Suzanne’s specialties
Training
Suzanne has trained extensively at The Gottman Institute (www.Gottman.com) and at ICEEFT (www.iceeft.com), both world-renowned couples therapy research institutes. Both encourage longer sessions with couples, based on studies. For more information about the methods used at CloserCouples, please take a look at gottman.com and at iceeft.com. Suzanne has completed Basic Training and some advanced coursework in EMDR: www.emdr.com.
Suzanne’s training includes research-based clinical training as well as modalities that honor psyche, soul and spirit. She has extensive training and receives ongoing supervision as well from AASECT (The American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists) and Polaris Insight Center. She has been accepted into the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies where she has completed a Utah site application and is in training to provide a breakthrough treatment for PTSD (completing Parts A and B of the training protocol). In these highly transformative settings, and indeed in many cultures and healing practices, there are all day or multi-day rituals and processes that allow time enough for true transformation to take place. Suzanne anticipates that the intensive model will be considered state-of-the-art in light of the compelling anecdotal and research-based evidence for all day sessions punctuated by integrative sessions. Such models allow more individuals and couples to stop suffering sooner.
When the ingredient of ample time is added to many processes, richness and complexity often emerge. In couples’ therapy, time allows for the taking of healthy risks, the safe dismantling of defenses and the embracing of significant nuanced interpersonal difficulties. Time allows for a much more respectful pace, which feels safer and to some, even sacred.
Suzanne has noticed that lengthier sessions allow her to make more useful interventions because there is actually time for a beginning, middle, and end to a complex process necessary for real relief. A longer single session provides a “container” that weekly shorter sessions cannot always achieve, and a surrounding that allows for more disclosure and greater opportunities for healing. This field for healing cannot be created under pressured time constraints.
"Rushing is a form of violence." SB Pratt MD III
To locate other Certified Gottman therapists that provide marathon therapy in other parts of the country, please click Find a Therapist or call The Gottman Institute at 888-523-9042 x1. All requests for therapy are kept confidential.
Research regarding the above:
Boegner, L, & H. Zielenbach-Coenen (1984). On maintaining change in behavioral relationship therapy. In K. Hahlweg and N.S. Jacobson (Eds) Relationship interaction: Analysis and modification (pp. 27-35). New York: Guilford Press.
Theory and Practice of Online Therapy
Internet-delivered Interventions for Individuals, Groups, Families, and Organizations
ByHaim Weinberg, Arnon Rolnick
https://www.ecfvp.org/files/uploads/2_-change_readiness_assessment_0426111.pdf