- Identify the physiological and relational impacts of acute vs. chronic stress on couples’ functioning and happiness.
- Differentiate distress versus eustress and their distinct effects on relational skills and daily interactions.
- Recognize signs of diffuse physiological arousal (flooding) in session through physical and interpersonal cues.
- Utilize Stop Action and other immediate interventions to decrease emotional temperature during flooded moments.
- Apply breathing exercises, progressive muscle relaxation, and guided imagery to help couples complete the stress cycle.
- Implement pulse oximeter use and coregulation strategies to help couples recognize and depersonalize flooding.
- Facilitate Corrective Emotional Experiences and cross-questioning/cross-interpreting techniques to promote repair.
- Teach the HARD Conversation Model and mindfulness skills to build personal responsibility and stress resilience.
- Conduct Gottman-style stress-reducing conversations and negotiation exercises to address resentment and boundaries.
- Determine the structure, purpose, clinical indications, and contraindications for intensive couples therapy formats.
- Appraise client characteristics and logistical/ethical considerations when preparing for intensive sessions.
- Demonstrate strategies for joining through hope and conducting assessments/feedback in the initial phase of an intensive.
- Apply enactments and structured exercises to facilitate behavioral change and emotional connection during extended sessions.
- Differentiate conflict from flooding and intervene effectively with dysregulation across multiple hours.
- Implement closure strategies including reflection, future planning, and clinical handoffs in intensive formats.
- Evaluate when to pause or discontinue intensive work due to emerging ethical, clinical, or scope-of-practice concerns.
- Integrate stress-specific interventions into both standard weekly and intensive therapy formats for immediate clinical application.
- Recognize limitations of the research, potential risks, comorbidities, and cultural considerations in stress-focused couples work.
- Utilize therapist self-regulation and cultural humility to maintain presence and effectiveness with stressed couples.
- Develop follow-up plans and referral strategies that support long-term stress resilience beyond the intensive or seminar.
AZ 5-Day Treating Stressed Out Couples: An Immersive Retreat for Clinicians to Help Couples Reconnect, Regulate and Repair
When 50-Minute Sessions Aren’t Enough:
An Immersive Retreat to Help You Do Deeper, More Effective Couples Work
Spend 5 days in Sedona with Elizabeth Earnshaw, MA, LMFT, bestselling author and couples therapy expert, learning practical interventions to help stressed couples de-escalate, reconnect, and make real progress.
An Immersive Retreat to Help You Do Deeper, More Effective Couples Work
Spend 5 days in Sedona with Elizabeth Earnshaw, MA, LMFT, bestselling author and couples therapy expert, learning practical interventions to help stressed couples de-escalate, reconnect, and make real progress.
There Are Some Clinical Skills That Simply Can’t Be Learned in Passing
Helping stressed couples regulate in real time, move through resentment, and find their way back to connection requires more than insight, more than communication scripts, and more than what can often fit inside a standard 50-minute hour. It requires time, depth, observation, practice, and the chance to fully immerse yourself in the work.
That’s what makes this 5-day retreat with Elizabeth Earnshaw, MA, LMFT, so different. Set in Sedona’s quiet, restorative landscape, this immersive training is designed for clinicians who want to step away from the demands of daily practice and deepen the way they work with high-stress couples.
Elizabeth—Certified Gottman Therapist, founder of A Better Life Therapy, and author of multiple bestselling relationship books—has built this retreat around the clinical realities therapists face every day: escalation, shutdown, chronic resentment, emotional flooding, and the limitations of weekly therapy when couples need more support than the traditional format can hold.
Over five days, you’ll learn a practical treatment approach for working with stressed couples—one that includes tools for rapid de-escalation, co-regulation, repair conversations, attachment-informed interventions, and the thoughtful use of intensive therapy structure when deeper work is needed.
Most importantly, you won’t be learning this at a distance. Through live demonstrations, guided role-play, experiential practice, and real-time feedback, you’ll have the opportunity to absorb the work more fully—to try it on, refine it, and begin making it your own.
