Advanced Training in Couples and Relationship Therapy
Specializing in Infidelity, Communication, and Emotional Conflict Resolution for Relationship Therapists
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Why Choose PORT Institute for Couples Therapy Training?
The PORT Institute is designed for therapists seeking specialized, advanced training in couples therapy. PORT offers a unique approach focused on emotional presence, helping therapists address complex issues like infidelity, communication breakdowns, and emotional conflict.
With PORT, you’ll gain practical tools for engaging both partners, fostering emotional regulation, and rebuilding trust within relationships.
Whether you're an experienced therapist looking for professional development or exploring specialization in couples therapy, PORT provides progressive strategies to expand your skill set and deliver effective results
Introduction to Presence Oriented Relationship Therapy
Learn PORT In 3 Easy Steps
The PORT Institute is offering a year-long intensive, or go step by step. Learn more here.
PORT Level 1
Complete foundational 20 hour training, followed by a post-assessment.
PORT Level 2
Professionals advance to in vivo application of PORT skills.
PORT Level 2 is scheduled after completing Level 1.
PORT Level 3
Join ongoing group supervision and case presentations.
PORT Level 3 is scheduled after completing Level 2.
Presence Oriented Relationship Therapy (PORT)
Created as a training model, PORT is a solution focused relationship therapy. PORT identifies specific relationship targets for a couple which were developed based upon the key insights over the last 40 years. These insights are based on research and practice of John and Julie Gottman, Imago Relationship Therapy, Emotionally Focussed Therapy, PACT, Heart and the Developmental Model. PORT recognizes that couples are in each other’s care and utilizing this relationship allows for powerful validation, motivation, support and effectiveness.
Key Features
Among PORT’s innovations are the integration of the PORT Relational Brain Model that makes neuroscientific insights accessible for both clinicians and clients; The Presence Bridge Model which incorporates existential and mindfulness into the bridge concept; and the 5 Step Therapy Progress Model (AARNI) which informs intervention and manages client conflict.
Relational Brain Model
PORT’s Relational Brain model helps therapists target their interventions using neuroscientific insights. PORT is centered on teaching couples to co-develop connection skills with language that aligns with lived experience and avoids neuroscientific jargon. This allows for therapists to intervene rapidly with couples for emotional regulation and minimizing conflict through the course of therapy. It aligns developmental stages with needs and validation strategies; varying proxemic, haptic, kinesic and verbal empathy strategies; and how to triage seemingly paradoxical developmental attachment needs in the moment.
Presence Bridge Model
The Presence Bridge Model helps tracking couples moment to moment within the the session; and the 5 Step Therapy Progress Model (AARNI) which helps therapist track progress over the course of therapy and plan interventions appropriately
The goal of all couples therapy is increased connection. PORT is based on the idea that increasing presence allows the greatest possibilities for connection. PORT’s Presence Bridge Model provides a progressive developmental and tracking pathway to support presence. It helps therapists guide their couples into a mindful flow state incorporating empathy, validation, responsiveness and appreciation.
Additionally the Presence Bridge Model enables clinicians to integrate a wide variety of interventions from a range of other couple and individual therapy models.
A key benefit of combining the Presence Bridge Model with the Relational Brain model is that it equips the therapist to attune quickly to the neural configuration of the couple, identify neurodevelopmental challenges in the moment, and apply developmentally appropriate interventions. This significantly increases the range of clients who can be treated effectively and speedily through couples therapy.
5 Step Therapy Progress Model
A key challenge in any therapy work is progress tracking. The 5 Step Therapy Progress Model (AARNI) was developed by the RElate team to help guide and track progress through the affair recovery progress. AARNI helps therapists know where they are going and to hone their interventions appropriately to the stage the couple is at and the challenges of that stage. It also helps identify when couples are progressing or regressing. Additionally AARNI helps manage the couples expectations and let them know how they are doing in the journey.
Comparison to other Models
PORT is an intensely practical couples therapy modality that developed from the ground up out of the challenge of equipping a diverse team, including interns, with the most effective strategies from models as diverse as PACT, EFT, Imago, Gottman and the Developmental Model. What became clear is that each of these models offered significant strengths but often lacked essential features or flexibilities present in other models. In addition insights from other modalities including Narrative, ACT, NLP, Psychodrama, Gestalt, Relational Neurobiology were incorporated. PORT’s challenge and achievement has been to integrate these diverse insights into an accessible, flexible and powerful approach that empowers clinicians while allowing them to incorporate their own unique insights and experience.
