Join us for 6-weeks of integrating relational skills into your practice
Enhance Your Counseling
Beginning on April 12, Join us for a 6-week immersive experience into the inner workings of our brain’s relational circuitry using The Joy Switch material in your counseling and coaching practice.
Chris Coursey will take a cohort of up to 12 people who work as licensed counselors, coaches, pastors, or helping professionals through The Joy Switch course on key topics for relational growth and healing looking at Your Attention, Your Thoughts and Feelings, and Your Body.
WHAT ARE RELATIONAL SKILLS?
Relational skills are a set of brain-based abilities that are essential for developing healthy connections and sustaining relationships. Ideally, we learn important skills from our families beginning in infancy, but the reality is we all have gaps. Relational skills are the missing piece most of us are searching for to deepen our ability to stay steady through the ups and downs of life, expand our healing and reach new heights in our relationships. We can fill painful gaps by learning crucial relational skills our brain needs to sustain a rhythm of joy and peace. When we know how, we can gain new tools so we work more effectively, efficiently and joyfully.
About the cohort
This brain-based curriculum is filled with hands-on practice so you fully experience the development of relational skills in your own life to be in a better position for effectively helping those you serve. In 6 weeks, you increase your capacity to serve and equip your clients with relational skills. You learn practical tools to use as well as a simple lens to help people gain more awareness to better activate their brain’s relational circuitry. What you receive will transform your practice and lay the foundation for increased healing and maturity in every area of your clients’ lives.
About Chris M. Coursey
For over 25 years THRIVEtoday president Chris Coursey has been using the Life Model to work with families, communities and individuals with severe trauma. Learning brain science, creating brain-based exercises and working with Dr. Jim Wilder has brought clarity to effectively serve and equip people who are on a journey of growth and recovery.
Chris is passionate about giving support to counselors and teaching people how relational skills can be applied to the important work of walking with people so they reach their God-given potential. Whether you are a licensed counselor, coach, pastor, or lay minister, there are exciting implications for how we can more effectively use relational brain skills to help people heal, mature and grow.
Cohort Days & times
Tuesdays; 6-7:30pm Eastern Time
April 12 – May 17, 2022 (6 weeks total)
Each 90-minute Meeting Includes
- Teaching from Chris Coursey on the topic of study each week.
- Exercises that Chris will lead you through and coach you on how to use with your clients.
- Application and Q & A time for Chris to help you troubleshoot special cases in your practice.
Group Requirements
- The Joy Switch book AND The Joy Switch Course
- You must actively work or volunteer in the field of counseling, coaching, pastoring, or something similar.
Cost & Registration
$997 Early Registration (ends 3/18)
$1199 Late Registration (ends 4/1 or once group is full)
Registration Includes
- Six 90-minute training sessions with Chris (valued at over $2000).
- Copy of the recordings from each session for the duration of the course to review and study.
- One full year with access to the Joy Switch Online Course (valued at $199).
- A PDF copy of Chris’ teaching notes.
- Registration closes on April 1st, or once the group is full.
Weekly Outline
When we counsel people, their attention is being hijacked by their pain, which can be relentless and all-consuming. This can be a huge barrier to seeing people heal. However, we can use the relational skills to help clients build capacity to deal with pain and not be overcome by it.
During week 1 you will learn:
How to help people train their brains to maximize their joy levels without getting stuck in the ruts of unprocessed pain and negative emotions.
Keys for empowering and equipping clients to expand their emotional capacity and build resilience so they can suffer well when pain comes knocking at the door.
In Week 1, our focus is helping clients build capacity so they can face their pain without drowning in it. Once this new resiliency is in place, you will now be able to shift your focus and help clients recover and get back to joy when they experience pain and negative emotions.
During week 2 we will focus on:
How to lead clients through this process of recovering from the pain they experience.
Learning valuable tools to help people develop pathways back to joy from painful emotions.
How to help others gain confidence in their ability to face the hard things in life and find joy even in the midst of trials and suffering.
As counselors, we tend to either focus on thoughts and cognition OR feelings and emotion. But how can we get both to work together in joy and peace instead of being in opposition to each other?
During Week 3, you will:
Look at how the brain works from the perspective of both feelings and thoughts.
Discover how you can help thoughts and feelings to synergistically work together the way God designed.
Learn tips for how to get joy and peace to be the thermostat for the thoughts and feelings of both you and your clients.
This catch-up week will allow the group to review and ask more questions from Weeks 1-3 .
During Week 4 you will:
Dig deeper into discussion and application related to the material covered so far.
Learn additional content Chris was not able to share in the previous weeks.
Have an extended time for questions and troubleshooting.
Those of us in pain want to escape our body because this is where our pain shows up. How can we help people learn to live in their body in joy and peace without having to run from it? Learn how the body is the canvas for the brain and how to maximize this reality.
During Week 5 you will learn:
What the Immanuel Lifestyle is and how it helps people to stay anchored in peace and shalom.
How to teach clients to become more aware of their bodies and tune into the body as an indicator of their emotional health.
How to engage the body and the brain so they function the way God designed so people can be comfortable in their bodies and experience the Shalom of God
In this final week, Chris will lead you through final thoughts that bring together all you have learned. This week will include an extended time of Q & A, including practice and application.
What Previous Participants Have to Say:
I struggled for far too many years with a codependent relationship that kept hitting my buttons and I would get very upset at the way they treated me. It would bother me for days. I had found freedom a few years back as I changed the way I responded but never knew why I had stayed in the dance all that time. They seemed to have power over me and I didn’t like myself for being affected. Chris’s teaching in codependency really hit the nail on the head. Explaining that we track the other to find out how we feel and that it is the brain’s way of solving the problem made such sense! I have been able to share this with a few of my clients who struggle with this and it really gave them an aha moment! – Clare, Counselor
This course has helped me incorporate joy building practices with my clients. I have seen how important and powerful this is. I was amazed at how quickly one particular client was able to connect with Jesus and therefore gain powerful perspective and insight through a simple joy building exercise. – YWAM Member Care Specialist
I received great personal encouragement and deepening of the “Joy Switch” book. I noticed a positive change in myself and my approach in the last two counselling/mentoring sessions: One person. wrote as feedback: “I returned home from our session joyfully and gratefully”. Now I feel more secure to meet (today) with a traumatized person I have counseled mainly by letters so far. Before, I was afraid of not being able to handle a meeting and was not willing to be open to real attachment. – Counselor/Mentor.
This cohort empowered me with skills to help my clients increase their capacity for joy. It was practical, insightful, and relevant to my coaching practice. – Brian, Coach
After the Joy Switch cohort, I have been better able to recognize the rhythms of my client’s needs for rest and returning to joy. While this material is immensely useful in helping individuals manage their own emotions, it has been particularly helpful with couples. For example, I had a joint session in which the husband was ten minutes late already underwater in shame, realizing he had to now face an irritated wife who was tired of his not coming through. The Joy Switch material gave me the skills to help them individually return to joy and then to reconnect with each other. They left the session connected, hopeful and asking for more. – Ed, Therapist