AN ONLINE WORKSHOP FOR HEALTHCARE & OTHER PROFESSIONALS
When: Mon, Sep 22 – Sun, Oct 19, 2025 (4 weeks) ONLINE weekly at your discretion
Cost: $240 (Students $120) Registration Deadline: Monday, Sep 15, 2025
WEEK 1
- Introduction
- Gottman Research: Structure, reliability, likelihood.
- What characterizes the relationship in long time older adult relationships?
- The Principles of Gottman Practice Theory: Setting the conditions for positive emotional experience.
WEEK 2
- The Sound Relationship House Theory
- Love and Attachment Deconstructed: The Sound Relationship House Practice Theory
- Treatment Efficacy?
- How complex are the problems we are expected to treat?
- Life Stage or a Life of Problems: What are the issues older adult couples are bringing to therapy?
- Introduction of a Case Example
WEEK 3
- Assessment Precedes Intervention: Be thorough, know where you are going and do no harm.
- Assessment Made Easy: Am I foolish-ing you?
- Example Assessment and Case Plan, pre-retirement couple
WEEK 4
- Sessional Goal and Objectives: simply complex.
- Example Ritual of Connection Intervention.
- Why, When and How of Structured Interventions: Replacing the Four Horsemen, The Gottman Rapoport, Dreams in Conflict, Aftermath of the Fight and More.
- Where to go from here.
Instructor: Mike Fidler, MSW, RSW
Certified Advanced Trainer Gottman Institute, Seattle Washington
Bio:
Age 70, with 48 years of marriage, 3 adult children, 5 grandchildren and one grand dog. I began my clinical work with the Children’s Aid Society in1979, after receiving dual degrees a Bachelor of Social Work and a Bachelor of Arts (Sociology), became a child abuse specialist, taught for the Institute for the Prevention of Child Abuse in Toronto as parttime faculty, immediately following my Master’s degree from U of T in1984. I started a parttime private practice in 1984 overlapping my work in the CAS as did my faulty position with IPCA. Leaving the CAS, my wife and I put our nose to the grind to create a fulltime clinical practice in 1989 and had 9 associates, four counselling locations in four regions before we sold Mike Fidler and Associates in 2019. Early in 2004, I began my Gottman studies resulting in certification as a Gottman Methods Couples Therapist in 2009 and was certified an Arts and Science Couples workshop leader in the same year. I began teaching Gottman level one training to therapists a year later and in 2014, by virtue of invitation by the Gottman Institute was certified to teach all three levels and act as a consultant to Therapists in the Certification track in 2016. As an advanced trainer at the Gottman Institute I am privileged to receive yearly training as member of 35 similar trainers worldwide. There are three CDN advanced trainers. My wife and I started Positive Relationship Inc, in 2019 with a focus on couple’s clinical work, teaching and consulting. Presently, I primarily focus on teaching and consulting offering three consulting groups, and individual consultation to therapists conversant in Gottman methods. I am pioneering workshops directed to teens assisting with their developmental challenges to learn how to engage in positive relationship.
Registration and payment available online at https://aging.utoronto.ca/642-2/