Register for Couples and Relationship Therapy Training
November 6, 2024: 11 AM- 1PM NZST
Leveraging Relationship Science in Counselling for Better Mental Health Results
Description
Individual therapists and curious couples counsellors will learn how to use relationship psycho-education to improve client long term well being.
It is well-established in the mental health field that an individual's quality of relationship with their romantic partner is one of the most influential factors in their long-term mental health, overall quality of life, and even physical health. Over the 20 years the ubiquity of social media has changed perception of relationships and lifestyle. Often this has resulted in an increasingly negative view of self. Often social media idealizes relationships without context or showing the challenges of relationships. For as much as social media creates an unrealistic perspective of individuals, it also creates an unrealistic perspective of relationships which can have negative mental health effects. Despite this, many counselors receive insufficient training in applying their knowledge of developmental paradigms to the context of romantic relationships. While counselors are often well-versed in developmental paradigms as part of their clinical training, comprehensive education on the cycle of relationships is frequently lacking.
Additionally, counselors often draw heavily on Rogerian principles as the foundation of their eclectic therapeutic modality. However, the evidence suggests that the uninformed application of individual therapy skills within a relationship therapy context is contraindicated. This highlights a significant gap in the training and practice of many counselors, with potential negative consequences for the effectiveness of relationship therapy.
This presentation aims to address these gaps by providing a summary of the cycle of relationships. The use of easily accessible relationship psychoeducation, and how to effectively apply Presence Oriented Relationship Therapy’s Relational Brain Model a neuro-developmental paradigm within a relationship context. It will also explore strategies for adapting individual therapeutic skills in a way that is appropriate and beneficial for relationship therapy, moving beyond a solely Rogerian approach. By bridging the gap between individual and relationship therapy, counselors can better support the long-term mental and physical health of their clients.
November 6, 2024 11 AM - 1 PM NZST
Register to attend the live session or to get a video replay.
December 11, 2024: 11 AM - 1 PM NZST
After the Affair: Decoding the Sexual Blueprint for Betrayal Disclosure
Description
Elevate your practice: Gain confidence and expertise in navigating affair disclosures and transforming unhealthy relationship patterns
Couples struggle with the impact on their relationship of changing cultural narratives. Traditionally, in Western European cultures people had limited romantic partner options and settled into committed, monogamous heterosexual relationships for life. Affairs and other indiscretions were addressed by the church and couples should ‘stay together for the sake of the children.’ This narrative is changing and ‘once a cheater always a cheater’ and ‘you can do better’ encourage separation. At the same time online dating apps and the visibility of ethically non-monogamous life-styles lead many couples and individuals to question the role or need of commitment within relationships. At the same time increasing social isolation means that the expectations for social, emotional and intimate support within relationships are These societal changes highlight the prevalence of ‘trust breaches’ within relationships. Often an individual’s behavior is driven by their developmental history of which they are generally unaware of. This presentation examines Presence Oriented Relationship Therapy’s Sexual and Developmental Blueprint which is designed to help individuals understand the developmental, behavioural, contextual, social and emotional drivers of their sexual and relational behaviour. Relationship counselors need to help clients identify their values, beliefs, longings as well as their sexual and developmental history.
Creating this developmental and sexual map or blueprint is not something that is typically taught systematically and often relies on the therapist’s own formulation (which may or may not be articulated). Yet this deprives the client of the opportunity to more fully explore and articulate their own understanding of their life narrative and to have this available for future explaining and updating.
The Certified Sex Addiction Therapy (CSAT) model is one of the few approaches that tends to try and develop this blueprint for use within a “Full Disclosure’ process where a sex addict discloses all of their sexual acting out behaviour to a partner. However the CSAT model has limitations for couples work which include an individual focus, abstinence as a goal, complete disclosure which is often an unnecessarily long and painful process. Furthermore the CSAT model presumes sex addiction and many betraying partners are not sex addicts.
Presence-Oriented Relationship Therapy (PORT) has developed a hybrid model integrating some of the CSAT process with the Erotic Blueprint, components of the Adult Attachment Inventory and PORT's Relational Brain Model. Combining clinical insights within the ideas of these counselling modalities, the Sexual and Developmental Blueprint gives counsellors a structured process to help support clients through developing their own sexual and developmental blueprint.