5-Day Treating Stressed Out Couples
An Immersive Retreat for Clinicians to Help Couples Reconnect, Regulate and Repair
LIVE in Sedona, Arizona: Wednesday, February 24 - Sunday, February 28, 2027
All-Inclusive package for $3,199!
Plus, earn up to 18 CE Hours — included in your tuition. Click here for Credit details
Credit hours may vary by board and profession. Don't see your state profession listed? Contact us.
Click here for cancellation policy details
Credit hours may vary by board and profession. Don't see your state profession listed? Contact us.
Click here for cancellation policy details
Come Experience the Magic of Sedona
Between the exquisite landscape, waterfalls, garden walks and healthful meals, the soul of Sedona can be felt as you drive onto the property. Past participants rave about how wonderful it is to stay at Mago… taking time to unwind, rejuvenate and connect with themselves and their community of colleagues… all at this remarkable place.
The daily schedule is designed to allow ample personal time to enjoy the beautiful surroundings and amenities. And, with all-inclusive pricing, your lodging, meals, and training are all covered in one simple price.
The Sedona Mago Retreat Center is located in an area long known for natural healing and spiritual awakening. Experience beauty, feel the energy, and awaken your spirit.
- Secluded retreat, offering 173 acres
- Private lodging with private bathrooms (Double occupancy available for two traveling together)
- Nourishing pesco-vegetarian cuisine (3 meals daily)
- Beautiful lake surrounded by trees, flowers, aromatic herbs, and many wild birds
- Covered patios, meditation areas & labyrinth
- Healing vortexes – experience healing and deep awakening
- Peaceful trails to enjoy nature
- Awe-inspiring sunrises, sunsets and stargazing
- Direct shuttles service available from Phoenix Sky Harbor (additional fees)
*Make this retreat even more memorable by renting a car or extending your trip to visit Sedona's most famous sights, amazing restaurants, and excursions.
5-Day Treating Stressed Out Couples
An Immersive Retreat for Clinicians to Help Couples Reconnect, Regulate and Repair
LIVE in Sedona, Arizona: Wednesday, February 24 - Sunday, February 28, 2027
All-Inclusive package for $3,199!
Plus, earn up to 18 CE Hours — included in your tuition. Click here for Credit details
Credit hours may vary by board and profession. Don't see your state profession listed? Contact us.
Click here for cancellation policy details
Credit hours may vary by board and profession. Don't see your state profession listed? Contact us.
Click here for cancellation policy details
Hands-On, Experiential and Deeply Immersive Training
Do you ever feel like you’re spinning plates in your standard 50-minute couples therapy session?
You’re constantly deciding whether to interrupt escalating stress or let the conversation continue, only to watch partners become flooded, shut down, or leave with unresolved resentment. On their own, stressed couples mirror this pattern at home: they open an issue, grapple briefly, then sweep it under the rug until the next session. Traditional weekly therapy frequently replicates the cycles of agitation, withdrawal, and lost affection that brought them in, leaving both clinician and clients frustrated with slow or stalled progress.
This training equips you to change that.
You’ll gain a deep understanding of how today’s relationship stressors impact couples, including:
- Ongoing work–life imbalance and burnout
- Social media comparison, pressure, and disconnection
- Emerging forms of infidelity and intimacy challenges driven by technology (online secrecy, digital affairs, pornography)
- Sociopolitical stress and its impact on emotional safety and communication
- Unequal mental, emotional, and household load within partnerships
Earnshaw will equip you with 22 evidence-based interventions designed to help couples regulate their emotions, communicate more constructively, and reconnect emotionally both inside and outside the therapy room.
Through Liz’s intensive therapy structure, you’ll also learn how to create focused, uninterrupted time for real-time regulation and in-session practice—so couples leave with practical tools they can apply right away.
For Therapists Ready to Move Beyond Surface-Level Couples Work
- You work with couples and want better tools for stress, flooding, resentment, and disconnection.
- You’re tired of watching 50-minute sessions end just as the real work begins.
- You’ve seen communication tools fall flat when one or both partners are too activated, shut down, or overwhelmed to use them.
