FREE Live Training With Terry Real
The 5 Losing Strategies Your Clients Bring Into Every Relationship
🗓️ Tuesday, June 30, 2026 | 12:00–1:30pm ET
(Can’t attend live? Register to receive the replay via email.)
Terry Real has helped 100,000+ people learn the relational skills to build extraordinary relationships – with themselves and others.
Are You Missing The Most Important Moments in Your Sessions?
Have you ever sat with a client who seems deeply committed to the work – open, engaged, willing to openly share all that’s on their mind?
They might sound like a dream client until a few minutes in, when you realize their version of “honesty” is a detailed character assassination of the person they say they want to feel closer to.
Or perhaps it’s the client who can’t seem to let their partner finish a sentence, without jumping in to correct them: “Actually, it was Saturday, not Sunday,” or “No, what I meant was…”
It’s easy to dismiss these moments as bad habits, poor communication, or personality quirks and move on.
But what if we started seeing them as data?
Because being on the receiving end of relentless criticism doesn’t make us feel loved. Constantly correcting someone’s experience doesn’t make them feel understood.
Yet these are often the very behaviors people reach for when they want more connection, more closeness, and more reassurance from their partner.
And it’s painful for the person on the receiving end, but it isn’t random.
Underneath the criticism or the correction is an attempt to protect against something far more vulnerable: shame, rejection, abandonment, helplessness.
In Relational Life Therapy®, we call these Losing Strategies.
In this free live training, Terry Real will draw on his 40 years of clinical experience to teach you how to identify, name, and work with the 5 losing strategies.
When You Can See the Strategy, You Know Where the Work Needs To Go
The very behaviors our clients rely on to protect themselves are often the same behaviors that keep them from getting what they most want.
You’ll leave this training with practical tools to help you hold the mirror up for your clients so they can see what they’re doing to get in their own way – and what they can do instead to build the deeper connection they’re seeking.
(Can’t attend live? Register to receive the replay via email.)
What You’ll Learn in the FREE Training
Why some clients attack, criticize, and point out everything that’s wrong with their partner – and why the very strategy they’re hoping will create change is often pushing their partner further away.
What’s behind a client’s need to prove their version of events or win the argument – and how to help them move from being right to being relational.
The overt and covert ways clients try to control the people they love – and what they’re really trying to protect when they can’t stop managing, fixing, or policing others.
Why some clients feel they have the right to hurt their partner – and how to guide them toward expressing hurt in ways that invite repair, not score-keeping.
The reasons clients keep one foot out the door, disappear emotionally, or pull away the moment relationships become challenging – and how to bring them back into the relationship.
PLUS you’ll join 30 minutes of live Q&A with Terry to help you identify the losing strategies showing up in your sessions.
(Can’t attend live? Register to receive the replay via email.)
When I need advice, I call Terry Real.
His decades of clinical experience, research, and wisdom are invaluable to my patients, colleagues, and friends.”
— Esther Perel
Psychotherapist and bestselling author
Who Is This Free Training For?
This free training is for therapists, coaches, and mental health practitioners – whether you work with couples, individuals, or both.
This is for you if:
- You've let certain client behaviors slide – the "helpful" corrections, the guilt trips, the constant humor – because naming them felt risky. You'd like a framework that makes naming them productive instead.
- You've worked with clients who seem completely committed to connection while repeatedly engaging in behaviors that push the people they love away.
- You can spot criticism, defensiveness, withdrawal, or control in session, but you'd like a clearer understanding of what those behaviors are protecting and how to work with them effectively.
- You've watched clients repeat the same painful relational patterns across relationships and want a practical framework for helping them understand why.
- You've wondered how Terry Real can identify the heart of a relational dynamic so quickly – and would like a roadmap for recognizing those patterns in your own work.
(Can’t attend live? Register to receive the replay via email.)
Terry Real is an internationally-recognized family therapist, speaker, and New York Times bestselling author.
With more than 40 years of clinical practice, he has trained thousands of therapists and coaches worldwide in his Relational Life Therapy (RLT) model – the direct, progressive approach to transforming relationships.
Much of that work grew from a single observation: the patterns quietly running his clients’ relationships were the same ones showing up, unnamed, session after session. The 5 Losing Strategies are part of how RLT teaches practitioners to identify – and ultimately change – them.
How Training in Relational Life Therapy Has Helped Your Colleagues
“Practical tools that made intuitive sense in helping couples adopt healthier practices.”
I am thoroughly enjoying the Level 1 Training presently, particularly immersion in the 8 diagnostic lenses… so many of the practical tools that were present – 5 Losing Strategies, 5 Winning Strategies, CNI, Relationship Grid, the Feedback Wheel etc. – made intuitive sense in helping equip couples to pivot from dysfunction and adopt healthier practices….
What we [my wife and I] love about RLT is that it is a fusion of trauma informed care, healthy confrontation, and practical tool implementation. It is robust and in our opinion the most holistic approach we have encountered.”
Certified Life Coach Katy, TX
“Now I have a road map and I know how to begin to make sense of what’s going on in a relationship.”
When I think about how I used to approach my work with couples and how I approach my work now… I didn’t know what I was doing, but I didn’t know I didn’t know. Now, I have this clarity and knowledge about what it is that I can deliver to them that’s going to be helpful.”
Clinical Counselor, M.Ed., R.C.C. Kelowna, BC
“I feel great about the work I’m doing with couples.
Now, for most of my couples, their course of therapy is between six months to two years. Whereas before some couples I would be seeing for like up to five years and still not really feeling like the strong tangible results were there.”
Clinical Social Worker, LCSW-C, CST Baltimore, MD
Frequently Asked Questions
I can already name the 5 Losing Strategies – is this training for me?
Yes – if you’re familiar with Relational Life Therapy (RLT), you may already know what the five strategies are. But knowing how to spot them in the moment – particularly the more subtle presentations – is what bridges the gap between your theoretical knowledge and practical application. You’ll explore exactly what you’re looking for, how these strategies develop, and the winning strategies to guide clients toward instead.
Do I need to have done any training in Relational Life Therapy already?
No – this training serves as the perfect introduction to Relational Life Therapy and how to integrate it into your work, whether that’s with couples or individuals. Knowing how to spot and work with the 5 Losing Strategies is an invaluable skill you can apply to your work immediately, without any prior RLT training.
How do I access the free session?
Complete the registration form by clicking “register for free” and you’ll receive a confirmation email from us, which includes your Zoom link to join the training. We will also email you the link again 24 hours before the session and you’ll have the option to set up SMS reminders once you’ve registered.
What if I can’t attend live?
We’ll email you a link to the recording roughly two hours after the session so you can catch up.
Learn the 5 Losing Strategies Sabotaging Your Clients’ Relationships
– and How to Work With Each One
🗓️ Tuesday, June 30, 2026 | 12:00–1:30pm ET
(Can’t attend live? Register to receive the replay via email.)