Greetings,
I am pleased to be sending you this opportunity to enroll in Martha Kauppi’s online program, Assessing and Treating Sex Issues in Psychotherapy.  Martha is an excellent instructor and teaches practical approaches for addressing sex issues in therapy. I recommend taking a look at her program and if it seems like a good fit for you and your practice, do not hesitate to sign up. You will be putting the information you learn to immediate use improving the lives of your clients.
If you've ever struggled to treat a complex sex issue like desire discrepancy, you won’t want to miss this opportunity!

AASECT-certified sex therapist and supervisor Martha Kauppi still has spots available in Assessing and Treating Sex Issues in Psychotherapy, an online program beginning February 5th for therapists who want to become better at helping their clients with concerns about sex.

This 16-week course is Martha's full toolkit of robust strategies, interventions, and techniques for working effectively with sex issues from straightforward to complicated. It will equip you with the knowledge and skills you need to be comfortable, confident, and competent working with a broad variety of common (and uncommon) sex issues.
Would you like to help your clients heal more deeply, in an extremely vulnerable and important area of their lives?
retain more clients with difficult‐to‐shift sex issues such as desire discrepancy?

be sure you aren't missing life‐threatening health issues by failing to ask the right questions?
become known in your community as someone who deals competently with sex issues, and have clients seek you out for your expertise?
be a therapist whom clients trust and confide in, no matter the topic of discussion?
If so, this program is or you.

Even more, unlike most online courses on the market, this one gives you in-depth personal attention, feedback, and consultation with Martha herself, so you have expert support for using your new tools successfully right away. 
Martha's course is designed to take your skills to the next level, regardless of how experienced you are in treating sex issues.

If you're just starting out, it will give you a thorough introduction to all the information and tools you need to tackle even the most complex sex issues.
If you already have experience working with sex issues, you’ll pick up an extremely useful framework and a fresh approach, plus you’ll brush up on multiple areas of knowledge, including the physiology of arousal and much more. And as you incorporate skills and interventions for supporting differentiation of self, you may find your relational therapy skills improving as well.

Wherever you start out, Martha will be there with you all the way, guiding your progress and cheering on your successes. Because Martha wants to give as much personal attention and feedback to each of her students as possible, the class size is limited—so you’ll want to sign up while spots are still available.
You can learn more about Martha's course here, and you can reach her with any questions at martha@instituteforrelationalintimacy.com.
Warmly,
Amy Blake, LCSW
www.relationshiptrip.com

P.S. If you missed Martha’s free 2-part mini-workshop on getting a strong start working with sex issues in therapy, it’s not too late; you can access it here. It's basically a sneak peek at a portion of the first module of her course, so it will give you a sense of her teaching style and the quality of her course materials, as well as lots of valuable information and a terrific assessment tool you can use immediately.
Letter-style emails are best used for addressing a single topic. Write in a professional yet friendly fashion, and be as specific as possible about what you're trying to communicate.

“I want to have sex every day!”
“That sounds horrible. I really only have time and energy, not to mention desire, about once a week!”
“Once a WEEK? We haven’t had sex in 2 months! I’d be happy with once a week. You’re not attracted to me any more, are you? I don’t think I can do this anymore. I just can’t hear you say no again. If you ever feel like sex, you just let me know, I won’t be initiating anymore.”
“Of course I’m still attracted to you, but I’m tired after work, and it sure doesn’t help that you pressure me all the time.”
 
I’ll bet you’ve worked with a couple like this. Many couples experience desire issues at one time or another, and, like the couple in our example, each partner is likely to make meaning of it that is damaging to the relationship. With this issue, distress tends to run deep.
 
We need to let go of the idea that a perfect couple means two souls seamlessly melding into one. The key to a long lasting and fulfilling partnership is not perfectly matched libidos or perfectly coordinated personalities. It's the ability to tolerate and even take delight in the ways in which you and your partner are different, to draw close while still honoring your unique selves.
 
Every relationship has a desire discrepancy of one kind or another, and not just about sexual desire. A couple might have a desire discrepancy about, e.g., how clean the house must be, how much money must be saved, or whether aging relatives move in at the end of life. Yet couples and therapists tend to struggle to help with sexual desire discrepancies much more than any of the myriad other ways in which couples experience differences. There is nothing more normal and expectable than that couples should have different levels of desire. But this doesn't mean that desire discrepancies don't cause a lot of distress, when couples aren't equipped to handle them.
 
Sex is a deeply sensitive subject. Because sex feels so vulnerable, a person is much more likely to feel hurt and make damaging meaning of it when things don’t go as planned. For instance, many people feel rejected, unloved, pushed away, like a bad partner, not a real (insert gender here), and so on. Most of us don’t question our very being when our spouse forgets to vacuum.
 