- You want hands-on practice—not just theory—so you leave ready to use these interventions immediately.
- You’re interested in intensive couples work or want to bring more depth and momentum to your current approach.
- You already have experience with couples work—but want a more effective way to intervene when stress takes over the room.
- You’re craving the time, space, and depth to step away from daily demands and fully immerse yourself in meaningful clinical growth.
Ideal target audience for this retreat includes: Counselors, Marriage and Family Therapists, Social Workers, Psychologists, Physicians, and Other Mental Health Professionals.
Why Clinicians Trust Elizabeth Earnshaw
Elizabeth Earnshaw, MA, LMFT, is one of today’s most trusted relationship teachers and a sought-after expert in couples therapy, stress, and intensive relationship repair. She is an AAMFT Approved Supervisor, Certified Gottman Therapist, founder of A Better Life Therapy, and author of I Want This To Work, ‘Til Stress Do Us Part, The Couples Therapy Flip Chart, and The Clinician’s Guide to Intensive Couples Therapy.
On her widely followed platform, @lizlistens, she shares practical relationship guidance with a global audience.
Known for her direct, grounded, and deeply practical teaching style, Elizabeth helps clinicians move beyond insight alone and into real clinical application. At this retreat, she’ll guide you through a highly experiential learning process built around live demonstrations, role-plays, real-time feedback, and immersive skills practice so you can leave with interventions you feel confident using immediately with stressed, high-conflict couples.
Click here for information about Elizabeth Earnshaw
On her widely followed platform, @lizlistens, she shares practical relationship guidance with a global audience.
Known for her direct, grounded, and deeply practical teaching style, Elizabeth helps clinicians move beyond insight alone and into real clinical application. At this retreat, she’ll guide you through a highly experiential learning process built around live demonstrations, role-plays, real-time feedback, and immersive skills practice so you can leave with interventions you feel confident using immediately with stressed, high-conflict couples.
Click here for information about Elizabeth Earnshaw
Retreat Schedule
All Times Listed in Local Time
Wednesday, February 24, 2027
4:00–5:30 pm
Check-in
5:30–6:30 pm
Dinner
7:00–8:30 pm
Introduction & Overview Content*
Daily Schedule for Thursday, Friday and Saturday
February 25-27, 2027
7:00–8:00 am
Breakfast
8:00–11:00 am
Training*
12:00–1:00 pm
Lunch
1:00–5:30 pm
Restoration and Relaxation
5:30–6:30 pm
Dinner
6:30–8:30 pm
Training*
Sunday, February 28, 2027
7:00–8:00 am
Breakfast
8:00–9:30 am
Training*
9:30 am–12:00 pm
Check Out
*CE is awarded during these specified times. A break will be included during longer training sessions, at the discretion of the speaker. Licensing boards require full attendance to each CE training session throughout the entire retreat to receive ANY credit for the entire retreat. Please review the retreat schedule carefully and plan accordingly. Daily schedule from Wednesday-Sunday is subject to change, but the total number of CE hours will remain unchanged.
5-Day Treating Stressed Out Couples
An Immersive Retreat for Clinicians to Help Couples Reconnect, Regulate and Repair
LIVE in Sedona, Arizona: Wednesday, February 24 - Sunday, February 28, 2027
All-Inclusive package for $3,199!
Plus, earn up to 18 CE Hours — included in your tuition. Click here for Credit details
Credit hours may vary by board and profession. Don't see your state profession listed? Contact us.
Click here for cancellation policy details
Credit hours may vary by board and profession. Don't see your state profession listed? Contact us.
Click here for cancellation policy details
What You’ll Practice, Refine, and Leave Ready to Use
Over five immersive days, you’ll learn a practical, stress-focused treatment approach for working with couples who escalate quickly, shut down under pressure, or stay stuck in chronic resentment. Through live teaching, guided role-play, and real-time coaching, you’ll build skills you can use immediately in both weekly sessions and intensive formats.
