A session by session guide book for mental health practitioners on how to conduct evidence-based couples counseling. The book guides the therapist step by step through twelve sessions, and covers everything from the very first client phone call all the way through termination.

Couples Therapy Workbook is a series of guided questions to promote meaningful couple conversations and build ongoing, connected communication. The core of this unique guide is 30 guided conversations of the most critical relationship struggles. For each of the 30 topics, there is an introduction, goal-setting strategies and 10 scripted questions to ask each other - all presented in an easy-to-use mindful style. Set in a weekly format over 30 days but can be tailored to any timeframe. Designed to be used to couples, and also by therapists working with couples (bonus clinician prep included with each conversation). Week 1- Who Are We? Falling in Love, Friendship, Caring, Acceptance, Empathy, Emotional Intimacy, Rituals Week 2 - Who Am I? Childhood, Family Origin, Temperament, Influences, Spirituality, Values, How I Think Week 3- How do we work? Communication, Conflict, Defensiveness, Intimacy, Trust, Fidelity and Boundaries, Parenting, Staying in Sync Week 4 - What do we want? Romance, Joy and Gratitude, respect, Apologies and Forgiveness, Challenges, Relationship Savings Account, Past, Present & Future, Keeping Connected Reviews: “What a unique resource! A treasure-trove of guided conversations to increase intimacy and friendship. Therapists often ask me for good homework assignments. This book does the thinking for you. Keep it on hand and whether its values, sex, conflict or other challenging issues, you'll have a ready-made way to help your clients make immediate progress.” -- Ellyn Bader, Ph.D, Founder/Director The Couples Institute "This is a valuable resource for anyone working with couples. Any couple can profit greatly if they are willing to take Kathleen Youngman's challenge to explore these important topics and discuss these wonderful questions." -- Milan and Kay Yerkovich, Authors of best-selling How We Love series “Instead of offering analysis, advice or theory, The Couples Therapy Workbook offers just that, a set of questions to stimulate conversations that help couples deepen their engagement with each other and reconnect. All couples will find this an exceptional guide, and all therapists will find it an effective instrument to supplement the therapeutic process. I highly recommend it and complement the author on her creativity and attention to the core details of a connected relationship.” --Harville Hendrix, Ph. D. and Helen LaKelly Hunt, Ph. D.; Authors of Making Marriage Simple and Getting the Love You Want.

How do you counsel a couple that is heading for divorce by the time they seek help? Building on the research presented in their previous book Family Therapies, Mark Yarhouse and James Sells have developed a resource to train pastors and counselors in restoring high conflict relationships.

Couples in Conflict describes the nature of the emotional processes leading to difficulties and how a minister/ counselor can be a resource to help couples in conflict. The minister/counselor will be able to help them improve their lives personally, as well as their relationship and family life. By extension, couples will also develop skills that will improve their work life and their life in community. The book provides practical and specific approaches to helping these couples and the issues that a minister must deal with in order to be useful to them.

Everett L. Worthington Jr. offers a comprehensive manual for assisting couples over common rough spots and through serious problems in a manner that is compassionate, effective and brief.

Marriages are in trouble today. That is clear. Effective mothods of combating this trend are less evident. Counselors, pastors and social workers need more than mere theories or mere moralizing. They need a practical and comprehensive model for understanding couples and their problems. They need a throughly Christian perspective that is biblical, compassionate and human. Everett Worthington provides this in an integrated, biblically based theory of marriage and marriage therapy with analysis at three levels: the individual, the couple and the family. The model he has constructed, with techniques drawn from the major psychological schools, is standard enough to guide counselors in actual interventions and powerful enough to produce change. A thoroughgoing overview of the assessment process includes practical, workable guidelines for: creating realistic, mutually-agreeable goals for counselor and clients; estimating the number of sessions needed to reach those goals; and planning the actual assessment, intervention and termination sessions. Next Worthington offers specific techniques for enhancing cooperative change, intimacy, communication, conflict resolution and forgiveness within the marriage. But keeping couples from slipping back into old patterns is one of the counselor's most difficult tasks. So Worthington concludes with suggestions for solidifying change and effectively concluding the counseling relationship. Here is a text that will be a standard for counselors, pastors and mental health professionals in the years to come.

Many pastors feel ill-equipped to handle the challenges that arise when a couple is going through marital difficulties. If you are or have been in this situation before, this book shows church leaders how to counsel married couples from both a logical and biblical perspective. Author and pastor Jonathan Holmes offers you a practical guide to get started with the first sessions and then offers specific guidance on nine of the most common topics that come up in marriage counseling. In Counsel for Couples, Holmes provides you with: a biblical methodology that navigates you through the world of marriage counseling based on God’s word a theological counseling approach addressing the deepest of marital issues advice from several respected voices in the biblical counseling community In each chapter, you'll meet a new couple dealing with a different issue, much like the people in your church, office, and neighborhood. Whether you're a novice or already knowledgeable, Counsel for Couples provides theologically sound and biblically practical tools to help you as you help couples in need.

When one partner in a relationship is unfaithful to the other, it takes a lot of work by both parties involved to salvage the relationship. In today’s therapy-friendly climate, marriage/couples counseling is often a part of that rebuilding process. Many couples seek out professional therapy after an affair is out in the open, but often the act of infidelity is revealed while uncovering and discussing unrelated issues for which the couple is in counseling. And yet, amazingly, as common as this complex and difficult topic arises in therapy, there is relatively little professional literature devoted to understanding and "treating" infidelity. In this volume, Paul Peluso has assembled a truly impressive list of contributors from a range of disciplines and backgrounds, including marital therapy, family therapy, evolutionary psychology, marriage research, and cyberstudies, with the aim of filling this void.

Couples counseling is distinct from individual and family therapy and, while ideas from these other formats may be overlapping, applying theoretical concepts to couples has distinctive challenges. Constructivist, Critical, and Integrative Approaches to Couples Counseling is unique in that it addresses how to conceptualize various theories around a single case. By discussing only one case, the reader is more readily able to compare and contrast the theoretical ideas of each theory, as well as the pragmatics of techniques. Five theories are discussed around four consistent parts: history, theory of problem formation, theory of problem resolution, and case transcript. This book follows the same format as its companion Behavioral, Humanistic-Existential, and Psychodynamic Approaches to Couples Counseling.

This eminently practical guide presents an empirically supported approach for treating people with substance abuse problems and their spouses or domestic partners. Behavioral couples therapy (BCT) explicitly focuses on both substance use and relationship issues, and is readily compatible with 12-step approaches. In a convenient large-size format, the book provides all the materials needed to introduce BCT; implement a recovery contract to support abstinence; work with clients to increase positive activities, improve communication, and reduce relapse risks; and deal with special treatment challenges. Appendices include a session-by-session treatment manual and 70 reproducible checklists, forms, and client education posters.