From Ego to Eco: Shifting our Relationships from Power and Control to Collaboration and Love

Terry Real, LMFT, is an internationally recognized family therapist, speaker, and author. Terry founded the Relational Life Institute (RLI), which offers workshops to couples, individuals, and parents around the country, along with a professional training program for clinicians wanting to learn his RLT (Relational Life Therapy) methodology.  Like many, Terry experienced trauma as a child. His commitment to leading both individuals and couples into a more ecological and relational world stems from his desire to avoid repeating the patterns of trauma, sparing his children and helping them live a better life.   A family therapist and teacher for more than 30 years, Terry is the best-selling author of I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression, the straight-talking How Can I Get Through to You? Reconnecting Men and Women, and most recently The New Rules of Marriage: What You Need to Make Love Work. Terry knows how to lead couples on a step-by-step journey to greater intimacy-and greater personal fulfillment.

We have all felt it, it’s part of human nature. Nevertheless, reactivity eats intimacy. Partners in close relationships universally trigger one another, which means they behave in ways that are similar enough to a traumatic past that the wound or the adaptation to the wound comes to the surface, fueling immature, repetitive, dysfunctional interactions. Research shows that the reactive state is literally a different neurocircuitry in our brains, bodies, and nervous systems. In a dysregulated state of fight or flight, clients endlessly repeat automatic responses that evoke reciprocal responses from their partner: a vicious cycle. 

Learn about the two parts of our brain and our personalities, and how we can guide our clients into taking the first step toward making the automatic thoughtful and deliberate. 

It is only the higher functions of the brain that have an appreciation of the whole, the relationship, the big picture. Recent research teaches us that we are not freestanding individuals, but rather co-regulating nervous systems and that the core delusions of individualism and of patriarchy-that we are apart from nature and dominate it-create havoc in our lives, in our relationships, and in our own psyches. The nature one tries to control can be one’s partner, one’s child, one’s own body, one’s own thoughts. Us-Consciousness gets lost when we are triggered and we see ourselves as adversaries in a zero-sum game. 

In the individualistic world of patriarchy, you can be connected or you can be powerful, but you can’t be both at the same time. Since power is defined as dominance, it breaks the thread of connection. Traditionally, power has been a male domain, connection and affiliation a woman’s domain. 

Too often, when women (and male partners in a disempowered position) “find their voices,” they shift from over-accommodation to relationally immature assertion. Soft power teaches men, women, and non-binary people, how to be healthfully assertive and cherishing of their partner and their relationship at the same time. It is the difference between saying, “I need more sex,”‘ and “We both deserve a better sex life,” the difference between two competing individuals and a cooperating team. Soft power relies on a combination of appreciation, respect, and request. Learn how to teach each partner to start with what their partner is doing right, then build on it. 

There are three phases of getting more of what you want in a relationship. 

Phase One: Daring to Rock the Boat. This is a phase of loving confrontation and wise assertion. 

Phase Two: Helping Them Win. Our clients are not the expert on relationships, but they are the expert on what they want and what would please them. We must show them how to trade in complaining about what their partner does wrong for teaching them what right would look like. 

Phase Three: Making it Worth Their While. Teach your clients to celebrate the glass “15% full,” how to receive and appreciate progress and build on it. 

Of course, no matter how skillful your clients are, there are moments when they are in their Wise Adult and their partner is not. We must teach clients the skill of “Relational Integrity;” how to stay seated in the Mature Adult even when your partner isn’t.

Most of the couples we see are, to some degree or another, missing a functioning repair process. Couples often have a model of repair, derived mostly from psychotherapy, that goes like this: I share my feelings about you, you share your feelings about me, you move into accountability and apologize to me, and we get over it. With the best of intentions, this mostly leads to a power struggle and a blame game.

All live sessions with Terry are at 9am PDT/10am MDT/11am CDT/12pm EDT/5pm BST and are 60 minutes.

• Describe the ‘Wise Adult’ part of our psyches and its neurobiology
• Describe the ‘Adaptive Child’ and ‘Wounded Child’ parts of our psyches and their neurobiology
• Indicate to clients how to recognize their own reactive states

• Explain the culture of individualism and how remembering the whole changes everything

• Discuss with clients 1 or more strategies on moving from power and control to collaboration
• Recommend to couples 1 or more techniques for Relational Joy

• Recite to your clients the five losing strategies: an Adaptive Child agenda that will never get you what you want
• Explain to your clients 1 or more strategies on how to emphasize the positive while being assertive
• Express to your clients 1 or more strategies on how to ask, “How can I help you come through for me?”

• Discuss with couples 1 or more techniques for distinguishing between aggression and assertion, between individual and relational empowerment
• Demonstrate 1 or more strategies to help the listening partner shift out of defensiveness and argument into yielding, compassion, and flexibility
• Conduct 1 or more strategies to help the dissatisfied partner let go of self-protective skepticism and grudges from the past, allowing for an open mind and receptivity to progress
• Demonstrate 1 or more strategies to help both partners shift from a negative focus to a forward-looking, team-building future focus and teach them how to “let go of the outcome”

• Name 1 or more strategies to help couples to complain constructively, staying on their side of the street, speaking with humility, and always including a request for resolution
• Express 1 or more strategies to help couples how to really listen to each other instead of rebutting one another, either verbally or in their thoughts, and how to disengage from the twin orientations of “objective reality” and their own concerns
• Recite to couples how relationships heal us as we learn to deal with our own triggering instead of inflicting it on our partners

If you for some reason are not satisfied with the course, you have 14 days from the first live call (July 15th) to request a cancellation and a refund. Please refer to the policy section for details on how to cancel.

If you purchased CEs prior to August 3rd, 2021, we will cover the additional cost of CEs when approved by our new sponsor.

Disability Access – If you require ADA accommodations please contact our office 30 days or more before the event. We cannot ensure accommodations without adequate prior notification.

Please Note: Licensing Boards change regulations often and while we attempt to stay abreast of their most recent changes, if you have questions or concerns about this course meeting your specific board’s approval, we recommend you contact your board directly to obtain a ruling.