Retreat Education Outline
See Stress More Clearly in the Room
- Understand how acute vs. chronic stress affects emotional safety, relational functioning, and the body
- Differentiate distress from eustress and identify the patterns that keep couples stuck in agitation, withdrawal, and disconnection
- Recognize flooding and diffuse physiological arousal in session through physical, emotional, and relational cues
- Use case examples to see how unmanaged stress erodes curiosity, affection, and the couple’s ability to repair
- Review limitations, risks, and contraindications, including trauma history, comorbidities, cultural factors, and when referral to individual therapy is more appropriate
1. Rapid Regulation & De-Escalation Tools
How to quickly lower emotional temperature and interrupt flooding in the room
- Use tools like Stop Action, synchronized breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, guided imagery, structured breaks, and pulse oximeter biofeedback to lower emotional temperature when couples flood
- Apply physiological tracking and grounding strategies that help partners recognize and exit diffuse physiological arousal before conflict spirals
- Watch and rehearse “in-the-moment” de-escalation sequences you can use when tension spikes in session
- Practice mindfulness, self-soothing, and quick coregulation exercises that rebuild safety in real time
2. Repair, Resentment Work & Stress-Resilient Interventions
Moving from conflict to connection and building long-term resilience
- Use interventions such as Corrective Emotional Experience, cross-questioning, cross-interpreting, mindfulness practices, and the HARD Conversation Model to guide couples from reactivity into repair
- Address resentment, boundaries, and daily tension with Gottman’s Stress-Reducing Conversation, structured negotiation, psychoeducation, radical acceptance, and the “deflating the balloon” process
- Build stress resilience through personal responsibility exercises, enactments, and structured resilience-building protocols
- Use advanced enactments to support repair around attachment injuries and chronic stress-related ruptures
- Practice deeper repair work in role-play with real-time feedback from Elizabeth
3. Structure Intensive Sessions That Create Deeper Progress
- Understand the structure, purpose, benefits, risks, and clinical indications of intensive formats for deeper stress work
- Review preparation, informed consent, screening, scheduling, payment, and other logistical and ethical considerations before beginning intensive work
- Learn how to join through hope, assess both partners, deliver feedback, and co-create an agenda in the opening phase of an intensive
- Pace deep work across extended sessions using enactments, structured exercises, and real-time responses to dysregulation
- Plan for closure, future support, and referral when needed, while considering scope of practice, contraindications, and the limits of the research
4. Intensive Couples Therapy in Practice
Putting it all together with real couples scenarios
- Work through real couples scenarios, including chronic low-grade conflict, post-baby disconnection, later-life strain, recovery-related stress, trauma, illness, and external sociopolitical pressure
- Learn how to structure focused, uninterrupted blocks of work that create breakthroughs faster than standard weekly sessions
- Customize interventions for different couple profiles, including neurodiverse couples, culturally diverse couples, and high-conflict dynamics
- Rotate through therapist, partner, and observer roles in group practice labs with immediate expert coaching
- Adapt the full toolkit to your own clinical style, build session templates, and create take-home resources for the couples you serve
5. Strengthen Your Presence, Judgment, and Clinical Endurance
- Strengthen therapist self-regulation, cultural humility, and person-of-the-therapist awareness during high-stress couples work
- Integrate stress-focused interventions into both weekly therapy and intensive formats for greater clinical impact
- Use ethical decision-making to recognize when to pause, refer, or adjust course in the work
- Protect against burnout while maintaining presence and effectiveness with stressed caseloads
5-Day Treating Stressed Out Couples
An Immersive Retreat for Clinicians to Help Couples Reconnect, Regulate and Repair
LIVE in Sedona, Arizona: Wednesday, February 24 - Sunday, February 28, 2027
All-Inclusive package for $3,199!
Plus, earn up to 18 CE Hours — included in your tuition. Click here for Credit details
Credit hours may vary by board and profession. Don't see your state profession listed? Contact us.
Click here for cancellation policy details
Credit hours may vary by board and profession. Don't see your state profession listed? Contact us.
Click here for cancellation policy details
What does Tuition Include?
