Continuing Education Workshop Description:

We’ve all learned that codependence is a bad word – but what if that is an oversimplification of an otherwise healthy continuum of emotional dependence?

In this continuing education workshop, we will define and understand dependence, codependence, and interdependence without fatalism or gaslighting. This training will provide an overview of human attachment and how both our drive for connection and our tolerance for it are established in our early years.

With compassion, we’ll explore the dynamics of overreliance and discuss what codependence actually is (and, equally important, what it is not). We’ll also acknowledge the gold standard of interdependence and how to assist clients in developing and repairing relationships to that end. Most relevantly, we will address treatment planning and provide practical tools to leverage therapeutic change for our clients struggling in relationships – with themselves and others.

This continuing education workshop is designed for practicing therapists with clients of all ages. The workshop will be conducted in a Zoom format, and teaching modalities will include a mix of clinical discussion, lecture with case examples and video illustrations, as well as individual exercises.

Continuing Education Workshop Objectives:

• Understand attachment patterns and clinical presentations of emotional dependency in friendships, intimate relationships, parenting, and family systems.
• Appreciate interpersonal dependency as a healthy relational system.
• Recognize common client histories and red flags that typify codependency.
• Confront the dynamics of overreliance - vulnerability, validation, and interpersonal control.
• Consider establishing healthy boundaries as a key strategy for maintaining identity and addressing unhealthy boundary profiles, including nonexistent, weak or poorly expressed, and rigid boundaries.
• Underline professional boundaries in our role as therapists with a clinical population that may be struggling in this area.
• Provide strategies for clients to navigate and repair inevitable relational ruptures as well as develop other skills that promote healthy interpersonal dependency.