The Deconstructing Relationships Series

THE DECONSTRUCTING RELATIONSHIPS SERIES

4 separate seminars that build on one another: 101, 201, 301, and 401

The Deconstructing Relationships seminars are taught live, online by Dr. Pressman utilizing Zoom. Each seminar is 3 hours, 15 minutes long and includes a Q&A with Dr. Pressman at the end. (Each seminar is worth 3 CE credits for qualifying mental health professionals).

Buy the 4 Seminar Bundle for just $297

DECONSTRUCTING RELATIONSHIPS 101:

Finding the Core Fear and Chief Defense in your Relationships

Have you ever felt like you’re just “passing time” with your partner? Perhaps you feel they are not meeting your needs, that you are bored with them, or that the relationship has grown a bit stale. Maybe your relationship has become subtly or openly abusive, but you feel trapped with no idea what to do about it.

There’s no question…relationships make the world go ‘round. They can be our greatest source of fulfillment in one moment, and our greatest source of suffering in the next. As the saying goes: “You can’t live with them and you can’t live without them!”.

Given the importance of relationships in our lives, we need new solutions, something beyond resigning to our “fate” or living with unending volatility.

The Deconstructing Relationships Series gives you these new solutions.

Based on Dr. Pressman’s award-winning “Deconstructing Anxiety” program, this new seminar series starts with the profound discovery that there is a single “core fear” at the root of any struggle we may have. When applied to relationships, we see that the core fear is responsible for projecting how we view our partner, where we get tangled up in false assumptions about them, etc.—and how we do this to ourselves as well.

We then react to the core fear with a “chief defense’, an automatic habit that is designed to get us the love (or fulfillment or success) that we seek with the other, but which always backfires! The chief defense is responsible for EVERY relationship struggle we have, even when we are certain the other person is “wrong”.

And this is good news because it means there is always a new option, a new doorway to walk through, that will bring healing, understanding, empathy and fulfillment between you. This is where relationships become the vehicle for extraordinary growth and the realization of our highest potential.

Come join us for this exciting new seminar series which offers real solutions for resolving problems and finding wholeness in your relationships. By exposing the core fear and chief defense responsible for the turmoil behind the scenes, you will discover everything you need to take back control and create a relationship that really works!

Schedule:

• Understanding the core fear and chief defense—30 minutes
• Exercise: Finding the core fear: Digging for Gold—45 minutes
• Exercise: Finding the chief defense: Who Are You Really?—15 minutes
• Exercise: Seeing the core fear and chief defense at work in our relationships—75 minutes
• Q and A—15 minutes

Worth 3 CE credits for qualifying mental health professionals.
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The Deconstructing Relationship Seminars are highly experiential! Come prepared for a deep exploration into how the core fear and chief defense play out in your relationships . . . and learn what to do about them!

NOTE: This seminar is appropriate for any kind of relationship, including parent-child relationships, peer relationships, work relationships, romantic relationships, dating relationships, our relationships with a group of people, relationships between friends, and even our relationship with ourselves or with a “higher” source.

DECONSTRUCTING RELATIONSHIPS 201:

The “Deconstructing Relationships” Communication Technique

(Pre-requisite: Deconstructing Relationships 101 or sufficient familiarity with the core fear and chief defense principles)

In part two of our Deconstructing Relationships Series, we build on the insight of how the core fear and chief defense have knocked our relationships off course.  We then begin the first exercise for resolving the problem…the Deconstructing Relationships Communication Technique.

This powerful new strategy gets at the heart of any relationship struggle by seeing how our core fear and that of our partner has been triggered, as well as how our mutual chief defenses have set the pattern for never-ending conflict, anxiety or hopelessness.  The Communication Technique then transforms defensiveness and attack into empathy and true compassion for each other’s pain.  You will see clearly that both of you have been struggling to be seen, heard and cared about.  By “doing the opposite” of the chief defense, you will bypass the responses that have continued the merry-go-round of attack and defense, freeing both of you to give and receive what you have been seeking for a lifetime!​

• Review of finding the core fear and chief defense; seeing them at work in our relationships—30 minutes
• Describing the Deconstructing Relationships Communication Technique—30 minutes
• Exercise: Practicing the Technique—90 minutes
• Q and A: 30 minutes

Worth 3 CE credits for qualifying mental health professionals.

