CREATED FOR CONNECTION: CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE WORKSHOP
Learning to Grow in Oneness with Each Other CONTACT ME ABOUT THE NEXT WORKSHOPCreated for Connection: Christian Marriage Workshop
Do you have a subtle feeling of dissatisfaction with your marriage, like God may have more for your oneness than what you are currently experiencing?
Is your home sometimes a place of tension and you’re not sure how to resolve it?
Do you ever tell yourself “here we go again” as you hash over the same issues without a satisfying resolution?
Are there moments of frustration where, instead of listening to one another, you fall into predictable, negative responses (shutting down, defending yourself, storming off, verbally attacking, or blaming)?
Do you sometimes feel like you’re on eggshells around your spouse? That you have to avoid important topics because they set off a reaction?
Are you unable to get beyond an old injury that comes up every time you have an argument?
Do you yearn to grow closer to God and have more of His Word and presence in your marriage?
Marriages don’t struggle to thrive because of financial problems, too much fighting and conflict, lack of communication, or lack of sex.
Research shows the primary reason for marital disconnection and dissatisfaction is because of a lack of positive emotional responsiveness and affection.
We are created for loving connection.
It is almost impossible to be responsive or affectionate if you feel unsafe and distant with each other.
“A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.” – Brené Brown
Created for Connection: A Marriage Workshop for Christian Couples
Created for Connection is an engaging marriage seminar that helps Christian couples repair, enhance, and strengthen their bond and covenantal love for each other.
Created for Connection is based on the truth that God is relational in His trinitarian self and with His people. We need relational connection and support because we are created in His image. Throughout Scripture, we see that God is our refuge, fortress, strength, salvation, help, and comfort. Acknowledging vulnerability and the need to turn to God and others for support is all over Scripture. There are 59 “one and other” verses in the Bible that highlight the fact that we are interdependent. “The world” teaches us that relying on others is a weakness and that for adults to “need” others is somehow shameful. But it is clear from Scripture and science that a sense of connection with a loved one, as with God, provides us with a safe haven and the courage to face the world.
The Created for Connection workshop is based on a Biblical worldview combined with the highly effective, research-based approach of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples.
This seminar will enrich your healthy relationship, renew the love you used to feel, or rescue your relationship if it has gone awry.
What is Unique About the Created for Connection Workshop?
Most other programs emphasize improving communication skills, learning how to argue better, analyzing your early childhood, or making grand romantic gestures.
Created for Connection gets to the emotional underpinnings of your relationship by recognizing that you are attached to and dependent on your partner in much the same way that a child is on a parent, and we are on the Heavenly Father, for nurturing, soothing and protection.
The way to heal, strengthen, and enhance our relationship with God and our spouse is to be
emotionally accessible, responsive, and engaged.
But how do we do that?
By the grace of God, through the power of the gospel, with the Holy Spirit as our Counselor and Helper.
Jesus’ substitutionary death on our behalf invites us into an eternal secure relationship of love with God.
“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” 1 Peter 3:18.
God the Father is now our secure base and safe haven. He enables us to risk being emotionally open, responsive, and attuned with our spouse.
“Romantic love is all about attachment and emotional bonding. It is all about our wired-in need to have someone to depend on, a loved one who can offer reliable emotional connection and comfort. Love is not the icing on the cake of life. It is a basic primary need, like oxygen or water. Once we understand and accept this, we can more easily get to the heart of relationship problems.” – Sue Johnson
Most marriage enrichment programs are informational, top-down programs that give couples great information. However, when couples are stuck in negative patterns of interaction, it is extremely difficult and unlikely that the couple will be successful at drawing on information to interrupt and change the negative patterns that are keeping them stuck.
Created for Connection, while biblical and psycho-educational, attempts to help couples:
- become more familiar with their own unique negative patterns
- helps couples interrupt the negative patterns or avoid them all together
- start creating a new positive pattern through six structured conversations
What Will We Actually Do At the Created for Connection Workshop?
The Created For Connection seminar will begin with a review of the research, science, and Biblical foundation of love and attachment. This information will help you make sense of the cycles of disconnection couples often experience.
