HOLD ME TIGHT – ONLINE COUPLES WORKSHOP
A workshop for couples seeking stronger relationships
A New Online Way for Couples Workshops
(only 30 seats available)
looking to enhance your relationship connection?
This retreat will help you strengthen your emotional connection with your partner.
You and your partner will become more empathic, accessible, responsive and engaged with each other.
You will better understand the science of attachment and love
Is the HOLD ME TIGHT RETREAT for you?
This Hold Me Tight retreat is designed to help couples at any stage of a relationship who wish to enhance their connection.
If you wish to establish a more secure emotional connection with your partner, yet find yourself at an impasse in certain key moments, this is the workshop for you.
People of all backgrounds, ages, faiths and sexual orientations can participate in this workshop.
Hold Me Tight is an educational program, developed by Sue Johnson, who developed the model of couple therapy: Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples. You will receive the book Hold Me Tight by Sue Johnson in advance of attending a workshop.
All sharing is between you and your spouse with fully trained therapists ready to support you as needed.
Build new patterns of trust, love and intimacy
The Hold Me Tight workshop is an experience for couples of bonding through a series of guided and safe conversations designed to help them build new patterns of trust, love and intimacy.
It is based around Seven Transforming Conversations that include:
Recognizing Demon Dialogues
In this first conversation, couples identify cycles that prevent them from hearing one another’s deepest desire for love and connection.
Finding the Raw Spots
Here, each partner learns to look beyond immediate, impulsive reactions, seeking to understand vulnerabilities and fears experienced by their lover.
Revisiting a Rocky Moment
This conversation provides a platform for de-escalating conflict and repairing rifts in a relationship and building emotional safety.
Hold Me Tight
The heart of the workshop experience: this conversation moves partners into being more accessible, emotionally responsive, and deeply engaged with each other.
Forgiving Injuries
Injuries may be forgiven but they never disappear. Instead, they need to become integrated into couples’ conversations as demonstrations of renewal and connection. Knowing how to find and offer forgiveness empowers couples to strengthen their bond.
Bonding Through Sex and Touch
Here, couples find how emotional connection creates great sex, and good sex creates deeper emotional connection.
Keeping Your Love Alive
This last conversation is built on the understanding that love is a continual process of losing and finding emotional connection; it asks couples to be deliberate and mindful about maintaining connection.
Henry Sawatzky
MA; RCC and Director
Phone: 250-878-6943
Email: henry.sawatzky@relationshipwellnesscentre.com
Your Relationship Therapist
Henry provides couples therapy in Kelowna and has been working with Marriages & Families since 1991. This includes 10 years as a foster parent, helping couples prepare for and enrich their family experience, and 25 years of private practice as a couples & family therapist. His wealth of experience and professionalism provide you and your family with the care and direction you need in order to achieve your relationship goals.
Henry is certified as a couples therapist by the Gottman Institute, and by the International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy. The knowledge embodied in these two empirically validated and proven methods of couples therapy provides Henry with the strategies needed to help you shape your relationship into a source of strength and safe harbour that your relationship and family needs in order to thrive.
While taken training in the Gottman Method of couples therapy and have become a Certified Gottman Therapist, Henry is completely independent in providing clinical services and fully responsible for those services. The Gottman Institute or its agents have no responsibility for the services you receive.
Therapy focuses on three significant change points
Couples most often enter therapy stuck in either a cycle of escalation that tears at their bonds of love, or emotionally distant and living unsatisfied and parallel lives. The first goal of therapy seeks to have them see and understand their cycle with the goal of being able to step out of it, thereby creating calm, and space for a sense of togetherness.
From there, therapy seeks to support an emotionally distant or unavailable partner in being present in the relationship. Learning to ask for what he or she needs and to provide meaningful love and support to their partner. Finally, a partner stuck in a cycle of criticism and reactive anger learns to talk about their fear and loneliness, inviting their partner to love and care for them.
The Virtual Workshop
While the virtual format can easily feel a bit like an unknown quantity, it also represents a number of significant advantages.
- You are able to participate in Hold Me Tight from the comfort of your own home.
- You will experience a much higher level of anonymity and confidentiality than what can be provided for you in a traditional setting.
- You will have private access to professional therapeutic support during each of your Hold Me Tight conversations.
What does this mean for you? What will you need in order to gain the maximum benefit from your online Hold Me Tight experience?
- A high speed and stable internet connection. Think about reducing other forms of bandwidth use like video streaming or large downloads. If using WIFI, make sure that your device is close enough to your router to maintain a consistent connection.
- Use a device with a large enough screen to be able to read text and see videos clearly. I recommend something no smaller than 13 inches.
- Choose an environment where you will be uninterrupted and you feel comfortable that your conversations will not be overheard.
- If you have children who require care and attention throughout the day, consider hiring childcare for them. You will need to give all your attention to the workshop and your partner in order to have the maximum benefit. If you are distracted by providing childcare, or wondering if your children need you, your Hold Me Tight experience will be limited.
Our experience tells us that when couples participate in on line therapy, or an on line Hold Me Tight, their benefit is very similar to participating in person.
Virtual Workshop FAQ
Is seeing a therapist on my screen as good as seeing them in person?
Is our online workshop secure?
How stable is our online workshop?
May 14 & 15, 2022
9am – 5pm
Online via ZOOM meeting
Reduce your conflict and increase your sense of connection.
Based on the book
Hold Me Tight:
Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love
By:
Dr. Sue Johnson www.holdmetight.com
- Curriculum Binder (.PDF file to print at home)
- GST
Cancellation Policy:
Fees are refundable until April 3, 2022 less a $50.00 administration fee.
Not refundable after April 3, 2022.
REGISTRATION CLOSED
If you’d like to be added to our waitlist and be informed of our next workshop, please fill in this waitlist form below.
We also offer Hold Me Tight in the context of a fully-guided and catered whitewater canoe trip down the Kootenay River in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, BC, Canada.