Introduction to RLT is a separate one-day training, ticketed independently of the conference.
Outside Creation Room
Desirae Ysasi·Creation Room
Opera Foyer
Grand Opera
Terry Real·Grand Opera
Three Concurrent Sessions
Damian White
What if RLT is not only a set of interventions, but a theory of what it means to be human in relationship? In this workshop, participants will learn to name the existential fears beneath common RLT patterns, translate core concepts into an existential formulation, and use a repeatable session flow that brings freedom, responsibility, meaning, and repair into the room.
Deran Young
This workshop reframes parenting as a relational and communal practice rather than an isolated individual task. Participants will examine how cultural pressure, gender roles, burnout, and over-functioning shape caregiving, while exploring RLT-informed ways to offer children both emotional grounding and space for autonomy.
Anna Sterk
How can the Relationship Grid become more than a concept and turn into a living clinical map? Participants will learn how the grid functions across all three phases of RLT: as a tool for assessment and reconnection, a pathway into Relational Mindfulness, and a reference point for consolidating new skills. The living grid experiential helps practitioners feel each quadrant from the inside and translate that awareness into clearer clinical choices.
Four Concurrent Sessions
Lori Davis
Participants will learn to recognize sexual grandiosity in both initiating and declining partners, including how shame, cultural scripts, and therapist discomfort obscure the pattern. The workshop offers RLT-informed language, reframes, and stance work for addressing entitlement, contempt, and other-based self-esteem while maintaining compassion.
Zach Brittle
This workshop frames relational recovery as an ongoing practice rather than a fixed outcome. Participants will explore how shame and performance pressure interfere with change, and learn a practice-based approach that emphasizes return, repair, direction, and lived relational movement over perfection.
Priscilla Short
This workshop introduces the TIMBBBBER framework as a way to map emotional reactivity and support reflective awareness within RLT. Using clinical video and worksheet practice, participants will identify trauma-driven processes beneath couple reactivity and apply the framework to help clients move toward relationality.
Cathy Hill
This workshop connects therapist use of self with research, RLT stance, and the clinical balance of stress and safety. Participants will identify overlapping research concepts, examine key RLT therapeutic stances, and consider how culture shapes what feels stressful or safe in relationship therapy.
Frank Anderson·Grand Opera
Grand Opera
Grand Salon
Opera Foyer
Grand Opera
Dr Kenneth Hardy·Grand Opera
Four Concurrent Sessions
Solange Dufourq
This workshop helps practitioners spot moments when nervous system activation blocks Wise Adult functioning in couples work. Participants will learn a simple Trauma Tapping Technique protocol and explore how to integrate it ethically alongside core RLT tools such as Time Outs, repair, boundaries, and the Feedback Wheel.
Dr Kenneth Hardy
This workshop examines the anatomy of racial trauma and the hidden wounds caused by ongoing oppression. Participants will consider why standard trauma-informed care often falls short, learn race-informed strategies for treatment, and reflect on self-of-the-therapist factors that shape clinical understanding and intervention.
Dolma Beresford
Participants will assess desire discrepancy through a psychosexual and biopsychosocial lens, including when medical referral may be needed. The workshop applies models of arousal, spontaneous and responsive desire, and brakes and accelerators to reduce shame and help couples move toward shared responsibility and intimacy.
Jane Bliss Birk
What changes when RLT becomes a leadership language, not only a clinical model? This workshop shows participants how to bring relational competence into coaching, teams, and organizational development. Participants will practice translating RLT concepts into clear workplace frameworks and learn how to adapt the model when the system is a team, leader, or organization rather than a couple or family.
Panel Discussion
Grand Opera
Julie RudigerModerator
Ya’Ron Brown
Justin Real
Julio Dantas
Martin Lehmann-WaldauMartha Kauppi·Grand Opera
Grand Opera
Opera Foyer
Opera Foyer
Grand Opera
Jim Gilligan·Grand Opera
Four Concurrent Sessions
Kate Harris
This experiential workshop explores detachment from outcome as both a therapeutic stance and a spiritual practice. Participants will consider why detachment supports presence and flexibility, then try relational mindfulness tools drawn from RLT, meditation, prayer, poetry, metaphor, and contemplative traditions.
Ya’Ron Brown & Stacee Brown
Participants will examine the therapist's role as a powerful third in couples work. The workshop distinguishes alignment from triangulation, explores how to use authority intentionally, tracks cultural impact without abandoning accountability, and practices repair when therapist-created rupture occurs.
Rilla Clark & Clare Mézes
Through floor mapping and psychodrama sculpts, participants will explore Adaptive Child coping mechanisms, Latent and Blatant roles, and stance-stance-dance sequences. The workshop offers an embodied way to pause, reset, and practice moving from protective patterns into the healthy Wise Adult.
Shelly Macdonald
Participants will evaluate parenting styles through an RLT lens and learn how the Influential or Center of Health style supports children's long-term emotional, relational, and behavioral health. The workshop offers Wise Adult self-regulation, behavior reframes, and concrete skills that increase connection, cooperation, confidence, and interrupt inherited cycles of hurt.
Terry Real & Carol Gilligan·Grand Opera
Workshop places are allocated in advance. Your confirmed sessions were sent to you by email. If anything here looks wrong, come to the registration desk in the Opera Foyer or write to support@terryreal.com.
Travel, hotel and registration details are on the conference page. Times and rooms may change. Last updated 15 September 2026.