You and your spouse will engage privately in six structured conversations that capture defining moments in a love relationship. In between each conversation you will watch videos of actual couples working through these conversations. Workshop leaders and trained facilitators will offer assistance with these conversation exercises.
Through these six conversations you will see how to shape these defining moments to create a secure and lasting bond.
- Recognizing The Demon Dialogues – Identify unhelpful patterns that are hard to spot and that can keep you stuck and disconnected.
- Finding the Raw Spots – Identify stuck points and begin to make sense of your own and your partner’s emotions and needs.
- Revisiting a Rocky Moment – Learn how to talk about hurts. Repair rifts in your relationship.
- Hold Me Tight – Engaging and Connecting – Communicate and develop deeper understanding and closeness
- Forgiving Injuries – Learn how to repair and forgive emotional injuries
- Bonding through Sex and Touch – Deepen your emotional and physical connection
Format and Structure for the Created for Connection Workshop
The workshop leaders will present information about love and attachment to help you make sense of the cycles of disconnection in which couples often find themselves. We will also show videos of actual couples working through common cycles of conflict.
At regular intervals, we will ask you to privately engage in structured conversations with your partner regarding your particular cycle. Workshop leaders, as well as other trained facilitators, will offer assistance with these exercises.
The 2-day workshop will consist of:
- Short presentations by the workshop presenters
- Videos to help illustrate the concepts of attachment with real couples
- Private break-off sessions where each couple is provided with structured exercises
- Individualized assistance offered by the facilitators during the break-off sessions
Schedule:
Friday 6:00 PM – 9:30 PM
Saturday 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM
Yes I want to create a closer and stronger connection with my spouse!
How Will the Created for Creation Workshop Help our Relationship?
No matter the stage of your relationship, married or dating, this workshop will repair, enhance, and grow your emotional connection with each other to create the oneness God intended for your marriage.
“For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh”. (Gen. 2:24, Matt. 19:5, Eph. 5:31)
The workshop will create opportunities to…
- Affirm strengths in your relationship
- Recognize the negative patterns where ALL couples get stuck and discover what you are really trying to communicate
- Learn how to get beyond unhealthy patterns of distance and arguments.
- Understand how your brain can make communication impossible during heightened emotion
- Understand the logic of emotions and make sense of your own and your spouse’s emotions
- Explore the feelings and needs underneath your behaviors
- Learn what drives conflict in relationships
- Learn more about your partner’s inner world
- Create safety so you can complete conversations
- Recover, repair and forgive past or present emotional hurts and injuries
- Find forgiveness, heal past hurts and move forward
- Enhance your physical and sexual intimacy
- Create and nurture emotional safety and intimacy
- Communicate with more clarity and effectiveness
- Discover how to stay emotionally connected and have productive conversations even when talking about “hot topics.”
More than just knowledge and information, you both will get to practice and experience a new way of interacting.
Together you’ll create a more secure and resilient marriage. You will learn how to stay connected together when you encounter stress, disagreements, and sensitive topics in your relationship.
More than just knowledge and information,
you will practice and experience a new way of interacting.
Is this Workshop Right for Us?
This workshop is intended for Christian couples who have been married many years, who have just been married, or who are thinking of getting married.
The workshop is designed to enhance the quality of your relationship. It is for couples who want to understand their patterns of communication and make changes to improve their connection. This workshop is for you if you want to heal, strengthen, renew, and deepen your covenant relationship.
Who Is This Workshop Not Appropriate For?
This workshop is not appropriate for:
- Couples who are actively engaged in an affair
- Couples who are actively engaged with untreated addiction issues
- Couples who are currently engaged in domestic violence or where there is the threat of harm
We highly recommend couples in these situations to seek marital therapy and other support before attending this workshop. If you have any questions whether this workshop would be appropriate to you please contact Casey Lee.
Casey Lee on Created for Connection
Robert Fair on Created for Connection
Is Group Participation Required for this Workshop?
