RLT Decoded: 8-Week Clinical Training For Therapists & Coaches
A Real Couple. The Complete Arc of Therapy. Every Clinical Decision Broken Down.
Follow one couple across the full arc of therapy with Terry Real, then break down every move, choice, and pivot with Desirae Ysasi so you leave with a clear, practical way to intervene in high stakes moments.
🗓️ Starts Tuesday, May 19
100% Money-Back Guarantee
16 Continuing Ed Credit Hours Available
when you attend all 8 x 2-hour classes LIVE and in full.
ACEP No. 7495
RLT is different, getting to the root of what’s driving couples apart from the very first session.
Developed by leading couples therapist and New York Times bestselling author Terry Real, RLT is grounded in his 40 years of clinical experience working with couples on the brink of divorce.
For Those Moments When You Think:
“What Do I Do Next?”
There’s a difference between understanding a model and knowing how to use it when a couple is sitting in front of you.
You can know the theory, understand the stances, recognize the patterns. But when you’re sitting in high stakes, emotionally-charged moments with your clients, it’s not easy to translate all that theory into one solid move to make right now.
Which partner do you stay with right now? Is this the moment to go deeper, or would that be too soon? One of them just made a joke – is that relief or deflection? Should you call it out or move on?
It’s not a knowledge gap. You know the theory. It’s the translation gap – the distance between understanding how the model works and confidently knowing exactly what to do in a charged, unpredictable moment with a real couple in front of you.
Know Exactly How To Intervene, When, and Why
with RLT Decoded: Real Sessions, Real Decisions
In this new 8-week course, you’ll watch Terry Real’s work with one couple across the full arc of therapy – including the moments where the work could go in multiple directions, and the choice he makes in real time.
Each week, Desirae Ysasi (RLT Director of Training) will walk you through exactly what he did, why he did it, and what he was tracking that led him there.
So instead of trying to interpret the work on your own, you leave with a clear map of how to make those same decisions in your own sessions.
Each class is structured around three connected layers of learning:
1
Watch
Real Transformation
Watch Terry Real’s full arc of therapy with one couple – not a role play or highlights reel, but the real session as it happened.
2
Decode
How It Happened
Desirae breaks down what you just saw – the clinical choices, the timing, and what Terry was tracking in the moment.
3
Apply
It To Your Own Work
Leave with a working map you can use in your own sessions – what to listen for, and how and when to intervene.
Please note: Terry Real will not join live, however, this is one of his most moving cases yet and an extraordinary opportunity to observe and learn from his expertise. With Desirae deconstructing each move with you and taking your questions across the 8 weeks, you’ll go deeper into the moment-by-moment implementation of RLT.
“Not JUST MORE THEORY but you learn INTERVENTIONS!
Terry’s work is SO IMPORTANT if not imperative and should never be missed if you also want to do couple’s therapy.”
— Dr. Fallynn C. Cox
The Couple You’ll Follow Through the Full Arc of RLT
From Aching Distance to Fierce Intimacy
Two men in a committed relationship. One has been pushing for more – more closeness, more connection, more of the man he loves. The other has been doing his best to respond. But something between them stays closed – like an invisible block – no matter what they try.
They came to a two-day intensive with Terry Real with over a hundred therapists watching. Their presenting complaint was a lack of physical intimacy. Minutes into the first session, it becomes clear that something far deeper lies behind it.
Neither partner outwardly looks like someone carrying significant wounds. One is articulate, high-achieving, and almost professionally composed – the kind of man who has handled every hard thing in his life with competence and forward motion. The other is warm, perceptive, and attuned to what a room needs – skills he learned early, for reasons that become clear as the work evolves.
Between them is something every couples therapist or coach will recognize: two people who genuinely love each other and cannot fully reach each other. They want intimacy. But they don’t yet know what that even is let alone how to work through what’s standing in the way.
Over your 8 classes, you will see their deeply moving journey unfold – every fresh insight and breakthrough moment – as Terry Real guides them on the powerful path to opening their hearts to each other – and themselves.
What You’ll Learn
As you move through this 8-week course, you’ll have a new set of tools after each class that you can immediately bring into your client work. You’ll develop greater skill and confidence in how to navigate the complexities of couples therapy so you can effectively work with even the most challenging dynamics.
