The AAMFT Podcast

In this episode, Eli sits down with Dr. Lewis to discuss the four components of sibling ghosts: frozen images, crystalized roles, unhealthy loyalty, and sibling transference.

In this interview, Dr. Ellyn Bader sits down with Eli to describe the evolution of her work as a couples therapist. She also recalls how she and her therapist husband, Dr. Peter Pearson, founded the Couples Institute and the Developmental Model of Couples Therapy, a model that teaches therapists how to diagnose, intervene and significantly help troubled relationships.

On this episode of the AAMFT Podcast, Eli sits down with the authors ofSocioculturally Attuned Family Therapy - Teresa McDowell, Carmen Knudson-Martin & Maria Bermudez – for a thoughtful dialogue on the need for marriage and family therapists to engage in socially responsible practice by infusing diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout theory and clinical practice. They explore why sociocultural attunement and equity matter, providing clinicians with integrative, equity-based family therapy guidelines. It is a valuable listen for any systemic practitioner wanting to apply a critical consciousness to their work.

Vienna Pharaon is a licensed marriage and family therapist and one of New York City’s most sought-after relationship therapists. Vienna is the creator of @mindfulMFT on Instagram where she’s helping over 600K people around the world heal their wounds. She has been featured in The Economist, Vice, and Motherly, and has led workshops for Peloton and Netflix, among others. Her latest book, The Origins of You, unlocks a healing process to help our clients understand their own family of origin—and examine what worked (and didn’t) in that system. In this episode, Eli sits down with Vienna to explore the importance of continuing to do your own family origin work throughout your life course as a systemic therapist.

Helping families/systems to achieve their goals is one of the most rewarding (and challenging!) clinical tasks. While therapists usually receive excellent training in theoretical underpinnings coupled with many hours of therapy and a high standard of supervision (often delivered by live or video review).

There still remain too few avenues for practice and to achieve competency in core Systemic Family Therapy (SFT) skills.

In this episode, Eli talks to Tony & Ryan about adopting deliberate practice methods to support experiential — “learn by doing” — training.