Are you interested in strengthening your couples therapy skills with a group of like-minded clinicians? 

Therapists of New York is thrilled to offer a weekly Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) Supervision Group.  EFCT is the most empirically supported treatment in helping distressed couples build strong, secure bonds. It provides a uniquely humanistic, attachment-focused lens that goes right to the heart of the matter. Come find out why therapists and clients alike resonate deeply with this model.

The aim of this group will be to:

• Strengthen your skills in the EFCT model through didactics, guidance, and feedback on clinical case examples.

• Track your couple’s negative cycles: help couples track and understand their cycles from an attachment lens & unite them in fighting against the cycle to achieve deeper connection. 

• Create a consistent, supportive community for therapists to feel less alone in the natural ups and downs of working with couples.

• Provide hours of supervision to support EFCT certification for eligible clinicians.

The group creator and leader, Dr. Emily Pedowitz, is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist and Supervising Psychologist specializing in couples therapy and trauma treatment. She was awarded international certification as a therapist in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy following her postdoctoral fellowship at NYU Langone Medical Center Military Family Center, where she developed a specialty in working with traumatized and high-conflict couples. Dr. Pedowitz deeply believes in the power of secure attachment in and outside the therapeutic relationship to resource us all through life’s challenges. 

Please note, Dr. Pedowitz is currently an ICEEFT supervisor candidate, which means your time in this group will count towards your group supervision hours for ICEEFT certification.

Location: Virtual

Time: Mondays 10 AM - 11 PM, beginning in January 2025 (date TBD, currently enrolling) and Thursdays 11 am-12 pm (Currently Full)

Costs: $100/session 

Maximum Participants: 6-8 therapists

Email For more information, contact epedowitz@therapistsofny.com

Finding your footing as a couple’s therapist can be challenging for any clinician, but it is especially difficult to do when working on your own. For this reason, Therapists of New York is thrilled to offer a weekly Couples Therapy Supervision Group geared towards helping private practice clinicians learn the essential knowledge and skills to support couples. The group will help clinicians find and hone their unique style as a couples therapist. 

The group will be run by the Director of the Couples Program at Therapists of New York, Annabelle Seife, Ph.D. Annabelle’s couples therapy approach is an integration of interpersonal psychodynamic psychotherapy, Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), Gottman skills, her own premarital counseling program (Before the Leap), and Relational Life Therapy (RLT). As a supervisor, Annabelle helps her supervisees ground themselves in their own orientation and interpersonal style as they integrate new clinical skills to become confident and authentic couples therapists. 

These skills include:

• Identifying couples’ entrenched ways of relating

• Reflecting here-and-now dynamics in order to provide couples with a new emotional experience

• Providing psychoeducation and skills in a way that couples can take in and practice

• Containing conflict to create emotional safety and model healthy relationship practices

• Facilitating direct and authentic expressions of vulnerability

The aim of the group will be to:

1. Strengthen your skills in couples therapy through didactics, guidance and feedback on clinical case examples. 

2. Teach specific EFT, RLT, and Gottman skills for you to integrate as you find/strengthen your own therapeutic style with couples.

3. Create a consistent, supportive community for therapists to feel less alone in the natural ups and downs of working with couples

Location: Virtual

Time: Mondays from 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM; beginning late January/early February.

Cost: $75/session 

Maximum Participants: 6 participants

Email For more information, contact aseife@therapistsofny.com

Sexuality inevitably arises in our clinical work, often influencing both patient and clinician in ways that may be subtle but powerful. These moments can evoke complex emotions, including shame, vulnerability, and uncertainty, which when unexamined, may lead to impasses, ruptures, or ethical dilemmas. This is compounded by the fact that many training programs do not adequately cover sexuality as a clinical theme or issue. 

This supervision group is designed to provide a supportive and thoughtful space where clinicians from all backgrounds can deepen their understanding of the complex ways that sexuality, sexual issues, and related dynamics may appear in treatment. Some objectives are as follows: 

1. Increase comfort and competency assessing for and addressing sexual issues 

2. Expand repertoire for thinking psychodynamically about sex/sexuality in treatment

3. Build awareness of own biases pertaining to sex and sexuality

4. Strengthen conceptualization of sexual issues

5. Create a consistent, supportive community for therapists to process clinical material related to sex/sexuality and erotic transference/counter-transference
   

About the Group Leader:

Dr. Ali Shames-Dawson’s research and clinical foci integrate psychoanalytic, attachment, and social-developmental perspectives to explore questions of sexual subjectivity, gender socialization, and embodiment. Her work examines the intersections of culture, power, and desire with sexual orientation and sexual agency, relevant to issues such as boundary violations, sexual consent negotiations, compulsive sexual behaviors, and sexual trauma. Dr. Shames-Dawson's doctoral research integrating relational psychoanalysis and male sexual behavior was recognized with awards from the APA Division 51 and the New School for Social Research. She is a licensed clinical psychologist and the Director of Education at Therapists of New York, and she teaches graduate-level courses on sexuality and clinical practice. Her approach emphasizes the centrality of intersectionality, embodiment, and unconscious processes to both human sexuality and psychotherapy process.

This is a clinical supervision group; readings will not be assigned unless requested.

Location: Virtual

Time: Start date end of March, Tues or Thurs afternoons (2 or 3 PM TBD based on participants’ preferences/availability.)

Cost: $90/session (sliding scale available)

Maximum Participants: 6 - 9 therapists

Email ashamesdawson@therapistsofny.comif you are interested in joining or learning more about the group. Some of her writing on sexuality can be viewed at Public Seminar.