PORT’s Sexual and Developmental Blueprint is a new project that is designed to help clients gain insight into their past sexual and relational behavior. It utilizes the concepts of the "4 loves" to identify and explain sexual and relational milestones correlating with PORT's Relational Brain Model. The protocol takes place over 16 week using desensitization principles to manage shame, narrative principles to identify strengths, identification of unexpressed desires and urges. While the original purpose of PORT’s Sexual and Developmental Blueprint is to help couples dealing with infidelity increase their level of insight and self-compassion the Developmental and Sexual Blueprint can be used for a wide range of therapeutic purposes.
Affair therapy is not primarily motivated by either keeping the couple together or separating them. Positive outcomes are based on either increased trust and commitment in a continued relationship or mitigating betrayal shock and acrimony in separating partners. Completing the blueprint increases both partner’s insight into their sexual and relational desires and needs, decreasing impulsive or deceptive sexual and relational behaviors.
December 11, 2024: 11 AM -1 PM NZST
Register to attend the live session or to get a video replay.
January 15, 2024: 11 AM - 1 PM NZST
Borrowed Trust: A Therapeutic Tool for Healing from Infidelity
Description
Therapists who want their clients to trust and form loving relationships, will take a deep dive into how they can ‘lend trust’ to facilitate healing.
In his Book, "What makes love last?: How to build trust and avoid betrayal," John Gottman has noted that trust is a primary factor in relationship happiness. After an affair or infidelity, a couple's ability to create and maintain trust is severely, if not completely, destroyed. Trust within a relationship is constructed from the interaction of each individual's sexual and developmental blueprint, their partner, and the early phases of the relationship cycle. Once trust is lost, couples often require an external trust source, typically from professionals or religious figures. This presentation will include a trust equation to help couples create trust and will explain the basics of Betrayal First Aid to aid the betrayed partner's regulation. Helping couples create trust and minimise the harm after betrayal are key to recovery after an affair and long term individual well-being.
Trust is fundamentally an attachment level construct shaped by an individual's developmental history and subsequent relationships. This often remains an unconscious neurodevelopmental construct influenced by social, religious, and experiential factors. Limited or faulty trust beliefs and experiences within individuals and their relationships can engender significant negative long-term relational dissatisfaction and behaviour and poor health outcomes.
Enhancing counselors' understanding of trust as both a construct and a process can foster clients' insight into their experiences. Understanding the "trust equation" and how to rebuild trust provides a more measurable way to alter clients' lived experience of trust and help them engage with more efficacy in the work of rebuilding trust.
For therapists, understanding the power of "borrowed trust" can help them strengthen the therapeutic alliance with the couple. ‘Borrowed Trust’ also means that the therapist’s presence literally makes the couple feel safer with each other. Intentionally developing the ‘Borrowed Trust’ will dramatically increase the effectiveness of the therapeutic endeavour and help counselors avoid pitfalls like taking sides, making impossible promises, or validating gaslighting.
Discovering a partner's infidelity precipitates a crisis, with the betrayed individual experiencing "betrayal shock" and attempting to reestablish equilibrium—often with unintended consequences. The risk of this shock evolving into trauma hinges on the information received by the betrayed partner, underscoring counselors' responsibility to understand the process and effects of betrayal. Betrayal first aid is an extension and development of borrowed trust which encompasses targeted brief interventions and psychoeducation to support the betrayed partner in the initial post-betrayal period.
January 15, 2025: 11AM - 1PM NZST
Register to attend the live session or to get a video replay.
