time zone that you are located in. The programming schedule will be continuously updated leading up to the event.
Intensives 8:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.
Systemic Sexuality: An Integrative Approach
Candida Crasto, M.A., MFT, LPC
This session will demonstrate the application of The AFFECT Project’s WIDTH Framework within clinical settings. Participants will explore the integration of sex and family therapy to reduce intergenerational shame and build healthy relationships. Discussion will include original research findings, potential risks of boundary blurring, and ethical strategies for addressing sexual wellness through an eco-systemic lens to improve relational well-being.
Perimenopause Isn’t a Relationship Problem
Mariah Plociniak, Ed.D., LMFT, QS
This workshop will present a systemic, physiology-informed framework for understanding perimenopause in couples therapy. Hormonal changes will be reframed as shifts in physiological capacity rather than pathology. Attendees will learn to assess patterns, reduce misdiagnosis, and implement practical interventions that improve relational functioning and clinical outcomes.
Psychosis Rising: Supporting Families in Crisis
Susan Lea, LMFT
This training will examine the rising incidence of psychosis, early warning signs, and the critical — yet misunderstood — role of anosognosia in treatment resistance. Attendees will gain practical clinical tools, referral pathways, and family support strategies grounded in both clinical evidence and lived SMI experience. Better family support produces better outcomes.
When Teaching Hurts
Victoria Kedemi, MA
The workshop will look into the impact of ACEs on the system. When a school system does not account for these traumas, it creates a cycle of dysfunction that affects everyone. Teachers burn out because "the tank is empty," which leads to compassion fatigue. A stressed-out teacher and a traumatized student both have "offline" prefrontal cortices, leading to power struggles and harsh environments rather than regulation. Chronic stress disrupts the brain's ability to move from survival mode to learning mode. If their nervous systems feel unsafe, the teacher and student cannot focus on algebra. This causes academic stagnation. The workshop will seek to shift the narrative from hurt to healing by advocating for a trauma-informed approach for the school system. This approach moves the burden off the individual teacher and onto the structure and shareholders of the school. Schools must provide mental health support for staff, not just students.
Using Neurobiology & Positive Psychology to Advance Systemic Therapy
Rick Weinberg, Ph.D., ABPP
In this workshop, participants will learn several novel couple and family therapy strategies that incorporate recent findings from interpersonal neurobiology, relationship science, and positive psychology. Emphasis will be on assisting struggling couple and family clients in lessening emotional responding, communicating more thoughtfully and reasonably, effectively managing conflict, deepening relationship satisfaction, softening old wounds, increasing vulnerability and compassion, and strengthening the felt, in-the-moment, healing experience of love.
Workshops 10:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
The Whole is Greater: Fix the System, Not the People.
Rebecca Brunson-Nsubuga, MA, MBA, LMFT, LCAS, CCS
Kristen Ellis, LMFT
This session will examine how systems theory can be applied to restructure integrated care organizations. Participants will learn to map workflows, identify interdependencies, and target leverage points that improve coordination, reduce burnout, and enhance outcomes. Family systems concepts will be used to understand relational patterns that sustain dysfunction and inform system-level redesign.
The Grieving Therapist: What We Carry After a Client Dies
Kenneth Phelps, PhD, LMFT
This presentation will examine therapist grief following client death across the arc of loss, from sudden or anticipated death through long-term integration. Responses to suicide, illness, and violence will be explored. Practical strategies for staying grounded, relating differently to self-judgment, and continuing meaningful clinical work through values and connection will be presented.
Chronic Sorrow in Families of People with Disabilities
Srinithi Sridhar
The session will examine chronic sorrow in families of people with disabilities as a recurring, relational, and culturally shaped experience rather than failed adjustment. Content will address clinical risks of pathologizing grief, overreliance on loss-based frameworks, and neglect of resilience. Participants will learn systemic, culturally responsive strategies for assessment, support, and intervention across family subsystems.
Embedding Systemic Practice in Pediatric Systems of Care
Sarah Scott, MS, IMFT-S
Brittany Schaffner, M.Ed
This workshop will outline a system-level approach to implementing systemic practices within Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Participants will learn how needs assessments, targeted training, and supervision structures supported consistent practice across settings, and will gain actionable strategies to implement and sustain family therapy across diverse programs.
Irreplaceable by Design: How MFT Practice Survives AI Disruption
Veronica Viesca, Ph.D., LMFT
Nicole Isbell, MA
This workshop will examine current data on large language model adoption in mental health contexts and demonstrate why Marriage and Family Therapy is structurally irreplaceable in an AI-disrupted market. Evidence-based analysis of LLM limitations will be presented alongside MFT’s systemic advantage. Court-involved family work, Medical Family Therapy, and school consultation will be explored as durable practice domains.
