Couples Therapy & Marriage Counseling | Couples Workshops | Raleigh, NC
Couples Therapy Workshop
One day, the two of you, focused, invested, rewired.
Lunch and the Inner Compass Assessment included
Not ready yet? Start with the Inner Compass Assessment.
Your relationship is not broken.
It’s just running on old code.
You came because the same fight keeps arriving in different clothes. Different topic. Same trigger. Same wound. Same distance afterward.
You have read the books.
You have done the work alone.
You can name what is happening while it is happening and still not stop it.
That is not failure. That is the pattern. The work is to map it.
What is in the room with you
Practical tools. Working protocols. Not theory you forget by Monday.
The Couple Forward Inner Compass Assessment, included with registration
The Couple Forward Roadmap to map your cycle from trigger down to core needs
Private partner exercises (no group sharing, no public speaking)
Protocols for emotionally intelligent conversations that actually land
Full day with Christian J. Charette, LMFT
All materials in print and digital, and a catered lunch
Most couples think communication is the problem.
It is not.
You’re never reacting to what is said or done, or to what is not said or not done. You’re reacting to what it means to you. And until you make what it means to you conscious, this loop will never change.
Christian J. Charette, LMFT
01.
A working definition of what love actually is. Not the romantic-comedy version. Not the inherited version. Love as a skill set, a sequence, and a daily practice of repair. The version that survives a long marriage and the deconstructions that come with it.
02.
The fight underneath the fight. The actual trigger, not the surface complaint. The actual loop, not the story you have been telling about it.
03.
A sequence for re-entering each other after rupture. The Order of a Conversation. The Intentional Conversation Protocol. Tools you can use in the kitchen at 7 PM, not just in a therapist’s office.
04.
The source code under your survival strategies. The pattern is not who you are. It is what was adaptive once and is no longer serving. Rewiring is not a feeling. It is a practice.
The MAPSS Analysis™
The descent from the surface argument to the original blueprint underneath it. Five layers. Each one explains the layer above it.
Trigger
The fight starts on the surface. A tone. A look. A forgotten errand. Underneath, a much older signal fires.
The loop
The cycle running between you, faster than thought. Flight, fight, freeze, fawn. Each of you developed your default in the earliest relationships, long before you met. Secondary emotions form the visible loop. The primary emotions live underneath, unseen and unspoken.
Survival strategies
The protective adaptations stored in the body. The ways you learned to keep yourself safe when nobody was looking. This is the layer most couples have read about but never named together. Until it is named together, the loop will keep finding the wiring.
The wiring
Underneath the protector lives the engine that runs it. This is the wiring. The protector is loud because the wiring is loud.
Core needs
Connection. Attunement. Trust. Autonomy. Love and sexuality. Five attachment needs the survival strategies arose to protect.
Composite case. Not a specific client.
A composite case
Married thirty-one years. Three adult children. One grandchild. They came in not because the marriage was failing but because the map they’d been handed at twenty-three no longer fit who they were at fifty-four.
He’d been doing the work of becoming a different kind of man for a decade. Quieter. More reflective. Less certain. She’d been doing her own kind of work in her own register. The marriage they’d built had been built on inherited blueprints neither of them had ever examined. What it meant to be a husband. What it meant to be a wife. What love was supposed to look like in a household.
The work was not couples therapy in the traditional sense. The work was re-mapping. We went through the five layers of each of their inherited scripts. What had they been handed. What had they kept without thinking. What had stopped being true. What did they actually want now, at this stage, with this much life behind them.
The marriage didn’t end. The map they’d been navigating with did. They built a new one together. It looks almost nothing like the one they started with. It fits them now.
The territory was always real. The map needed updating.
If you are, like me, a husband who is reluctant to attend a marriage workshop, I'm here to tell you that Christian is worth every penny and every minute you spend with him. He immediately put both of us at ease, and did a great job of listening as well as teaching us approaches and techniques to make our marriage better. He has created a program that integrates approaches from the gurus of couples therapy (Gottman, Real, Perel), as well as his own material, which has made an immediate and positive impact on my marriage. We invested five hours to learn from him, and we'll spend the rest of our lives with a marriage that is richer and more satisfying to both of us. Even after 30+ years of marriage and reading many couples books, Christian still managed to help us reach a new level of communication & connection. Highly recommended.
Date
To be announced
The waitlist hears first
Time
To be announced
Lunch and breaks included
Location
213 E. Cabarrus St
Raleigh, NC 27601
Format
In person
Eight couples maximum
Seating is intentional. The room stays personal and the work stays direct. The waitlist hears about the next date first.
Lunch and the Inner Compass Assessment included
Not ready yet? Start with the Inner Compass Assessment.
Lunch and the Inner Compass Assessment included
