Marriage and couple therapists see clients with broken relationships and bonds all the time; those who were once madly in love can grow indifferent, people change, and couples go into sessions feeling depressed, traumatized, and sometimes abused by their partners. Joan Lachkar examines the vicissitudes of love relations by taking into account aspects of aggression, cruelty, sadism, envy, and other primitive defenses lurking in the shadows of love and intimacy. Each chapter revolves around a specific situational conflict, with guidelines and treatment suggestions offered to the therapist. Numerous vignettes and detailed descriptions of theoretical technique, methodology, and diagnostic distinctions are included throughout the book to help readers see theory in action. The theoretical concepts drawn on include psychoanalysis, object relations, self-psychology, attachment theory, DBT, mindfulness, and others, with a heavy emphasis on listening and non-verbal and verbal communication throughout.

Marriage and couple therapists can read about specific, situational conflicts in this book and learn guidelines and treatment suggestions offered for each type of couple and individual. The book is vignette-heavy and contains detailed descriptions of theoretical technique, methodology, and diagnostic distinctions.

A guide for parents whose adult children have cut off contact that reveals the hidden logic of estrangement, explores its cultural causes, and offers practical advice for parents trying to reestablish contact with their adult children. “Finally, here’s a hopeful, comprehensive, and compassionate guide to navigating one of the most painful experiences for parents and their adult children alike.”—Lori Gottlieb, psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone Labeled a silent epidemic by a growing number of therapists and researchers, estrangement is one of the most disorienting and painful experiences of a parent's life. Popular opinion typically tells a one-sided story of parents who got what they deserved or overly entitled adult children who wrongly blame their parents. However, the reasons for estrangement are far more complex and varied. As a result of rising rates of individualism, an increasing cultural emphasis on happiness, growing economic insecurity, and a historically recent perception that parents are obstacles to personal growth, many parents find themselves forever shut out of the lives of their adult children and grandchildren. As a trusted psychologist whose own daughter cut off contact for several years and eventually reconciled, Dr. Joshua Coleman is uniquely qualified to guide parents in navigating these fraught interactions. He helps to alleviate the ongoing feelings of shame, hurt, guilt, and sorrow that commonly attend these dynamics. By placing estrangement into a cultural context, Dr. Coleman helps parents better understand the mindset of their adult children and teaches them how to implement the strategies for reconciliation and healing that he has seen work in his forty years of practice. Rules of Estrangement gives parents the language and the emotional tools to engage in meaningful conversation with their child, the framework to cultivate a healthy relationship moving forward, and the ability to move on if reconciliation is no longer possible. While estrangement is a complex and tender topic, Dr. Coleman's insightful approach is based on empathy and understanding for both the parent and the adult child.

Couples and Family Therapy in Clinical Practice has been the psychiatric and mental health clinician's trusted companion for over four decades. This new fifth edition delivers the essential information that clinicians of all disciplines need to provide effective family-centered interventions for couples and families. A practical clinical guide, it helps clinicians integrate family-systems approaches with pharmacotherapies for individual patients and their families. Couples and Family Therapy in Clinical Practice draws on the authors’ extensive clinical experience as well as on the scientific literature in the family-systems, psychiatry, psychotherapy, and neuroscience fields.

Whether you’re newly together and eager to make it work or a longtime couple looking to strengthen and deepen your bond, Eight Dates offers a program of how, why, and when to have eight basic conversations with your partner that can result in a lifetime of love. “Happily ever after” is not by chance, it’s by choice– the choice each person in a relationship makes to remain open, remain curious, and, most of all, to keep talking to one another. From award-winning marriage researcher and bestselling author Dr. John Gottman and fellow researcher Julie Gottman, Eight Dates offers an ingenious and simple-to-implement approach to effective relationship communication. Here are the subjects that every serious couple should discuss: Trust. Family. Sex and intimacy. Dealing with conflict. Work and money. Dreams, and more. And here is how to talk about them—how to broach subjects that are difficult or embarrassing, how to be brave enough to say what you really feel. There are also suggestions for where and when to go on each date—book your favorite romantic restaurant for the Sex & Intimacy conversation (and maybe go to a yoga or dance class beforehand). There are questionnaires, innovative exercises, real-life case studies, and skills to master, including the Four Skills of Intimate Conversation and the Art of Listening. Because making love last is not about having a certain feeling—it’s about both of you being active and involved.

Inside 101 More Interventions in Family Therapy, you'll discover many revolutionary and flexible strategies for family counseling intervention that you can tailor, amend, and apply in your own practice. Designed to appeal to professionals of beginning, intermediate, or advanced level status, 101 More Interventions in Family Therapy caters to an even broader range of ethnic, racial, gender, and class contexts than did its well-received predecessor, 101 Interventions in Family Therapy. You'll also find that this volume encompasses a wider variety of family therapy orientations, including strategic, behavioral, family of origin, solution-focused, and narrative. In 101 More Interventions in Family Therapy, you'll have at your fingertips a collection of favorite, tried-and-true interventions compiled, revised, and delivered to you by the professionals who use them--the clinicians themselves. You'll gain valuable insight into: effective and useful assessment strategies therapy that addresses school and career problems questions to use in solution-focused therapy questions to use in narrative therapy ideas for resolving intergenerational issues Too often, the in-the-trenches accounts you need to help add variety and a high success rate to your own practice come to you piecemeal in journals or newsletters. But in 101 More Interventions in Family Therapy, you'll find 101 handy, easy-to-read, and fun ways to modify your own therapeutic styles for a truly diverse variety of clientele and settings right where you want them--in one volume, in one place. Even after a few chapters, you'll discover 101 reasons to be happy with the prospect of improving your practice. Specifically, some of the interesting tips and techniques you'll read about include: applying theater techniques to family therapy using an alarm clock and rubber band as props in clinical practice with children, couples, and families utilizing the “play baby” intervention to coach parents on ways to address their child(ren)'s concerns adopting a “Columbo therapy” approach--one in which the therapist acts confused and asks questions out of a genuine curiosity about the client's experience--to take a one-down position with clients creating a safe space in therapy and helping clients transfer it into their lives using homework to increase the likelihood of producing desired therapeutic outcomes