Here’s just some of the skills you’ll come away with:
Help Highly-Defended Clients Reconnect to Their Feelings
Work with intellectualizing and emotionally shut-down clients – including how to identify and dismantle their defenses, bring them back into their body, and reconnect them to the relationship.
Coach Clients to Embrace Healthy Conflict & Ask for What They Want
Learn how to help clients move from insight to behavioral change – including the relationship skills for expressing needs, negotiating, and learning to handle conflict without shutting down.
Use Your Own Humanity to Build Trust
Learn how and when to judiciously self-disclose to move the work forward – using your own experience to build connection without derailing the session.
Uncover the Wounds Beneath Presenting Problems
Move from surface-level conflict to the childhood patterns driving it – using precise questions and diagnostic lenses to get to the heart of what’s really going on.
Conduct Inner Child Work in the Presence of the Other Partner
Set up and guide relational trauma healing with one partner while the other witnesses. You’ll understand when to use deep experiential vs non-experiential approaches.
Work With Two Love Avoidants in the Same Relationship
Identify the two types of love avoidance, understand how partners with very different histories can both be wired for distance, and the cure to bring them back to connection.
Navigate Race, Culture, and Identity with Skill & Sensitivity
Bring race, cultural context, and sexual identity into the work – and understand the clinical distinction between minority stress adaptation and Adaptive Child patterning.
Create Momentum Through Intensive Work
Understand how to structure and use an intensive format to accelerate progress – and create the conditions for deeper, uninterrupted work.
Your Curriculum
Over 8 live classes with Desirae Ysasi, Director of Training at RLI, you’ll watch Terry Real work a complete couples case from intake through to closing – and understand exactly what he was doing at every step.
This is not a passive observation course. For 7 weeks, your classes will begin with watching Terry’s therapy sessions (roughly 50 mins to 1 hour).
Immediately after, you will join live teaching and Q&A with Desirae Ysasi to deconstruct the theory, thinking, and decisions behind what you saw – so you leave with a working map you can bring into your own sessions straight away.
On week 8, you’ll move from observation to integration – as you bring everything you’ve learned together through open Q&A.
Class 1 – The Work Begins: From Presenting Problem to Root Cause
🗓️Tuesday, May 19 | 1–3pm ET
🗓️Tuesday, May 19 | 1–3pm ET
You’ll watch Terry conduct a live intake with a real couple – and see exactly how he uses RLT’s diagnostic lenses to move past the presenting problem to discover the deeper wound underneath it.
You’ll learn:
- How to create a contract with your couples for the work ahead.
- Precise questions and threads to follow to uncover the underlying dynamic behind a couple’s presenting problem.
- How to move beyond present-day issues into the childhood wounds that drive them.
- Loving confrontation and gathering leverage to engage clients in the work.
Class 2 – Building Hope For Change: Uncovering The Story Behind The Wall
🗓️Tuesday, May 26 | 1–3pm ET
🗓️Tuesday, May 26 | 1–3pm ET
As the work deepens, you’ll watch Terry begin to map the history behind one partner’s defenses. See how he clearly links the presenting problem our couple came in with to the root cause in his childhood trauma.
You’ll learn:
- Questions that reveal the family history and roles clients carried into present-day relationships.
- How to identify blatant and latent power imbalances in couples.
- How to help intellectualizing clients move out of their head and into their body.
Class 3 – Inner Child Work: Guilt, Forgiveness, and Finally Feeling
🗓️Tuesday, June 2 | 1–3pm ET
🗓️Tuesday, June 2 | 1–3pm ET
You’ll watch Terry set up and guide inner child work with one partner while the other is present in the room. The clinical decisions made in the moments leading up to this work are as instructive as the work itself – and what happens in the room is something most therapists have never seen live.
You’ll learn:
- Practical strategies to help shut-down clients reconnect to their feelings and empathy.
- How to set up and conduct inner child work with one partner in the presence of the other.
- How to guide clients to reconnect with their Adaptive Child – helping them find the right words, show compassion, and set limits on their behavior.