This is an education workshop and is not group therapy so there is no requirement for group participation. There is no pressure or expectations for you to interact with other couples. We understand that many people are very private and can be anxious about being in a group. Please rest assured that we emphasize a warm and supportive environment, and you will not be asked to share anything personal beyond your comfort level.
But, What If…?
We don’t know how to talk and get stuck?
The workshop leaders are Licensed professional counselors trained specifically in the area of marital therapy. The leaders along with other trained counselors will offer assistance to each couple if needed. If you don’t know how to talk to each other or feel stuck during the conversation exercises someone will help you. This is to be expected and normal as some conversations can be hard. You won’t be alone. We will be there to support you both.
We get really angry and mad at each other?
The exercises are designed to help you talk about your relationship in a structured and helpful way. Nevertheless, talking about your relationship can sometimes bring up strong emotions. If that happens, one of the workshop facilitators can help you both slow down the conversation and guide you to a more helpful conversation.
We find out that we need more help?
The workshop leader, Casey Lee, is a trained Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) Therapist with a practice in downtown Columbia. He is available for appointments if you both want to continue the progress you’ve made in your marriage during the weekend.
Experiences From Past Participants of the Created for Connection Workshop
“I was looking for ways/tools to navigate through tough conversations with my partner. I not only got those tools, but I was able to recognize the toxic dance that I get into with my partner…”
“I can be skeptical about workshops…always wondering if they are truly biblical and not just generic fluff…this was a great one!”
“The way the conversations were constructed made it easy for us to communicate our emotions to each other in a clear way without conflict.”
“We were really able to go deep and understand each other just a little more and I feel great about it!”
“We had some great conversations acknowledging, apologizing for, and accepting things we’ve done…We have a new awareness of the deeper emotions and raw spots.”
“I know that my husband and I will benefit from this workshop because we know “the terrain” better than ever before. We’ve attended other workshops/conferences on marriage, but this is the only one where I felt like we both had the proper time and guidance in digging deeper.”
Want to invest in your marriage and strengthen your bond?
Workshop Leaders
Robert Fair
Pennsylvania Licensed Professional Counselor
Robert obtained a B.A. in Biochemistry from Temple University and holds an M.A. in Clinical Psychology from Eastern University. Prior to starting his own counseling practice in 2018, Bob served for 5 years with Serving Leaders Ministries as a staff counselor. During this time, Bob received special training working with couples and obtained certification in Emotionally Focused Therapy from ICEEFT. Bob has also worked as a full-time mental health counselor in the Outpatient Program of Horizon House in Philadelphia before joining ServingLeaders Ministries. At Horizon House, Bob was trained in the use of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for the treatment of Unipolar and Bipolar Depression, Anxiety Disorders, Eating Disorders and Schizophrenia from the University of Pennsylvania and the Beck Initiative. During this time, Bob also became a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in Pennsylvania. Bob has extensive experience working with individuals, couples, families, and teens from a variety of cultures. Bob is also an experienced group therapist and has extensive public speaking experience. In addition to his current clinical work, Bob teams up with other experienced couples therapists to bring the Created For Connection Workshop to Christian communities
Casey Lee
South Carolina Licensed Professional Counselor
Casey’s heart and desire is to help people connect deeply with God, others, and themself. His passion for connection comes from experiencing joy and meaning from a deep loving relationship with God the Father.
Casey obtained a B.A. in Psychology at University of Toronto and a M.A. in Counseling at Columbia International University. He worked with children, adolescence, and families at Lexington Department of Mental Health. He also worked at Lexington Christian Counseling providing Christian Counseling for issues such as anxiety, depression, PTSD, and marital problems.
Casey specializes in couples therapy because he believes the oneness that God intended for spouses to experience with each other can bring immense healing, joy, and growth. Casey’s passion is to help couples experience the safe and secure love of God through their relationship. He is trained in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT), which research has shown to be one of the most effective therapeutic models for couples in distress.
Casey started Rooted Hearts Counseling LLC to focus on creating relationships that heal. “It’s through relationships that we are wounded, and it’s through relationships that we are healed”.
ROOTED HEARTS COUNSELING LLC
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