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Digital Seminar

Embracing Goodness in Relationships

When Clients Struggle to Connect without Sabotage
Faculty:
Vienna Pharaon, LMFT
Duration:
1 Hour 54 Minutes
Copyright:
20 Mar, 2026
Product Code:
NOS096668
Media Type:
Digital Seminar
Access:
Never expires.
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Description

We often focus on helping couples navigate conflict, pain, and disconnection in relationships—but what about moments of tenderness, joy, and goodness? For many clients, intimacy, kindness, and vulnerability feel deeply threatening and unfamiliar—even more uncomfortable than “negative” feelings and experiences. This workshop explores the protective function behind many clients’ tendency to reject or sabotage goodness in relationships, whether they’re giving or receiving it. You’ll learn how to help clients build the capacity to receive and give goodness in romantic relationships (as well as other relationships). You’ll discover how to help clients:

  • Explore early attachment/origin stories that contribute to goodness feeling threatening
  • Shift the nervous system coding that perceives goodness as a threat
  • Identify their habitual protective strategies that sabotage or push away closeness
  • Expand their window of receptivity and tolerance for goodness through interventions that cocreate relational safety

CPD

Faculty

Vienna Pharaon, LMFT's Profile

Vienna Pharaon, LMFT Related seminars and products

Vienna Pharaon, LMFT, is one of New York City’s most sought-after relationship therapists. She’s practiced therapy for more than 15 years and is the founder and owner of the group practice Mindful Marriage and Family Therapy. She's been featured in The Economist, Vice, and Motherly, and has led workshops for Peloton and Netflix, among others. THE ORIGINS OF YOU is her first book published with Penguin Random House and has become a national bestseller.

 

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Vienna Pharaon is the owner and founder of Mindful Marriage and Family Therapy. She receives royalties as a published author. Vienna Pharaon receives a speaking honorarium and book royalties from PESI, Inc. She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Vienna Pharaon is a member of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.

Additional Info

Access for Self-Study (Non-Interactive)

Access never expires for this product.

For a more detailed outline that includes times or durations of time, if needed, please contact cepepesi.com


Objectives

  1. Explain and reframe to their clients why they break contact and connection with goodness from the giving and/or receiving position.
  2. Identify protective behaviors/strategies the clients may use to avoid receiving or offering goodness and what function it serves.
  3. Apply at least two somatic or attachment-based interventions to support clients in expanding their capacity for relational goodness.

Outline

  • Why “goodness” (tenderness, kindness, joy) can feel threatening 
  • The paradox: why conflict may feel safer than intimacy 
  • Identifying client strategies that push away closeness (withdrawal, criticism, over-functioning, humor, shutdown) 
  • Understanding the protective function vs. pathology 
  • Case examples of “goodness avoidance” in session 
  • Using micro-moments of relational attunement to build tolerance 
  • “Cocreating safety” as a prerequisite for receptivity 
  • How to help couples reframe and interrupt cycles of sabotaging goodness 
  • Shifting from defensive reflexes to vulnerability and repair 
  • Risks and limitations 

Target Audience

  • Counsellors
  • Social Workers
  • Psychologists
  • Psychotherapists
  • Therapists
  • Marriage & Family Therapists
  • Addiction Counsellors
  • Case Managers
  • Physicians
  • Nurses
  • Other Mental Health Professionals

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