“Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy.”

~Ester Perel

PACT Couples Workshops in Seattle

Take a deep dive to lift your relationship to the next level

Secure Connections offers day-long workshops and retreats, as well as evening mini-workshops for couples to learn about a specific topic or challenge. Most of these are at our office or conference room with 4-6 couples to create the intimacy for best learning. Carolyn Sharp leads a discussion and then facilitates exercises to help couples practice and build skills.

LEARN ABOUT PACT THERAPY

ONLINE CLASSES

Bring the Joy Back!

Join Carolyn Sharp, LICSW in this series of online classes for couples. Enhance your connection and return the fun and play to your life together!

Have you been feeling overwhelmed and disconnected in the craziness of the pandemic and lockdown?

Has your relationship felt on autopilot for so long it's gone to sleep?

Is your relationship feeling empty of fun but full of conflict?

Are you missing the spark and passion of your earlier times together?

Feeling confused about how to bring back the fun and joy to your relationship?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, these classes are the answer!

Join me for these classes and watch your relationship come back to life!

Let's Have FUN and Build Back Joy!

Expert PACT therapist, Carolyn will inspire learning and play with each other while teaching skills necessary to bring the joy back! Each 75-minute class will focus on a different aspect of secure relationships with opportunity for discussion and exercises to practice these concepts in the comfort & privacy of your own home. Her humor and natural playfulness will create fun working together on building something new!

Classes are on Wednesdays from 7-8:15 PST:

February 9: Creating New in the Same: Ways to keep things feeling fresh when you’ve been in some form of lock down for 2 years. Bring back the fun!
February 23: Fighting Fair: Information to make your fights productive and healthy so you can return to happy and connected.
March 9: SPARK, SPARK BABY! Keeping the spark of attraction alive and thriving. Bring the play back!
March 23: Agreements that stick: how to create and honor your commitments to each other to make life easier and more fun.
April 6: Buying a verb and turning words into action: Making repairs meaningful to heal and reconnect.
April 20: Creating New in The Same; Ways to keep things feeling fresh when you’ve been in some form of lock down for 2 years. Bring back the fun!
May 4: Fighting Fair: Tools to make your fights productive and healthy so you can return to happy and connected .
May 18: SPARK, SPARK, BABY! Keeping the spark of attraction alive and thriving. Bring the play back!

Each class is $100 per couple, or sign up for 4 classes at once for $350.

ONE DAY ONLINE RETREAT

May 21, 2022

Starting Over: Taking relationship challenges to create a completely new relationship with one another.

After two years of a pandemic with the challenges facing everyone, many couples find themselves recovering from extraordinary events. Job losses, family losses, parenting under COVID, as well as many other health and emotional struggles. Many couples are feeling stuck and lost with what to do to improve things in their relationship and within their home.

In this fun one day retreat, Carolyn will help you and your partner not only recover from these events but more importantly create meaning and power from this recovery. The opportunity to reflect on the most significant aspects of these challenges and how to use these challenges to grow closer and stronger is rich and powerful. This day will be broken up between information shared to develop deeper understanding of the skills and practices involved in this process and exercises and guided embodied practices with one another to grow closer and create a richer, healthier, more vibrant relationship. There will be opportunity to learn from Carolyn as well as the other participants.

This retreat will be online over zoom from 9:30 to 3:30 with a one hour lunch break with a guided exercise during lunch. You will receive a workbook a week before the retreat to keep and use beyond the retreat.

Cost: $350 per couple.

Please email Carolyn for more information and to register.

COMING SUMMER 2022

The Power of “I’m Sorry”: How repairing injuries is your most helpful tool for a healthy relationship.

Repair is one of the most important pieces of relationship maintenance. As human beings, we are all messy and imperfect and you will make many errors over the course of your relationship. Mistakes are not a problem. But mistakes repeated without repair are stored in our memories and create expectations of future hurts and an atmosphere absent of safety and security. Repairing resolves this and creates strength, connection, and safety for both of you.

In this one day retreat, we will teach you the brain science and the process for creating successful repair for both of you, both giving and receiving. Through teachings and exercises, you will learn how to craft the perfect repair for each injury and how to feel soothed and supported as you provide this care to your partner. Throughout, you will also experience compassion and humor as common mistakes are made safe to acknowledge in this small group workshop.

COMING FALL 2022

Thinking About Polyamory? Is Consensual Nonmonogamy Healthy for Your Relationship?

More and more couples who come for therapy are interested in polyamory or consensual nonmonogamy. Some have been practicing it for years and believe it to be part of their values and their self-expression. Others believe it will bring sexual excitement and enhanced intimacy to their primary relationship. Regardless of where you are in your relationship, the decision to introduce other people into your committed relationship carries significant risk and challenge and should be done with a great deal of thought and care.

This evening series will provide information and guidance in making the healthiest decision about whether to open your relationship and how to do so while maintaining security and connection together. Discussion and break-out exercises will support you and your partner learning to navigate challenging discussions that will support you as a couple, regardless what you decide.

COMING WINTER 2022

Spark or Fire: Learning to use your conflict to grow closer.

Sharing a life with another person is easily the most difficult thing we do as adults. It is also the most worthwhile. Your differences which attracted you to each other and created that spark are now annoyances and difficulties that ignite battles about housework, parenting, hobbies, sex, money and all the other things you share. Learning how to resolve these differences and feel good at the end of these struggles is critically important to staying connected toward your shared goals.

In this half-day workshop, Carolyn will provide the neurobiological information to help you understand how fights start and how to support each other from getting tipped into “fight or flight” with one another. Through fun and lively exercises, she will help you feel the difference in learning to fight and recover quickly in creating “win-win” situations in ANY conflict.