ImagoInsights

COVID-19 has been a time of extraordinary stress –financial worries, job loss or trying to work from home, children out of school, worries about family members. All of this occurs with a backdrop of a pandemic that brings ongoing anxiety and uncertainty. We know that the first country to be locked down – China – was the first country to report a surge in calls to domestic violence hotlines. This pattern has now been repeated in other countries.

Working with couples where there has been aggression is often seen as controversial. Certainly, it is not advisable to work with couples where there has been gender-based violence occurring for some time that has the elements of power and control. In such cases, the standard approach is to refer to anger management programs and (in the case of male on female violence) to programs for battered women.

However, in situations where it has been the first time of aggression - these are couples who will not typically follow up on referrals for anger management or support groups. Instead, they arrive at our door, hoping for help to understand how the violence happened and how to repair the subsequent relationship injury. Most approaches to couples counseling, however, are not terribly skillful at knowing what to do with those couples when they arrive in our waiting rooms.

This webinar will address the needs of those couples by giving us skills to assess the situation and whether we can help or need to refer.

In this webinar, you will learn how to:

• Distinguish between instrumental and situational violence
• Complete the assessment by asking appropriate follow-up questions
• Construct a decision tree to determine whether you will work with this couple or refer
• Evaluate if there has been further aggression
• Appraise that conditions are being met
• Formulate how to repair the relational injury
• Apply concepts of titration in order to maintain safety

Maureen McEvoy, MA, RCC has been working in the field of trauma and anti-violence for 30 years. She works with individuals, couples, and groups. She is a long-standing instructor with the Justice Institute of BC, teaching other counselors skills for working with survivors of child sexual abuse and other traumas. 

She provides clinical consultations to a number of counselors and agencies. Most recently she has undertaken projects to bring a trauma-informed approach to BC’s mental health and justice sectors, including a specific program with psychological staff within Corrections Canada.

Maureen also works with couples where one or both of the partners is a trauma survivor – either recent or historical. She is a Certified Imago Relationship therapist (Advanced Clinician) and Clinical Consultant. She also presents – along with her business partner Tamara Adilman – the Getting the Love You Want weekend workshop for couples.

She has extensive additional training in working with couples including Gottman, Emotionally Focused therapy and Psychobiological Approaches to Couples Therapy (PACT).

Many of her individual clients have experienced trauma, either recent or historical. Over the years she has developed a robust toolbox, including training in EMDR, Developmental Needs Meeting Strategies, Somatic Experiencing, and Sensorimotor Therapy along with earlier training in hypnosis and art therapy.

Maureen has written several articles, including one co-authored with Maggie Ziegler on counter-transference in trauma groups. She wrote the first manual for the first indigenous social worker program in BC entitled “Let the Healing Begin”. She has written several books including Balancing conflicting interests: A counselor’s guide to the legal process (2013) and Best Practices Manual for Stopping the Violence Counselling Programs (2006) with Maggie Ziegler.

Unfortunately, Continuing Education (CE) Credits will not be available for these courses.

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