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Over One Million Copies in Print
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October 16th Saturday 10am-4pm • Registration Open! 
$45 per person • $40 per person for 2 • $35 per person 3 or more
Walnut Creek Marriott Hotel • Santa Rosa Room • Free Parking
~This workshop is for individuals in or not in a current long term committed relationship. Also helpful for those who are separated divorced, remarried, or in stepfamilies. Couples also may attend together, but focus will be on each person and their growth, not on the other. You may find it helpful to come with a close friend or as a group as the workshop provdes a new foundation for supporting each other in the discovery of new relationship possibilities for the rest of your life~
The aliveness that you felt at the beginning of your marriage has faded into the background. Something is just different. The pressures and expectations you had of being the perfect spouse and parent while marrying the perfect partner is feeling unbearable. You want relief from this pressure. You want your spouse to change. S/he wants you to change. You no longer know how you really feel. You are stuck in a gridlock of unmet expectations.
When angry, your spouse accuses you of the same things over and over and, of course, you defend yourself, giving your own list about her/him. Or you never argue at all nor share how your really feel. You both have imaginary conversations with each other in your heads. You make adjustments to keep the peace, only to find things go back right where they were.
The surprise in all of this is that marriage (& parenthood), not your partner, is working its magic on you. Marriage, long term committed emotional relationship, is different from any other. It is marriage--long term emotional committment from your heart--that forces you to take a deep look at things about yourself that are hard for you to see, hard for you to believe, and hard for you to face. It also is an essential key to YOUR happiness.
What you have been unaware of and defending about yourself is called the "relationship blindspot." It is what your partner sees that you can't. It is the place where you have substituted how you really feel for what you thought you should feel. It is where what you say differs from what you actually do. Your real voice (how you really feel) is covered over by this blindspot, and it creates the painful, dead-end arguments that constantly happen between you, your spouse and your family members. It also creates that dead feeling that you have inside yourself.
Instead of going down the same impossible street and falling in the same impossible hole, you can begin to walk down a new street--a fundamentally new way of seeing things where you commit to investigate and accept what is actually happening so you can work with it instead of against it. Stop beating yourself up over and over again for trying to do the impossible. Discover what is really possible in the situation you are in right here and now.
With heartfelt directness, humor and kindness, Don Elium gives you straightforward guidance to identify your blindspot, understand how they create your marriage and parenting frustrations, and most importantly, discover how to start walking down a new street where gridlock turns into new and real possibilities. Not always pleasant, not always painful, but always possible.
Workshop Directions Click Here~Walnut Creek Marroitt Hotel
There are NO QUICK FIXES in marriage.
Long term soutions for long-term committed relationships!
For lunch, walking distance to Jack-In-The-Box, MainStreet Grill in Hotel, Japanese Sushi & Grill
& Taco Bell
• Workshop Questions, email Don Elium at Don@DonElium.com or call 925 256-8282
Five Hours of California Continuing Education Units are available for licensed therapists and nurses.*
PARTNERSHIP
But let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow." ~Kahlil Gibran
Member California Association of Marriage & Family Therapist
*Accredited as a provider of Continuing Education by the
Board of Behavioral Sciences, State of California, Approval No. PCE 3717
(Lic. # MFC28381)
Don Elium, MA MFT
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist
Individual & Couple Psychotherapy
(MFC28381)
