However, in the second year of marriage, an event happened that I could not forgive because I felt that my husband saying ” I’m sorry” really meant, ” I’m sorry you feel this way.”. 1 review of Hold Me Tight Workshop "My husband and I went to a Hold Me Tight workshop and came away amazed by the impact it had on our relationship of 25 years. Ask fellow travellers and attraction managers your top questions. And I now have a lighter toolbox to carry around. My husband initially questioned why he had to learn about attachment theory, but he soon realized that the attachment theory was a necessary "build up "to the difficult work we embarked on this weekend. We just celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary and we both wrote in our cards that things are better than ever. Thank you Michelle & Sam! You gave us lots of practical and helpful tools to take the learning and apply it at home. I thought the presentation style of media clips mixed with speaking and opportunities to share was wonderful. Thanks again for the wonderful experience. However, my partner encouraged me to attend and I am very glad we did. The group of women that attended were some of the most fascinating, kindest, nonjudgmental, authentic, strong, supportive and emotionally articulate people that I had ever spent time with. Wanda Garner, MA, LMFT, uses a proven method to help couples regain closeness and connection in their love relationships. Years of psychoanalysis, conventional marriage therapy and two years of weekly couples therapy with an excellent EFT therapist still could not get us beyond our feelings of abandonment and shame. The Hold Me Tight Weekend Workshop was a rewarding experience for us individually and as a couple. As my partner is less comfortable than I with sharing his deepest emotions, it helped so much to have a room full of other couples, all being open and vulnerable with one another. You will find it enlightening and healing!!! We then had a crisis in our relationship which led to a breakdown in trust and much pain. The private practice sessions you gave us made it feel safe to discuss very personal issues. A few days before the workshop, I found that I needed to have surgery which would be five days after the “Hold Me Tight Workshop” ended. By the end of just these two days, I saw my partner expressing and reaching out in ways that I have not seen him do before. Thank you for a wonderful weekend. What does a Private Retreat or Couples Therapy Intensiv e or Hold Me Tight® Workshop look like?. We are thankful we gave our relationship the gift of attending the workshop and encourage other couples to do the same. We recently retired and had time to move from our working relationship to something deeper. I have done many workshops so I have experienced this sort of thing before, but this was the first time my partner had ever done something like this, and the first time I had done a couples workshop. InterContinental (IHG) Hotels in Brighton, Hotels near Whats On In Brighton and Hove, Surfing, Windsurfing & Kitesurfing in Brighton, Zipline & Aerial Adventure Parks in Brighton, Points of Interest & Landmarks in Brighton, Conference & Convention Centres in Brighton, Devil's Dyke National Trust: Tickets & Tours‎, American Express Community Stadium: Tickets & Tours‎, Brighton Toy and Model Museum: Tickets & Tours‎, Brighton Museum and Art Gallery: Tickets & Tours‎. It is an educational workshop designed to help you build your relationship, overcome your difficulties, strengthen your connection and feel secure, valued and loved. We know that marriage and long term relationships takes work, of course, and so we are excited to begin a new chapter with a new therapist who is EFT Certified in our area. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for helping us start on the road to a happier journey. Michelle and Sam are a great team, and the group of support personnel they had to assist us was skilled and professional. We attended the Hold Me Tight Workshop with Sam and Michelle because we just read Sue Johnson’s book Hold Me Tight, and thought “Hmm, wouldn’t it be fun to take a Couples Workshop like this together to practice all this stuff?”. We now have developed a safe place for one another to share our feelings without defensiveness, blame or shame, and prior to the Hold Me Tight Workshop with Michelle & Sam, we weren't 100% safe with each other, therefore we also weren't vulnerable with each other so our communications about our own feelings were an unknown weakness. Since the workshop we have had a number of difficult emotional conversations that have gone vastly different than our past attempts. Hold Me Tight® is a two-day intensive workshop based in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy by Sue Johnson, created for couples struggling with communication, intimacy and security. Hold Me Tight® in the Heartland. Well, Sam and Michelle’s Hold Me Tight Workshop is just that- a safe place to allow us explore that connection that we all carry among us, but don’t know quite how to get to! As a same sex couple being vulnerable in a