January 29, 2025: 10 AM -2:30 PM NZST (30 Minute Break)
The 4 Loves: The Sexual Blueprint from Insecure Attachment to Mature Love
Description
4 hour training
A Journey from Insecure Attachment to Mature Love
Love as commitment, intimacy and passion is a journey that begins in infancy and unfolds throughout our lives. Each stage of love development lays the foundation for the next, influencing our capacity for mature, fulfilling relationships. Understanding these stages is key to recognizing patterns in our own love lives and cultivating the deep connections clients crave
Objectives:
- Identify how the four loves create a sexual and relational profile for clients
- Explore common problems and subsequent reenactment cycles many people face
- Identify how the sexual and developmental blueprint allows clients to alter relationship patterns
- Explore the use of the sexual and developmental blueprint for reducing recidivism after an affair
- Identify how the Relational Brain Model helps couples move from insecure attachment to mature love
Stage 1: First Love (0-9 months) - The Imprint of Unconditional Acceptance
Our first experience of love occurs in the first six to nine months of life. As helpless infants, we are completely dependent on our caregivers and highly receptive to imprinting. The love formed during this stage is a deep sense of being held and unconditionally accepted. This imprint is not gender-specific; it's about absorbing the mix of masculine and feminine touch and nurture from both parents. It's the feeling of dad's stubble and scent, mum's softness and smell, and the relief of intimate care. This first love sets the stage for a lifelong need for deep acceptance.
Stage 2: Second Love (4-6 years) - Emerging Identity and Sexual Awareness
Between ages four and six, our focus shifts to the opposite-gender parent. This stage is about discovering how we relate to the other and emerging as a sexual being. Little girls may express a desire to marry dad, while little boys may feel in competition with dad for mum's attention. This stage primes us to seek the "other" outside the family and establishes our understanding of ourselves as distinct yet connected to our caregivers.
Stage 3: Adolescent Love - Self-Discovery and Secure Base
In adolescence, our orientation shifts from family to peers as we become aware of ourselves as sexual beings. This can be a challenging time of emotional upheaval and physical change. The task is to maintain a secure base of love from both parents, especially the opposite-gender parent, while exploring our emerging identities. This stage sets the stage for seeking love and validation outside the family.
Stage 4: Mature Love - Integrated Intimacy
The most challenging stage is mature love, where we integrate all previous experiences into the ability to love a partner while maintaining a strong sense of self. It's about reaching out to connect with another while avoiding loss of self. This requires the unconditional acceptance of first love, the secure base of third love, and the emerging identity of second love.
From Attachment to Mature Love: Breaking Patterns of Incomplete Love
We often get stuck in these early stages, leading to cycles of reenactment and unfulfilling relationships. If we didn't receive the love and approval we needed, a part of us will unconsciously seek it in our adult relationships. The Relational Brain Model offers a powerful tool to work through these incomplete love patterns. By mapping our sexual and developmental blueprint, we can identify areas where we may be stuck and work towards integration and mature love. By understanding these stages, we can break free from patterns of incomplete love and cultivate the deep, fulfilling connections we all desire.
January 29, 2025: 10 AM - 2:30 NZST
Register to attend the live session or to get a video replay.
February 12 - May 28 11 AM-1:30 PM NZST (Fortnightly)
Registrants will get immediate access to 2022 edition of this course and then the live training on February 12th.
Presence Oriented Relationship Therapy (PORT) Level 1
Description
Presence Oriented Relationship Therapy is an integrated approach to couples therapy designed specifically to for therapists starting to work with couples for the first time and more experienced therapists looking to integrate other models.
This gives therapists lifetime access to the PORT Level 1 Training and includes the cost for examination for PORT Level 1.
This training is PORT Level 1 and is focused upon the history of couples therapy and the 3 foundational theories of PORT: the Relational Brain Model, the Presence Bridge Model, and the 5 Step Therapy Progress Model.
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PORT is an integrated eclectic approach developed over the last 8 years by the Relate NZ team. Initially developed in the context of the weekly team training sessions it was honed over the next 6 years of the intern programme to help distill the core insights of successful couples and relationship therapy to clinicians who had not been specifically trained to work with couples.
PORT is an intensely practical course that coalesce around the challenge of finding the successful common features of therapy models as diverse as PACT, EFT, Imago, Gottman and the Developmental Model. What became clear is that each of these models offered significant strengths but often lacked essential features or flexibilities present in other model. In addition insights from other modalities including Narrative, ACT, NLP, Psychodrama, Gestalt, Relational Neurobiology were incorporated.
Port's focus was simple and driven by the clear imperative of research that indicated that untrained therapist's working with couples were highly unsucessful and the therapy process itself was highly stressful for the couple and the therapist.
The challenge of course is that everyone needs to start somewhere and our focus was to support our interns to be successful as soon as possible.
While Steven was cross-training in Imago, Gottman and EFT he noticed a recurring pattern underlying their seemingly different methods. Steven adapted the Relational bridge model for interns to use and tested this among the team. The developmental brain model was the next innovation that made relational neuroscience accessible to clinicians and clients and therapy progress model among other innovations.
