The holiday season brings families and friends together, and we are reminded of what matters most in life—our relationships.
Holiday music, plays and traditions celebrate the joys of love and connection. Both Christmas and Hanukkah celebrate the power of love to deliver people from darkness, bondage and suffering, and bring them into a life of light, peace and joy. It is in our connections with others that we are most powerful and experience the greatest joy.
The Arizona Relationship Institute was created with the goal of facilitating people’s resilience through healing relationships. We focus on transforming people’s lives by helping them exit those patterns contributing to frustration and suffering, and shifting into those new patterns maximizing their fulfillment and joy.
In addition to the counseling and integrated services, we now are offering Sue Johnson’s relationship workshop entitled Hold Me Tight. This workshop is based on Dr. Johnson’s book by the same title, and the principles of the model of therapy she developed—Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). All counseling provided at The Arizona Relationship Institute is based on this model of therapy.
To create greater access to these transformative principles and practices, we are providing this workshop as a resource for couples not needing therapy, but wanting to improve or strengthen their relationship. Couples who also are participating in therapy will see positive results more quickly, and shorten the time they need to spend in therapy.
We all are born with the innate need for love and the innate capacity to love. However, these innate needs and abilities are shaped (for better or worse) by our experiences in our relationships. Our experiences shape our perceptions of ourselves and of others, as well as our beliefs about what helps and what hurts our ability to create and sustain connections with others.
All of us have distorted perceptions of ourselves and others to varying degrees. We often misread and misunderstand what our partner is really wanting and needing, as well as what we are really wanting and needing.
The strategies we use will only be as effective in meeting a need to the extent that those strategies are based on an accurate assessment of that need. This is why partners who are struggling to get out of negative patterns are often unable to do so. The very things they are doing to solve the problem are actually creating or perpetuating the problem they are trying to solve. Their interaction becomes analogous to a Chinese finger trap—the more they try to get out, the more stuck they become.
The Hold Me Tight workshop is designed to assist couples in learning to exit whatever traps or blocks are preventing them from creating the relationship they desire. The format includes a combination of instruction from Dr. Gold designed to assist participants in expanding their ability to see themselves and each other with more clarity and compassion, and discussion between partners regarding how to effectively apply those principles to their relationship.
There is group discussion, but only on a voluntary basis. Your privacy and comfort level will be respected. The emphasis is on assisting partners with applying the concepts to their specific relationship dynamics. EFT therapists will be available if participants would like their assistance with processing how to apply these principles to their own lives.
Come join us in an experience that promises to entertain you as it opens your mind to the possibilities of how great your relationship can be. If you are interested in attending, please contact The Arizona Relationship Institute. Call (480) 788-5069, or visit the website at azri.org. You also can send an email to ContactUs@azri.org.
*Singles are welcome, too. Feel free to bring a close friend to participate with you.