setting of many diverse couples is hard to comprehend, but it worked. Picture a cat going to a vet for his/her yearly visit, seeing the carrier and having the human guardian trying to force him/her into it is a fairly accurate representation of how I was feeling on the car ride over to the event on day one of Hold Me Tight Workshop! Even though my husband and I have read the book, “Hold Me Tight”, and have been in couples therapy, the Hold Me Tight Workshop made the principles come to life. Dr. Gannon came over and very delicately helped us work through the issue together --- a difficult conversation that had gone nowhere for years in our marriage. We were in a rock-bottom place recently and our hope is restored and we are giddy around each other as if we just met all over again. Thank you Michelle and Sam for your commitment to Emotionally Focused Therapy and the Hold Me Tight work. Apologies where you really take responsibility for what you did to contribute to the hurt. We took the risk and considered it our “trust fall”. We navigated deep waters with the help of our workshop leaders and therapists while feeling safe and secure. As a same-sex couple, we had some concerns about a “mixed-group” but felt perfectly welcome and safe. I am so thankful that we will now have these tools to carry forward in our relationship. Figuring out what our "raw spots" are or triggers made a lot of sense. Hold Me Tight®: Conversations For Connection. All exercises will be done privately with your partner. While we continue to have work to do as a couple I am experiencing a wonderful renaissance in our relationship. It was safe and the conversations remained private and not “out in the open” in front of the other couples. My wife and I were invited by family to go with them to the Hold Me Tight Workshop led by Dr Michelle Gannon and Dr Sam Jinich in San Francisco. This is allowing us to grow the love in our relationship and create a healthy and crucial relationship attachment security. I learned a great deal and have much work to do, but now have a way to move forward together with my spouse – with a theory based in science, a common language and some positive experiences from the workshop (hard as they were) that we can do this! A Hold Me Tight ® couples experience is designed to deepen your engagement and connection with each other. At the end of the workshop, we were asked “what we got” from the workshop. We had the pleasure of attending the Hold Me Tight Workshop led by Dr. Michelle Gannon and Dr. Sam Jinich. My experience was completely opposite. Imagine all the grief that he had bottled up the past 9 years. Thank you Michelle and Sam for your Hold Me Tight Workshop this past weekend. The workbook provides a step by step process that we were able to practice over the weekend, with the support of professionals there to help as we needed them. Hold Me Tight® in the Heartland. I didn't want to just read about it, I wanted to "work on it”! He had blocked out Linda’s feelings of abandonment and rejection. As a newly dating couple, we looked on the Internet to find a Couples Retreat like yours because we deeply want to form a secure relationship. It occurred to us it was the way the conversations were presented in a safe, encouraging, warm and humorous atmosphere. I found it fascinating and was looking for something more. They gave us the perfect amount of lecture and explanation, as well as private time for us to go off with our partners to work on the different exercises and conversations. We cannot recommend the Hold Me Tight Workshop with Michelle & Sam enough for all couples no matter what state your relationship may be in. Michelle and Sam are both very competent, knowledgeable and skilled. Bless your hearts. I truly believe that our time in your workshop gave my beloved and I the thing we had almost lost..... hope. All of a sudden, we were communicating from our hearts with the ease and emotion we began with. The love and compassion of all of the staff there was clearly felt and deeply appreciated. My wife and I attended with the simple hope of spending a weekend becoming closer and more connected. Michelle and Sam's presentation, with the help of the EFT Volunteer Therapists there, created an atmosphere of compassion and safety, based on their own vulnerabilities shared, to allow us, as participants, to dig deeply into our own selves, to blamelessly and very openly confront very difficult history and emotions. We are both very grateful for the EFT Therapists who helped us talk through the hard conversations. Thank you Michelle and Sam for your warmth and care. Visit The Program to find out more about what Hold Me Tight Online can offer. My husband was completely unfamiliar with therapy and had no idea what to expect, so he attended really to support me, not because he thought he would get a lot out of it. They really are a great team, well organized and excellent presenters. We had found our way by trial and a lot of error (:-), but this workshop gave us the particulars of building and maintaining loving bonds. 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