The feedback from PORT trained therapists is that they quickly felt confident to hold a relational space for the couple that felt safe for deep intimate connecting work and that they had strategies to help them contain and manage conflict. Additionally clinicians could maintain and develop their own unique authentic style and presence and incorporate other training and experience more seamlessly and effectively.
The online offering is designed to provide a resource and reference point for clinicians that can be assimilated at the therapists own pace and is designed to prepare therapists for PORT Level 2 which is 4 live sessions of group skills training with Steven which will give you provide opportunities for interaction and implementation.
You are suggested to subscribe to Relate Unlimited to access psychoeducation materials which will make PORT easier to understand (specifically the 5 Secrets of Relationship Champions).
Register now and receive access to the prior version of this training today. Then, participate in the updated version starting February 12.
Where: Zoom
When: February 12, 26; March 12, 26; April 9, 23; May 14 & 28 at 11 AM - 1:30 NZST.
CPDs via Australian Counselling Association is Pending
CEs for US Social Workers and Counsellors: National Association of Social Workers (NASW)-Iowa Seal of Approval is pending (This means that the Iowa chapter of the NASW has determined that the course has satisfied the NASW requirements for a satisfactory CE course. It is the participants responsibility to know if this course will satisfy their licensing/credentialling board.)
August 13 - November 26 11 AM-1:30 PM NZST (Fortnightly)
Registrants will get immediate access to 2024 edition of this course and then the live training on August 13th.
Working with Intimate Partner Betrayal, Affairs, and Broken Trust using PORT
Description
Intimate Partner Betrayal is one of the most common reasons couples present for therapy. Couples present in high distress, and therapy has the potential to be chaotic and overwhelming for both the clients and therapists. Research indicates that fewer than 5% of couples therapists are specifically trained in working with betrayal. Working with betrayal will prepare you with an understanding of the current research around betrayal and an implementable approach to guide your couple through the process. The training will include demos, resources and handouts and access to a peer support group. Spaced over 8 weeks this interactive training will help you integrate research and best practice guidelines into your thinking and practice. If you have never worked with betrayal this training will give you a solid place to start including a peer group to rely on. If you are an experienced practitioner this practice will help you reflect, review and update your practice.
This is a recorded webinar with 8 -90 minute sessions, 4 hours of demo videos, 'Mapping the Why' betrayal disclosure activities and additional Q&A.
What PORT Users are Saying
Focus on Emotional Presence
PORT Level 1 was great information but PORT 2 is a must if you really want to understand and get to practise (in the Zoom break out rooms) the "how" of PORT. It's more intimate and I greatly enjoyed getting to know the other participants in the course. Well worth the investment of time and finances.
Understand and Practise
I've recently completed the Port Level 1 and 2 courses with Steven, Dan, and the Relate team, and it has been an incredible experience. Not only did I gain valuable knowledge, but I also had the opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals who share the same passion for helping couples transition from conflict to deeper intimacy. I wholeheartedly recommend this course to anyone interested in expanding their expertise in this field. The wealth of knowledge offered is truly extraordinary.
Working with Intimate Partner Betrayal
The progression from elementary principles and issues to methodology and 'chaos' factors that present in this issue combine to make a very practical mix of clinical application, working framework and neurobiology. A lovely balance between assertive yet compassionate, directive yet enabling, rational yet caring. A rare mix indeed. This perhaps is one of the best webinars I have ever attended. The one disappointment; I wish I could have sat in a live environment and just talked over coffee with these guys!
Blog posts
Understand Relationships: The Search for Connection
Relate specializes in marriage and relationship therapy. If we had a motto, it could be "Searching for Connection." We understand that relationships can be challenging and it's often unclear how to...
PORT: Integrated Couples Therapy
Relate and PESI are offering a 16 hour course about integrating the most powerful interventions in couples therapy. This is the Level 1 PORT training. Go here to register. Dates: Weekly Feb 6 - Mar...
Relate is Partnering with PESI: How to Break the Pursuer / Distancer Cycle
Relate is proud to be partnering with PESI to offer a free resource to the professional community. On January 31 5:30 AEDT Steven will present 'How to Break the Pursuer / Distancer Cycle.' To regi...
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