Reconnect & Renew Your Relationship: Hold Me Tight Workshop® in Texas
When was the last time you and your partner had meaningful time to connect without distractions?
Would you like to feel closer to your partner and have more confidence in your relationship?
Would you like tools to help you turn conflict into connection?
We invite you to join us for our Hold Me Tight Workshop® .
Whether you’re dating, committed, or married, our EFT-trained facilitator, Carlene Lehmann, M.A., LMFT will help you co-create a safe haven to learn new skills, polish strengths, and spend time renewing your emotional bond and closeness. After this fun, engaging retreat you will see “communication issues” in a whole new light.
This workshop is based on the book, Hold Me Tight® , by Dr. Sue Johnson, which is now in its 10th year of publication and has sold over half a million copies world-wide. Created for couples struggling with communication, intimacy and security, Hold Me Tight® is a two-day intensive Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) workshop held in Texas to help couples heal broken bonds, and rekindle the spark that brought them together.
Hold Me Tight® will help you and your partner feel safe, secure and connected by enabling you to:
* Understand the real reasons you get into struggles over and over.
* Change patterns that leave you frustrated, angry and hurting.
* Engage in conversations keeping your love alive and secure.
This workshop will walk you through seven conversations that capture the defining moments in a love relationship and instruct you how to shape these moments to create a secure and lasting bond.
The seven transforming conversations topics are:
Recognizing Demon Dialogues—In this first conversation, couples identify negative and destructive remarks in order to get to the root of the problem and figure out what each other is really trying to say.
Finding the Raw Spots—Here, each partner learns to look beyond immediate, impulsive reactions to figure out what raw spots are being hit.
Revisiting a Rocky Moment—This conversation provides a platform for de-escalating conflict and repairing rifts in a relationship and building emotional safety.
Hold Me Tight—The heart of the program: this conversation moves partners into being more accessible, emotionally responsive, and deeply engaged with each other.
Forgiving Injuries—Injuries may be forgiven but they never disappear. Instead, they need to become integrated into couples’ conversations as demonstrations of renewal and connection. Knowing how to find and offer forgiveness empowers couples to strengthen their bond.
Bonding Through Sex and Touch—Here, couples find how emotional connection creates great sex, and good sex creates deeper emotional connection.
Keeping Your Love Alive—This last conversation is built on the understanding that love is a continual process of losing and finding emotional connection; it asks couples to be deliberate and mindful about maintaining connection.”
Dr. Sue Johnson Shares Why Hold Me Tight® Is Unique-
Take time to renew your emotional bond and closeness and create a secure and lasting bond with your partner.
Ready to reignite the spark in your relationship?
What Leading Relationship Experts and Authors say about Hold Me Tight®:
“Wonderful… Hold Me Tight® Workshops blends the best in research findings with practical suggestions from a caring and compassionate clinician. Hold Me Tight® will be of great benefit to couples trying to find their way to better communication and deeper, more fulfilling ways of being with each other. Bravo!”
– Daniel J Siegel, MD, author of Parenting from the Inside Out
“At last a road map through Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy with its creator. Dr. Johnson’s superb science, humor, and clinical wisdom are finally accessible to all of us. I couldn’t pick a smarter, warmer and more real guide for this journey.”
– John Gottman, PhD, bestselling author of The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work and co-author of And Baby Makes Three
“Dr. Sue Johnson is the most original contributor to couples therapy to come along in the last thirty years. This book will touch your heart, stimulate your mind and give you practical strategies for improving your relationship.”
– William J. Doherty, PhD, author of Take Back Your Marriage
“A much-needed message to all couples and therapists, and I recommend it to all”
– Harville Hendrix, PhD, author of Getting the Love You Want
Hold Me Tight Workshop®– Frequently Asked Questions
Who attends your workshops?
Couples of every kind come. Young and old. Straight, gay, and trans. Married and not. With kids and without. Living together, living apart, on the verge of divorce. All different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Young couples have come as a pre-wedding gift to each other or from their families. Couples with 40+ years under their belts come to get closer and restore deeper connection.
LGBTQ couples often ask us if it’s safe to join the workshop. Yes, it is. Contact us and we can share more. We have LGBTQ couples at our workshop. We encourage diversity and openly welcome every couple who wants a strong and lasting relationship.
How are the workshops structured?
Educational presentations. The Workshop facilitator gives engaging presentations using pictures, music, and videos from both science and popular culture to explain a few core concepts of attachment theory — the science of adult love. Couples will understand how adult love works without jargon, then learn how to apply these concepts directly to their own relationships to bond and stay securely attached to loved ones.
Couples exercises. Couples receive clear instructions and watch video demonstrations before breaking off to practice structured exercises together in private. These conversations allow the couple to explore and understand their unique relationship dynamic.
Group discussion. Couples benefit from being supported through group discussion with other couples who share the same goal of strengthening their relationships. However, no group speaking or sharing is required.
What Is Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFT)?
The message of EFT is simple: Forget about learning how to argue better, analyzing your early childhood, making grand romantic gestures, or experimenting with new sexual positions. Instead, recognize and admit that you are emotionally attached to and dependent on your partner in much the same way that a child is on a parent for nurturing, soothing, and protection. EFT focuses on creating and strengthening this emotional bond by identifying and transforming the key moments that foster an adult loving relationship.
• EFT has an astounding 70 – 75% success rate and results have been shown to last, even in the face of significant stress.
• EFT is recognized by the American Psychological Association as empirically proven.
Hold Me Tight® presents a streamlined version of EFT. It walks the reader through seven conversations that capture the defining moments in a love relationship and instructs how to shape these moments to create a secure and lasting bond. Case histories and exercises in each conversation bring the lessons of EFT to life.
Is this group therapy? I don’t want to share private information with unfamiliar people.
Our workshops are therapeutic and experiential, but not therapy – we blend education with therapeutic experiences. The group learns new material and discusses it together, but you and your partner process your relationship in private. We provide you with the option to request guidance from our trained and experienced facilitator so you are not alone with the challenging work. Back in the group meeting, we will debrief anything you wish to share about new learnings that happened for you, but there is no group sharing required. The group discussions often turn out to be one of the richest parts of the weekend.
How does the workshop cost compare to the cost of couples counseling?
The value of the workshop is extremely high considering that 15 hours of couples therapy with an experienced therapist would easily cost several thousand dollars. The weekend retreat often takes couples much further in one weekend than months of individual therapy can. This is due to the consistency and intensity of work a couple can do in a weekend format when away from the distractions of everyday life. Many couples also find that attending this workshop jump- starts a particularly productive couples therapy journey that follows.
I’m a mental health professional. Can my partner and I attend?
YES! We have mental health and allied health professionals join us at our workshop — healers need healing too! We will work with you to make sure it’s a confidential environment for you to be able to do your own relationship work.
How do I register?
To register for our upcoming workshops above, go to our Scheduling Page
*Hold Me Tight® is a registered trademark to Sue Johnson