701 | SAFELY GROW: Using a Transtheoretical, Trauma-informed approach to Counseling Highly Distressed Couples and Stopping Patterns of IPV and Coercive Control

Couples often enter therapy after enduring years of getting caught in rigid patterns of conflict. Over time, this breaks down the couple’s capacity to feel emotionally safe in the relationship (Johnson, 2004). This is exacerbated in couples who present with embodied trauma (Dana, 2018; Johnson & Best, 2003; Van der Kolk, 2014) This embodied trauma sets up each partner to get caught in re-enactments with one another, thus increasing the sense of threat in the relationship (Levine, 2010; Porges & Furman, 2011, Seigel, 2001). Psychologists, licensed mental health professionals, and ministry leaders need a transtheoretical approach to provide care for these complex dynamics. This workshop will present a transtheoretical approach, SAFELY GROW, that offers a non-pathologizing path to create the conditions for individual nervous system regulation resulting in the integration of self, the imago Dei, work with the couple’s rigid pattern of conflict by supporting each partner to reach to and respond from new states of self-integration and stop the re-enactments of past trauma by facilitating the growth of new neural pathways resulting in new styles of relating as each partner begins to experience the relationship as safe (Allender, 2022; Johnson, 2004; Levine, 2010; Schwartz, 2021; Townsend,1996). The presenter will also address intimate partner violence (IPV) and coercive control, which are common forms of domestic abuse that create systemic patterns of power and control perpetuated by one romantic partner against another (NCADV, 2022; Stark, 2007). If this pattern emerges in highly distressed couples, the participants need to be equipped with knowledge and tools to move the abused partner toward safety (Brom, et al., 2017; Herman, 2022). The presenter will discuss original research on the embodied somatic experience of women experiencing coercive control by a domestic partner to inform the clinician on ways to support nervous system regulation to facilitate growth in self-efficacy and decision making.