Class 4 – Welcome to Planet Earth: Integration and Aftershocks
🗓️Tuesday, June 9 | 1–3pm ET
🗓️Tuesday, June 9 | 1–3pm ET
Breakthroughs don’t end when the experiential work does. In this class, you’ll watch what happens next – and why the integration phase is as important as what came before it. Terry models how to hold a client who is navigating new feelings that feel unfamiliar.
You’ll learn:
- How to have the “aftershock” conversation with a disoriented client after inner child work.
- Practical exercises and homework you can give clients to build on the progress made in session.
- How to build connection between partners as understanding and empathy grow around where anti-relational behaviors come from.
Class 5 – Enmeshment, Absence, and the Invisible Wound
🗓️ Tuesday, June 16 | 1–3pm ET
🗓️ Tuesday, June 16 | 1–3pm ET
In every couple, there’s a partner who presents as the more functional one. This class is about what happens when you look closer. Watch Terry de-triangulate the couple and turn his full attention to the partner who, until now, has seemed “fine” – and see what starts to surface.
You’ll learn:
- How to “de-triangulate” your couples and look at each partner’s adaptive behaviors separately.
- The two types of love avoidant – and how to work with two avoidant partners.
- The impact of “psychological incest” and working with the wounds of false empowerment.
Class 6 – In The Pit Together: Working With Two Love Avoidants
🗓️ Tuesday, June 23 | 1–3pm ET
🗓️ Tuesday, June 23 | 1–3pm ET
Watch as Terry draws the threads of both partners’ histories together – and names the shared structure underneath two very different presentations. This is the session where the couple begins to see each other, and themselves, differently.
You’ll learn:
- How to connect each partner’s childhood patterns directly to their behavior in their present relationship.
- How multigenerational transmission of shame influences how clients show up in relationships.
- How to call out and work with clients’ defending and minimizing behaviors as they arise in session.
Class 7 – Negotiation, Assertion, and the Cure For Love Avoidance
🗓️ Tuesday, June 30 | 1–3pm ET
🗓️ Tuesday, June 30 | 1–3pm ET
The final therapy session moves from excavation into practice. You’ll watch Terry bring race, culture, and relational skills into the room as the couple begins learning relational skills – asking for what they want and staying open after their hard work to reconnect.
You’ll learn:
- How to respectfully explore race, culture, and identity with clients.
- How to help conflict-avoidant couples move into fierce intimacy, lovingly taking each other on.
- How to guide couples through final exchanges as they face each other and speak from the heart.
Class 8 – Integrating The Work: Your Questions Answered
🗓️ Tuesday, July 7 | 1–3pm ET
🗓️ Tuesday, July 7 | 1–3pm ET
This final class is your chance to deepen your understanding of all that you’ve seen over the past 7 weeks. In this full 2-hour Q&A, you’ll get the chance to ask questions that have come up from you and learn from your peers’ observations and queries. You’ll come away with sharper understanding as you integrate this work into your own sessions.
You’ll learn:
- How to think through your own clinical decision-making.
- Where you’re still hesitating or unsure – and how to move forward with clarity.
- The nuances behind key interventions – including when not to use them.
Meet Your Teachers
Terry Real,
Creator of Relational Life Therapy (RLT)
Terry Real, LICSW, is a renowned family therapist and New York Times bestselling author. Known for his direct, compassionate, and no-nonsense approach, he has spent more than 40 years helping couples, individuals, and families move into deeper, more meaningful connection.
His work has been featured in Psychotherapy Networker, Psychology Today, The New York Times, and CNN, and is widely regarded as one of the most influential approaches to modern couples therapy.
In this course, you’ll observe his work across the full arc of therapy with one couple — including the uncertainty, the judgment calls, and the moments where something finally shifts.
But more importantly, you’ll begin to understand how those decisions are made – and how they can be applied in your own work.
“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
Desirae Ysasi,
Relational Life Institute Director of Training
Desirae Ysasi, LPC-S, is a relationship therapist based in San Antonio, Texas, and the founder of Relational Life Texas, a group practice specializing in RLT.
