Schema therapy for couples with a narcissistic partner with Wendy Behary

Schema Therapy for Couples with a Narcissistic Partner with Wendy Behary

This workshop will offer a proposal for interventions and strategies to work with one of the most challenging issues in couple’s therapy: Narcissism. Wendy Behary, author of Disarming the Narcissist, is an expert when it comes to addressing the resistance and rigidity that often shows up in complex patterns of self-protection and aggression. She proposes a means for creating and enhancing leverage to avoid power struggles in the treatment of couples and in the treatment of individuals who are dealing with / living with a narcissist.

The workshop will provide therapists with some additional insights for helping clients dive deep into an understanding of the issues of narcissism—manifested in their partner’s emotional and behavioral patterns, with an appreciation for the coping modes that show up as bravado while masking inadequacy, intolerable shame, sadness and loneliness. Practitioners will learn to identify and model strategies for partners, such as: how to engage in active limit setting, empathic confrontation, and enforcing consequences with the narcissist. In this 3-hour, 3-session course, we will meet three consecutive weeks for 60 minutes each time.  

Included in this Curriculum:

• Origins of Narcissism and Treatment
• Assessing / Predicting Possibilities for Healing
• Affects of Narcissism on the Sexual Relationship
• Overcoming Challenges in the Treatment when faced with Narcissistic Anger and Bullying
• Strategies for Change / Healing Ruptures in the Relationship
• Identifying Therapy Relationship Challenges – Therapist’s Schema Activation

Learning Objectives:

• Participants will practice specific clinical strategies to apply with narcissistic anger and bullying
• Establishing a robust bypass system for personal (countertransference) triggers activated by the narcissist or the partner of the narcissist, i.e., therapist’s schemas: self-sacrifice (guilt/resentment), subjugation (anger), unrelenting standards (demandingness/fatigue)
• Utilizing empathic strategies and re-scripting to help couples create healthier forms of intimacy and sexual connection
• Identifying the complex “Mode Clashes” in the relationship (based on issues of narcissism) that manifest in the partners feeling devalued, rejected, abused, deprived, invisible…and more
• Helping partners of narcissists to overcome the “fear factor” that stunts growth and thwarts potentially otherwise-effective outcomes