Workshops 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.
In the Absence of Family: Lives Shaped by Incalculable Losses Over Time
Alice Lynn, MA, MFT
This workshop will provide an in-depth exploration of the lasting effects of the incalculable loss of family on individuals. Research on the changing American family, where increasingly more individuals will be without family sometime in their lives, will be interwoven with life-affirming stories and inquiry into how one survives and overcomes the presence of absence.
Family Recovery: Healing the Wounds of Addiction
Meri Shadley, Ph.D., MFT, LCADC
Kelli Grock, MS
Substance use and other addiction recovery outcomes are improved when recovery is treated as a family affair. By expanding treatment protocols to consciously integrate a family systems framework, mind/body approaches, as well as conflict resolution skills can be integrated more effectively to address the deep wounds that often drive addictive behaviors and relapse.
Trust Through Transparency in Cross-Cultural Supervision
John Robbins, PhD, LMFT
Elizabeth Santos Fisher. DMFT
Transparency and honest dialogue can transform cross-cultural supervision. This session demonstrates how to name tensions, work through bias, and navigate power differences while fostering trust and safety. Attendees will leave with practical strategies to deepen connections, repair misunderstandings, and engage supervision with humility and curiosity, promoting growth for both supervisors and supervisees.
Federal Advocacy for MFTs: Updates and Advocacy Opportunities
Patricia Barton
Roger Smith
Emily Brown
This session will cover federal policy changes that impact MFTs, including federal funding for behavioral health programs, inclusion of MFTs in the Medicare program, and changes to federal student loan programs. Join AAMFT government affairs staff to receive updates on key federal advocacy issues for MFTs, and an overview of how to get involved in advocating for the MFT profession.
Becoming a Safe Haven: EFT with Transgender & Gender Expansive Clients
Andy Price, M.A., AMFT,
Transgender and gender expansive couples may experience minority stressors, which can contribute to shame and fear of rejection, driving negative interaction cycles. Emotionally focused therapy (EFT) provides a framework for understanding how these experiences shape relationships and promoting acceptance and emotional safety. This workshop will explore applying EFT with TGE couples, helping partners become a secure base and safe haven.
Intensives 5:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
When Fairness Breaks: Relational Ethics in a Divided World
Manijeh Daneshpour, PhD, LMFT
This presentation will explore how political division and marginalization enter the therapy room as experiences of unfairness, conflict, and mistrust. A relational ethics framework from contextual therapy will offer practical tools to move beyond polarization toward accountability and repair. Clinical risks, including invalidation and power imbalances, will be addressed to support ethical and effective practice.
Intersectionality in the Therapeutic Setting
Karen D. Harris Tyrrell, M.A., Ed.D.
Neurodivergent clients of color are caught between racialized cultural expectations and clinical frameworks built for white, neurotypical populations leading to misdiagnosis or invisibility. This workshop equips MFTs with an intersectional framework drawing on critical race theory, Self-Determination Theory, and racial identity development to shift practice toward equity-centered praxis honoring the cultural wealth communities of color have long cultivated as resistance.
When Death Changes Your Life: Guiding Couples Through Shared Loss
Anitra Durand-Allen, LMFT
Individual grief is an intrapersonal adaptation process to loss and change. Shared grief becomes complicated between individuals whose intrapersonal adaptations are not following the same arc and timeline. This workshop will provide attendees with a prescriptive model and applicable interventions to guide couples through the journey shared grief presents while balancing their own needs with those of others.
Thriving in Uncertainty: A New Vision for Family Therapy Practice
Diane R. Gehart, PhD, LMFT
The world our clients live in looks nothing like the one our theories were built for. Political chaos, climate anxiety, AI disruption, skyrocketing loneliness—these aren't background noise anymore; they're walking into your office every day. This workshop makes the case that family therapy needs a serious upgrade: new purposes and goals, more integrative models, and a richer vision of what lasting wellness actually looks like. Leave with concrete practices to help clients do more than cope—help them thrive.
Queering The Clinical Space: LGBTQ+ Affirming Systemic Practice
Andres Brown, LMFT
As sociopolitical pressures target LGBTQ+ communities, MFTs must move beyond "neutrality" toward clinical excellence. This training utilizes Sue et al.’s framework (Awareness, Knowledge, Skills) to "queer" the clinical space. Through a Self-of-the-Therapist lens, participants will unpack internal biases and develop attuned, systemic interventions. Therapists will leave with a personal framework for providing ethically aligned, high-quality care in a polarized environment.