When treating clients who struggle with this problem, normalizing desire discrepancy is an important early step. Clients often don’t realize they have grappled with and probably resolved desire discrepancies in other spheres; they can do it here too! A difference in desire for sex is not a sign that the relationship is broken, but rather a completely healthy consequence of the individuality of human beings.

Click Here for additional Training Information
 

Click Here for access to Martha's Free Mini-Course: How to Get a Strong Start Talking About Sex in Therapy: Why, When, How and Then What?

Assessing and Treating Sex Issues in Psychotherapy begins February 2018. Click on the link above to access Martha's free mini-course and to make sure you get all the registration information for Martha's online course as soon as it becomes available.

Martha Kauppi's mission is to help all therapists be competent and comfortable addressing sex and sexuality with clients. Given my own successful experiences of utilizing Martha's training and assessment materials, I can say with confidence that if you join her course Assessing and Treating Sex Issues in Psychotherapy, your clients will know you are a competent and safe therapist when it comes to addressing issues of sex and sexuality in therapy. 
Sincerely,
Amy
Amy Blake, LCSW
www.relationshiptrip.com

 
The couples intensive embodies two days to focus on just you and your relationship. It is an invitation to be in heaven for some and well... decidedly not-heaven for others. Recently, I had the honor and pleasure of spending time in a couples intensive with my partner, being expertly guided by our teacher and mentor, Hedy Schleifer, MA. Here is a peek into what taking the journey of being present with the one you love can create.
 
In the couples intensive, you have the opportunity to explore each other’s world. Our worlds are filled with many neighborhoods. In fact, we create new neighborhoods all the time so anytime you visit your partner and are in the present moment, you will experience a new neighborhood, a place neither of you has ever been before. This is a place of expansion and aliveness. Some of our neighborhoods are wonderful places to explore and others are places we should never go to alone.
 
The first visit of the intensive experience is to a Precious Neighborhood, which is a place where you feel deeply good, centered, competent, a wonderful sense of aliveness. I invited my partner into my world to explore one of my precious neighborhoods. and boom, I hit gridlock. I feel deeply good out in nature…I feel most competent in my work… Which neighborhood to pick? I got caught in overthinking and needed to let the neighborhood pick me. As I sat in total connection and presence with my partner, an image of me on a paddle board began to emerge. Gridlock reappeared when I tried to bat the paddle board vison away because it did not seem to have anything to do with anything. In the spirit of allowing the presence of my partner to help me access the deepest wisdom and greatest feeling of aliveness within myself, I finally relaxed and went with the paddle board and here is what emerged.

                                                    “In the spirit of allowing the presence of my partner to help me access
                                        the deepest wisdom and greatest feeling of aliveness within myself, I finally relaxed
​                                                                                 and went with the paddle board…”
​
As I first learned to paddle board, not many years ago, I was shaky and wobbly. However, each time I stepped on the board I felt stronger and more balanced. After every spectacular plunge, I recalibrated and found a better balance. Eventually, I learned to relax and enjoy the scenery of the beautiful water and to anticipate the ripples and waves with a sense of adventure. I now paddle with a mission of getting from one place to the next and I can even take time to stop and purposely slip into the water to refresh and rejuvenate. I take time to lay on the board, relax and experience the feel of the water on my hands and feet as I dangled them overboard while appreciating the clouds floating across the sky. My precious neighborhood evolved nicely as each street highlighted important aspects of my paddle board experience. It then occurred to me that in the eyes of my partner and in a state of deep resonance I was describing a model for living life to its fullest. This is where I landed

​                                              Paddle Boarding as a Model for Living Life to its Fullest
 
1.  Enjoy the plunge and have the passion and resilience to get back up again, and again and
​     again.
2.  Welcome life’s ripples with a sense of adventure.
3.  Learn to Glide with ease, strength and balance
4.  Jump in, splash and play often.
5.  Take time to relax and enjoy the water below, the sky above and to appreciate your brilliant
​      and balanced presence in-between.


As a guide and therapist for other people’s lives and relationships It is important that I walk my talk and personally experience what I am asking of the people I help. It was clear that experiencing an intensive would be lovely and connecting for my relationship and it would help me and my partner gain clarity about our priorities and direction. My hope was that it would also help me learn to be a better guide for the couple’s intensives I provide.  Our intensive did all those things but as often the case there was so much more.
It was an immense surprise to connect with and articulate such a coherent model for living. I am intrigued by the potential for living this model fully and feeling more integrated and whole in my life and my relationship. I look forward to bringing this sense of balance, strength and ease into my work helping people transform their lives and relationships. I invite you to experience an intensive couples journey of your own and discover where your connection with your beloved will take you. It truly is a journey worth taking.
​Amy Blake, LCSW
Click HERE for more information about the couples intensive.