A Certified RLT Therapist trained directly by Terry Real, she brings 20 years of experience helping clients create more intimate, connected relationships. Desirae also serves as Director of Training and Certification at the Relational Life Institute, where she trains therapists and coaches worldwide in the RLT model. She is passionate about helping clinicians integrate courage, authenticity, and wholehearted intervention into their work with couples.
In this course, she’ll teach you how to translate what you see into your own work.
"Training with Desirae constantly leaves me with a sensation of clarity and direction. Her active and engaged style of instructing has assisted me in discovering my personal growth edges and meeting those with compassion.”
— Jessica Johnson
What Your Peers Say About Training With Terry & Desirae
What You’ll Get Inside RLT Decoded
8 weekly 2-hour classes including:
- Terry Real’s full arc of therapy with one couple
- Live Q&A & deconstruction of each session with Desirae Ysasi
A complete working model you can apply in your own sessions
Lifetime access to all class recordings via your private learning platform
15 NBCC-approved Continuing Ed credits (when you attend live and in full)
Try The First Class Risk-Free
You’re Protected by a 100% Money-Back Guarantee
We’re confident you’ll enjoy RLT Decoded but if for any reason you wish to withdraw from the course, you are entitled to a full refund within 48 hours of the first live call. Please contact us at support@terryreal.com by Thursday, May 21, 2026 and we will issue you with a 100% refund, no questions asked.
Join Today
RLT Decoded: Real Sessions, Real Decisions
Starts Tuesday, May 19
Whether you’re a seasoned RLT therapist or just starting to consider working with couples, this 8-week course will help you build a solid understanding of how to navigate the complexities of this work with confidence and practical tools and strategies.
Includes lifetime access to all class recordings.
Choose your payment option:
Frequently Asked Questions
When are the live calls?
The live calls are for two hours every Tuesday, 1–3pm ET on the following dates:
May 19
May 26
June 2
June 9
June 16
June 23
June 30
July 7
Is Terry Real joining live?
The couples therapy sessions are recorded and Terry will not join live, however, this is one of his most moving cases yet and an extraordinary opportunity to observe and learn from his expertise. With Desirae deconstructing each move with you and taking your questions across the 8 weeks, you’ll go deep into the moment-by-moment implementation of RLT..
What if I can’t make all of the live call dates?
While we encourage you to join live as often as you can, we appreciate that’s not always possible. All live classes will be recorded and stored in your private learning platform for you to watch at your convenience.
How long will I have access to the course material?
Forever! All materials will be recorded and stored in your private learning platform.
Do I need any previous training in Relational Life Therapy to join?
No – while it may be beneficial to already know some RLT theory, seeing the work in action and then breaking down the techniques is a great way to begin to understand how it all comes together. Seeing the work in action is one of the most effective ways to decide if this approach is right for you!
Are Continuing Ed credits available?
Yes – 15 Continuing Ed credit hours are available for an additional $40 when you attend all 8 two-hour classes live and in their entirety. We will send you details on how to purchase your Continuing Ed certificate after the final live class.
Relational Life Institute (RLI) has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7495. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Relational Life Institute (RLI) is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs. Learn more.
Is this course included in the RLT Certification?
Yes – if you are enrolled in the Certification, this course is included at no extra cost. Please check your inbox for an email from the Relational Life Institute on how to register for the live classes.
Is there a discount for RLT Alumni Members?
Yes – if you are part of the official RLT alumni membership, you are entitled to 30% off this course. Please check your inbox for an email from us with your discount code. If you’re a certified RLT practitioner and would like to join the Alumni, learn more here.
What’s your refund policy?
We’re confident you’ll enjoy Effective Couples Therapy Decoded, but if for any reason you wish to withdraw from the course, you are entitled to a full refund within 48 hours of the first live call. Please contact us at support@terryreal.com by Thursday, May 21, 2026 and we will issue you with a 100% refund, no questions asked.
I still have questions, who do I speak to?
Please email us at support@terryreal.com for any further questions.
See the Full Arc of Couples Therapy in Action, Learn Exactly How Each Clinical Decision Is Made, and Leave Knowing What To Do Next In Your Own Sessions
🗓️ Starts Tuesday, May 19
100% Money-Back Guarantee