RLT Decoded: An 8-Class 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.
Start anytime and learn at your own pace.
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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 eight-class 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.
In each class, Desirae Ysasi, RLT Director of Training, walks 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.
This course features one of Terry Real’s most moving cases and offers an extraordinary opportunity to observe and learn from his expertise. Desirae deconstructs each move and guides you through the moment-by-moment implementation of RLT, with teaching and recorded Q&A integrated throughout the eight classes.
“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 eight-class 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 navigating 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
Across eight recorded classes with Desirae Ysasi, Director of Training at RLI, you’ll watch Terry Real work a complete couples case from intake through closing and understand what he was doing at every step.
This is not a passive observation course. In the first seven classes, you’ll watch Terry’s therapy sessions, followed by Desirae Ysasi’s teaching and deconstruction of the theory, thinking, and decisions behind what you saw.
Questions and clinical observations from the original cohort are integrated throughout, helping you build a practical map you can bring into your own sessions.
In Class 8, the focus shifts from observation to integration through an extended Q&A and clinical discussion.
Class 1 – The Work Begins: From Presenting Problem to Root Cause
You’ll watch Terry conduct a recorded intake with a real couple and see exactly how he uses RLT’s diagnostic lenses to move past the presenting problem and 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
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
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 offers a rare opportunity for close clinical observation.
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
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
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
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
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
This final class brings together the questions and observations that emerged across the course. Through an extended Q&A and clinical discussion, Desirae helps you deepen your understanding and integrate the 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 recorded classes, including:
- Terry Real’s full arc of therapy with one couple
- Teaching, Q&A, and deconstruction of each session with Desirae Ysasi
A complete working model you can apply in your own sessions
Access to all eight recorded classes through your private learning platform
A learner transcript and audio-only version for each class
Questions Before You Enroll?
Review the Checkout Terms Before Enrolling
Please review the course details and the terms presented at checkout before enrolling. If you have questions, contact us at support@terryreal.com.
Join Today
RLT Decoded: Real Sessions, Real Decisions
Start Anytime
Whether you’re a seasoned RLT therapist or just starting to consider working with couples, this eight-class 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 access to all eight recorded classes through your private learning platform.
Choose your payment option:
Frequently Asked Questions
How is the course delivered?
RLT Decoded is an on-demand, eight-class course. Each class combines recorded clinical work with Terry Real, teaching and deconstruction from Desirae Ysasi, and integrated Q&A.
How is Terry Real featured in the course?
You’ll observe Terry Real working with one couple across the arc of therapy through recorded clinical footage. Desirae Ysasi then deconstructs the choices, timing, and RLT tools behind the work.
Can I learn at my own pace?
Yes. The course is available through your private learning platform so you can move through the eight classes at your own pace.
How long will I have access to the course material?
Your access period will be stated in the checkout terms before purchase. During that period, you can view the eight recorded classes, transcripts, audio versions, and included resources 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 Education credits included?
Continuing Education credits are not currently included with the evergreen self-study version. If that changes before launch, this page and the checkout terms will be updated.
Is this course included in RLT Certification?
Access through an RLT Certification enrollment depends on the terms of that program. If you are currently enrolled, check your program materials or email support@terryreal.com before purchasing separately.
Are alumni discounts available?
Current discounts, when available, are shown at checkout or communicated directly to eligible members. If you are an RLT Alumni member and are unsure, contact support@terryreal.com before purchasing.
What is the refund policy?
The refund and cancellation terms shown at checkout govern your purchase. Please review them before enrolling. For questions, contact support@terryreal.com.
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
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