Couples Enrichment Weekend
If you and your partner want to create and maintain a loving, secure, committed relationship, you need more than lessons in how to improve your negotiation skills, fight better, change behaviors, or experiment with new activities. More important is learning how to become emotionally responsive to each other. With half of all American marriages ending in divorce, knowing how to truly strengthen your relationship is critical. The Portland Hold Me Tight program teaches you how to understand and protect the emotional bond in your relationship. Contemporary research has shown that this is the key to maintaining a lively, stable relationship.
What is Hold Me Tight?
Hold Me Tight is a relationship enrichment and education program that helps couples strengthen their emotional connection. It teaches partners to become more empathic, trusting, and open with each other and to more easily handle day-to-day stress and problems. Hold Me Tight was developed by Susan Johnson, an internationally recognized expert in couple therapy. She based it on principles from Emotionally Focused Therapy with Couples, a research based, powerful way of helping couples renew their emotional bond.
How Does Hold Me Tight Work?
Portland Hold Me Tight teaches seven different conversations designed to help couples learn how to move away from cycles of conflict, increase emotional responsiveness, forgive old wounds, and rekindle desire and affection. The program uses Susan Johnson's book Hold Me Tight, videos of Sue working with couples, and interactive exercises help a couple capture the defining moments of their relationship. We also share personal vignettes about our relationship to help participants emotionally connect with these ways of relating. All experiential, interactive work is done privately between the partners, followed by group discussion. No one is required to share any personal experiences with the group.
What are the Seven Conversations?
Recognizing Demon Dialogues First, couples identify common emotional reactions that lead to negative cycles in order to step out of them.
Finding the Raw Spots Next, each partner learns to look beyond immediate, impulsive reactions to discover the vulnerable feelings under the negative cycles.
Revisiting a Rocky Moment This conversation develops a safe platform for de-escalating conflict, repairing disconnection, and building emotional security.
Hold Me Tight Now the partners can move into being more accessible, emotionally responsive, and deeply engaged to strengthen and protect their emotional connection.
Forgiving Injuries Old emotional hurts can block intimacy and a secure connection. Knowing how to identify these injuries and offer and accept forgiveness empowers couples to strengthen their bonds.
Bonding Through Sex and Touch Here, couples learn more about how emotional connection enhances physical connection, which in turn creates deeper emotional connection the best kind of cycle.
Keeping Your Love Alive The last conversation in the program builds on the understanding that a love relationship is a continual process of losing and finding emotional connection; it helps couples to be deliberate and mindful about maintaining that connection.
Comments about the program with Charles & Jamie:
"A great class - really helped us see a path forward."
"This is a super program. The examples from your relationship helped 'normalize' situations we discussed."
"My wife and I would like to thank you for this excellent and educational class. It gives us hope for a better, happier and richer marriage."
"We are so grateful for having taken it."
"Explaining the concepts from the lectures through your personal stories was immensely helpful."
"Combining the book with the lectures, discussions, personal examples and practice time was a powerful combination for tackling difficult emotional issues."
"The most powerful aspect of the program was the personal stories the instructors relayed about their own relationship conflicts."
When is the next weekend?
TBA
Friday, 7pm-9pm
Saturday, 9am-5pm
Sunday, 9am-4pm
What is the cost?
The cost of the program is $790.