Traditional 50-minute sessions often limit the progress couples can make—particularly when emotional flooding, conflict cycles, and unfinished conversations stall momentum. Intensive couples therapy offers a longer, uninterrupted format that allows couples to fully engage in deep clinical work, practice regulation skills in real time, and leave with a clearer path forward.
In this training, Elizabeth Earnshaw, LMFT, CGT, will present a structured framework for conducting effective couples intensives. You’ll learn how to determine client fit, set up the logistical and ethical foundations, facilitate change-oriented interventions, and close intensives with a plan for ongoing support.
You will gain practical, applicable skills for:
Structuring an intensive: purpose, goals, clinical indications, and contraindications
Assessing fit: identifying when intensives are appropriate and when they are not
Pre-session preparation: informed consent, scheduling, payment, and consult calls
Day One protocols: joining with couples, conducting assessments, and presenting feedback
Day Two protocols: facilitating enactments, managing dysregulation, and pacing deep work
Ethical decision-making: knowing when to pause or discontinue an intensive
Closure and follow-up: planning, referrals, and clinical handoffs
Elizabeth will walk you through four detailed case studies that illustrate common presentations, intervention strategies, and outcomes:
Alex & Priya – Chronic low-grade conflict and existential drift
Marcus & Dani – Post-baby relational strain and resentment
Linda & Charles – Later-life relationship under stress
Jordan & Ray – Coupleship in recovery under threat
These examples will show how assessment, intervention selection, enactment facilitation, and regulation skills unfold across the two-day intensive format.
Couples Intensives: What They Are, Why They Work, Who They Help
Setting Up for Success: Training, Policies, Forms, and Communication
Intensive Day One: Joining, Information Gathering, Preparing and Providing Feedback
Intensive Day Two: Setting Up and Facilitating Enactments, Pacing Deep Work Across Multiple Hours, and Handling Dysregulation in Real Time
Elizabeth Earnshaw, LMFT, is a Marriage and Family Therapist, Clinical Fellow of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT), Certified Gottman Method Couples Therapist, Certified Clinical Trauma Professional, and AAMFT Approved Supervisor. She is the author of the best-selling relationship book I Want This to Work, The Couples Therapy Flip Chart, and Til’ Stressed Do Us Part. She is the owner of a national therapy practice that provides systemic therapy to individuals, couples, and families. Elizabeth has worked with hundreds of couples since becoming a couple’s therapist. She lives in West Chester, Pennsylvania, with her husband, children, and dog.
Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Elizabeth Earnshaw is the founder of Intensive Couples Therapy Institute and A Better Life Therapy, LLC. She receives royalties as a published author. Elizabeth Earnshaw receives a speaking honorarium, recording and book royalties from Psychotherapy Networker and PESI, Inc. She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Elizabeth Earnshaw is a fellow of AAMFT and a clinical member of Postpartum Support International.
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