The Deconstructing Relationship Seminars are highly experiential! Come prepared for a deep exploration into how the core fear and chief defense play out in your relationships . . . and learn what to do about them!

NOTE: This seminar is appropriate for any kind of relationship, including parent-child relationships, peer relationships, work relationships, romantic relationships, dating relationships, our relationships with a group of people, relationships between friends, and even our relationship with ourselves or with a “higher” source.  

DECONSTRUCTING RELATIONSHIPS 301:

PRACTICES FOR “DOING THE OPPOSITE” IN RELATIONSHIPS

(Pre-requisite: Deconstructing Relationships 101 or sufficient familiarity with the core fear and chief defense principles)

DECONSTRUCTING RELATIONSHIPS 301—PRACTICES FOR “DOING THE OPPOSITE” IN RELATIONSHIPS
(Pre-requisite: Deconstructing Relationships 101 or sufficient familiarity with the core fear and chief defense principles).

In part 3 of the Deconstructing Relationships series, we work with additional practices for “doing the opposite” of our chief defense in relationships.  Understanding that it is only the chief defense that creates problems in our interactions with others, we are motivated to do the opposite of it in 3 ways:

1) Going into and through the fear
2) Doing nothing in response to the fear
3) Doing something highly compelling and completely unrelated to the fear.

The exercises in this module are powerful, effective and even fun.  Discover for yourself that all of your painful responses to another (or others) are simply projections from the core fear, and that the core fear isn’t real.  This module is all about freeing yourself from the fear, guilt and shame that keep you bound up in your relationship, to experience the joy of being fully expressed with others!

• Review of finding the core fear and chief defense; seeing them at work in our relationships—30 minutes
• Exercise: Confessing/Professing and Positive
• Flooding—60 minutes
• Exercise: Reparenting—60 minutes
• Exercise: Eye gazing—15 minutes
• Q and A—15 minutes

​Worth 3 CE credits for qualifying mental health professionals.​

The Deconstructing Relationship Seminars are highly experiential! Come prepared for a deep exploration into how the core fear and chief defense play out in your relationships . . . and learn what to do about them!

NOTE: This seminar is appropriate for any kind of relationship, including parent-child relationships, peer relationships, work relationships, romantic relationships, dating relationships, our relationships with a group of people, relationships between friends, and even our relationship with ourselves or with a “higher” source.  

DECONSTRUCTING RELATIONSHIPS 401:

Advanced strategies

(Pre-requisite: Deconstructing Relationships 101 or sufficient familiarity with the core fear and chief defense principles)

Continuing the practice of “doing the opposite” of our chief defense in relationships, this final module in the Deconstructing Relationships Series presents advanced strategies for breaking through the barriers to expressing our authentic identity, and having it mirrored by the other(s) we are in relationship with.  There is no experience more fulfilling than that of being truly seen and accepted  by another for who you truly are, after having kept this deep self in hiding under so many layers of anxious defense.  The exercises in this module are powerful and will give you a dramatic sense of freedom from the inhibitions and anxieties that have held you back…in relationships, in career and in life!  This session includes the “Vision Questing” process, where you will design a path to actualizing your ideal relationship(s).

• Review of finding the core fear and chief defense; seeing them at work in our relationships—30 minutes
• Exercise: Mirror-work—30 minutes
• Exercise: “Roaring” At Your Fear—30 minutes
• The Warrior’s Stance for Relationships—30 minutes
• Exercise: Vision Questing for your Relationship-45 minutes
• Q and A: 15 minutes

Worth 3 CE credits for qualifying mental health professionals. ​

The Deconstructing Relationship Seminars are highly experiential! Come prepared for a deep exploration into how the core fear and chief defense play out in your relationships . . . and learn what to do about them

NOTE: This seminar is appropriate for any kind of relationship, including parent-child relationships, peer relationships, work relationships, romantic relationships, dating relationships, our relationships with a group of people, relationships between friends, and even our relationship with ourselves or with a “higher” source.  

With this special bundle, you’re welcome to attend each seminar and you’ll also get access to all the recordings, so you can participate even if you can’t make it live.