“Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy.”
~Ester Perel
PACT Couples Workshops in Seattle
Take a deep dive to lift your relationship to the next level
Secure Connections offers day-long workshops and retreats, as well as evening mini-workshops for couples to learn about a specific topic or challenge. Most of these are at our office or conference room with 4-6 couples to create the intimacy for best learning. Carolyn Sharp leads a discussion and then facilitates exercises to help couples practice and build skills.
Contact us for more information about workshops.
ONLINE CLASSES
Wonder Couples: Activate Your Couple Power!
Join Jason Brand, LCSW & Carolyn Sharp, LICSW in this series of online classes for couples, as we support you in creating a richer, more vibrant relationship.
Expert PACT therapists, Jason and Carolyn will teach the concepts and skills necessary to build a secure relationship. Each 75-minute class will focus on a different aspect of secure relationships with opportunity for discussion and exercises to practice these concepts in the comfort of your own home.
COMING LATE SPRING 2020
Building the best start to your commitment: Creating vows and agreements that will start your marriage on the best foundation.
Agreements guide how we behave with one another and what we do for one another to maintain a secure functioning relationship. They are our rules of engagement and they uphold our mission statement as a couple. Together we create our agreements to ensure our safety and security and orient our relationship around our agreements to maintain fairness and justice.
In this fun one day retreat, we will help you and your partner develop the agreements that uphold the health of your relationship. These agreements can be the basis for your vows or commitment that you are beginning. We will help you understand the principles behind agreements and lead you through exercises that will help you and your partner develop agreements that will support your relationship through all the years to come.
COMING SUMMER 2020
The Power of “I’m Sorry”: How repairing injuries is your most helpful tool for a healthy relationship.
Repair is one of the most important pieces of relationship maintenance. As human beings, we are all messy and imperfect and you will make many errors over the course of your relationship. Mistakes are not a problem. But mistakes repeated without repair are stored in our memories and create expectations of future hurts and an atmosphere absent of safety and security. Repairing resolves this and creates strength, connection, and safety for both of you.
In this one day retreat, we will teach you the brain science and the process for creating successful repair for both of you, both giving and receiving. Through teachings and exercises, you will learn how to craft the perfect repair for each injury and how to feel soothed and supported as you provide this care to your partner. Throughout, you will also experience compassion and humor as common mistakes are made safe to acknowledge in this small group workshop.
COMING WINTER 2020/2021
Thinking About Polyamory? Is Consensual Nonmonogamy Healthy for Your Relationship?
More and more couples who come for therapy are interested in polyamory or consensual nonmonogamy. Some have been practicing it for years and believe it to be part of their values and their self-expression. Others believe it will bring sexual excitement and enhanced intimacy to their primary relationship. Regardless of where you are in your relationship, the decision to introduce other people into your committed relationship carries significant risk and challenge and should be done with a great deal of thought and care.
This evening series will provide information and guidance in making the healthiest decision about whether to open your relationship and how to do so while maintaining security and connection together. Discussion and break-out exercises will support you and your partner learning to navigate challenging discussions that will support you as a couple, regardless what you decide.
COMING FALL 2020
Spark or Fire: Learning to use your conflict to grow closer.
Sharing a life with another person is easily the most difficult thing we do as adults. It is also the most worthwhile. Your differences which attracted you to each other and created that spark are now annoyances and difficulties that ignite battles about housework, parenting, hobbies, sex, money and all the other things you share. Learning how to resolve these differences and feel good at the end of these struggles is critically important to staying connected toward your shared goals.
In this half-day workshop, Carolyn will provide the neurobiological information to help you understand how fights start and how to support each other from getting tipped into “fight or flight” with one another. Through fun and lively exercises, she will help you feel the difference in learning to fight and recover quickly in creating “win-win” situations in ANY conflict.