Consultation Group for Couple’s Therapists – January - May 2026
with a special focus on nervous system regulation and somatic-based intervention
As many of you know, working intimately with relationships touches my heart deeply as a therapist.
Couple’s therapy is about navigating through diverse perspectives, uncovering unspoken pain, and reigniting connection that clients agonizingly struggle with.
Having devoted much study and attention to the mind-body connection, this consultation group will emphasize how maintaining nervous system regulation and body-based interventions can deepen your work and add significantly to your practice. We’ll discuss how to use the natural workings of the autonomic nervous system to help couples engage more effectively with each other. Beneath words, two nervous systems are communicating through tone and body language. When couples become emotionally charged or shut down it’s because they’re feeling threatened, by something inside of them or something between them and their partner. Their nervous system engages to protect and it’s as if a banner appears on their forehead that says, “I no longer care about you, I’m busy surviving.”
We'll delve into navigating the distress that brought them to therapy, guiding them through emotional reactivity, and healing underlying trauma that emerges.
- Notice and attend to subtle body cues like movement and muscle tension to uncover underlying clinical issues.
- Track nuanced shifts in the body that reveal hidden emotional triggers beyond conscious awareness.
- Apply Polyvagal-informed techniques to create a safe environment and prevent overwhelm and re-traumatization.
- maintain nervous system dysregulation to foster a space of safety and support for healing and growth.
- Approach intimacy and sexual issues through this somatic lens
For: therapists who work with couples, all frameworks welcome
Why: Working with couples is challenging and having a safe environment to explore the places you get stuck and learn new strategies can reinvigorate your work and take it to a new level of expertise
Nuts and bolts: January – May 2026; Tuesdays 10:30 - 12:00 EST, twice/month, 2nd and 4th Tuesdays. There will be no second one in March unless we can reschedule it.
$80/session, payable on the first of each month. There is no cancellation policy, meaning that you are responsible for the payment whether you attend a particular session or not.
Virtual via Zoom (unless participants are local and would like to meet in person – I’d love that)
Format: Case consultation with some didactic presentation, experiential exercises
About me: Among numerous trainings in somatic intervention, I have trained most extensively in Somatic Experiencing, Peter Levine’s model for the treatment of trauma. My background in couples therapy is Imago Relationship Therapy and I am an AASECT certified sex therapist. I have adapted what I have learned in individual trauma treatment models to the couple dyad.
I ask that you commit to the entire period of time, pay on the first of each month and come prepared with cases to discuss and questions to ask and explore.
Please let me know if you’d like to join by November 14, 2025. To hold your place in the group, the first payment of $160 is due by December 1, 2025 which will cover the two January sessions (so this is in lieu of the 1/1/26 payment)
Any questions and to register, email me: deborahfoxdc@gmail.com
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Psychotherapy Networker online course:
Somatic Psychotherapy for Treating Intimate Relationships - Healing disconnection, betrayal, trauma and more through the body
Access is on the Psychotherapy Networker website: https://catalog.psychotherapynetworker.org/sales/pn_c_001970_somatictherapyforintimaterelationships_organic-870418
Couple’s therapy is complex. It's about navigating through diverse perspectives, uncovering unspoken pain, and reigniting connections that clients often feel are beyond hope.
While traditional methods focus on communication and behavior change, they sometimes miss a profound aspect of healing: the body.
Having devoted much study and attention to the mind-body connection, I invite you to join me in exploring how body-based interventions can profoundly complement your practice.
In my six-module course (12 CE’s), we'll delve into navigating conflicts, guiding clients through nervous system dysregulation, and healing underlying trauma that emerges.
My course is designed for both individual and couples therapists, offering practical tools to address relationship challenges whether clients attend alone or with their partners.
- Decode subtle body cues like movement and muscle tension to uncover underlying clinical issues.
- Track nuanced shifts in the body that reveal hidden emotional triggers beyond conscious awareness.
- Apply Polyvagal-informed techniques to create a nurturing environment and prevent overwhelm or retraumatization.
- Address nervous system dysregulation to foster a space of safety and support for healing and growth.
- Approach intimacy and sexual issues through this somatic lens .
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Treatment of Sexual Trauma - next workshop TBD
This workshop will contain significant experiential components. This is a camera-on, interactive workshop. There will be no recording.
Why somatic intervention? The body contains the roots of past traumatic experiences that continue to have a negative emotional impact in present time. Somatic interventions provide a window into hard-to-reach emotional and psychological material. Often talk therapy alone has limitations in accessing dissociated and compartmentalized memories and emotions that are the underpinnings of troubling symptoms. The body holds so much emotional experience that is “beneath words.”
Somatic comes from the Greek word soma, meaning body. Somatic interventions are techniques that use body awareness to interrupt habitual ways of thinking and behaving that are contributing to distress (depression, anxiety, stress) and enable the therapeutic process to move forward.
In this workshop, you’ll learn to track posture, gaze, facial expression, muscle tension, breath, movement. You’ll learn to intervene with body-based strategies that help clients stay in, or return to, a state of nervous system regulation, and release trauma that the body is holding, facilitating the process of memory reconsolidation.
I am an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist, a Certified Imago Relationship Therapist and among numerous trainings in somatic intervention, I have trained extensively in Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing model for the treatment of trauma.
This workshop will include:
Nervous system response of victims of sexual abuse
Somatic interventions unique to treatment of sexual trauma – strategies to use and NOT to use
Reclaiming the body lost in betrayal – how to create sensory experience that allows them to stay within their window of tolerance
Experiential practice
Via paypal - www.paypal.me/DeborahFox230