There is no shortage of couple therapy training programmes in the UK, so why would you choose to learn with CICS?
Well, without boasting, we believe that our Certificate in Contemporary Intimate Partner Therapy is really rather unique.
Pluralism and Common Factors
In line with our Pluralism modality, we take a Common Factors approach to couple therapy, which is research and evidence based.
Pluralism accepts that one way won’t work for all clients and challenges a single modality approach to therapy. At CICS we draw on a range of contemporary theories of love and relationships to inform the formulation of couple difficulties, including attachment theory, differentiation, Imago and the Gottman Method, to name but a few. We then take a Common Factors approach to provide the ‘how to’ of effective couples therapy.
Research show us that couple therapy has positive outcomes and that those outcomes are due to a number of common factors; the therapeutic alliance, facilitating changes in perspective, conceptualising difficulties in relational terms, interrupting and changing problematic relationship patterns, improving connection through communication and identifying and promoting strengths. These common factors provide us with the skills of couple therapy, the ‘how to’ of the work, giving us the tools to put our theories into practice.
Relationships and Diversity
CICS is well known for our gender, sexuality and relationship diversity awareness and focus. We prefer the term ‘Intimate Partner Therapy’ to ‘Couple Therapy’, for example, as we are well aware that not all intimate partner relationships are defined as or limited to ‘couples’. Our course covers intimate partner therapy with gay men, lesbian and queer women and people in consensually non-monogamous relationships. We also consider the impact of physical disability, neurodiversity and culture, race and religion. Our course is fully online making it fully accessible to students of all geographical locations and access needs.
Sex!
As a specialist sex and relationship therapy training school we think it is essential to have sex therapy knowledge when working with couples and intimate partners. Our course covers the essential principles of sex therapy and provides specific knowledge and skills on working with sexual issues in couple therapy.
We could say more about why to choose CICS as your couple therapy training provider, but then we really would start to sound like we are boasting! Join us! Spaces are still available for our Autumn intake.