- 5 days with Elizabeth Earnshaw
- Live demos, role-play & real-time Q&A
- Up to 18 CE hours
- CE certificate & course manual
- Healing vortexes, meditation areas & labyrinth
- Peaceful lake & trails – surrounded by magnificent red rock mountains
- Healthful pesco-vegetarian cuisine
- Lodging, with private bathrooms, for duration of your stay
What does the program fee NOT include?
- Flight
- Travel insurance
- Shared or private shuttle to and from Sedona Mago Retreat OR rental car
- Excursions or other activities available
- Massage treatments
What Will Be Different After This Retreat
By the end of this retreat, you won’t just have more information—you’ll have a clearer way of working. The difference will show up in the moments that usually feel the hardest: when couples escalate, shut down, get flooded, or stay stuck in the same unresolved cycle.
- You’ll spot stress sooner. You’ll be better able to recognize flooding, dysregulation, and the signs that a couple is losing the capacity to stay present and engaged.
- You’ll have more ways to intervene in the moment. Instead of relying on communication tools alone, you’ll know how to lower emotional temperature, guide co-regulation, and create the conditions for repair.
- You’ll feel less boxed in by the limits of weekly therapy. You’ll understand how to structure deeper, more focused work when couples need more time, more containment, and more momentum than a standard session can provide.
- You’ll work with more confidence when the room gets reactive. With hands-on practice and real-time coaching behind you, you’ll be better prepared to stay grounded and lead couples through difficult moments.
- You’ll return to practice with skills you can use right away. The goal isn’t just to inspire you—it’s to help you leave Sedona ready to apply what you’ve learned with the very next stressed couple you see.
Click "+" to Expand
If you’re looking for a place to unwind and reconnect with what’s important, what better environment than one of the most beautiful deserts on the planet?
The Sedona Mago Retreat Center is located in Sedona, Arizona, an area long known for natural healing and spiritual awakening. Surrounded by red monoliths, Native American ruins and majestic mountains. Experience the beauty, feel the energy, and awaken your spirit.
Retreat Highlights
- Secluded retreat, offering 173 acres
- Private or shared lodging with private bathrooms
- Healthful pesco-vegetarian cuisine (3 meals daily)
- Beautiful lake surrounded by trees, flowers, aromatic herbs, and many wild birds
- Covered patios, meditation areas & labyrinth
- Healing vortexes – experience healing and deep awakening
- Peaceful trails to enjoy nature
- Awe-inspiring sunrises, sunsets and stargazing
- Direct shuttles service available from Phoenix Sky Harbor (additional fees)
Your Accommodations
Retreat rooms at Sedona Mago are simple, yet comfortable, offering you a peaceful space to unwind and recharge. Each room comes equipped with two queen beds, a private bathroom, a mini fridge, a hair dryer, and bath products. Rooms at Mago are meant to be quiet places for you to pause, rest, and unwind while on retreat.
Retreat Location
Sedona Mago Retreat
3500 E Bill Gray Road
Sedona, AZ 86336, USA
Phone: (928) 204-3391
Shuttle Services
Shuttle services are available from Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport to Sedona Mago, such as Groome Transportation (928-350-8466). For more information, please visit Sedona Mago’s website HERE. Note that transit times may take longer than the geographical distance from the airport. Please review the retreat’s schedule above, inquire regarding transit times with the shuttle services, and plan flights/travel accordingly.
Accessibility
Sedona Mago Retreat Center has been mindfully set in nature – the grounds and roads are a mixture of dirt, gravel, and pavement. The general guest areas are spread out over many acres, so getting to and from various points will require walking moderate distances and traversing stairs and hills. If mobility is a concern, please contact the retreat center before registering with PESI.
Non-Participating Retreat Guests
Sedona Mago is an all-inclusive retreat center. All reservations are per individual, not per room. All individuals staying at the retreat center incur a room and board charge whether or not they are participating in the PESI educational training. If you are considering bringing a guest with you who will not be participating in the PESI educational training, please contact PESI at 800-844-8260.
CE Information
Please review the retreat’s credit information by clicking any of the “Click here for CE credit details” links found above.
PLEASE NOTE: Most licensing boards require full attendance to the entire program to receive any credit.
Please review the retreat’s schedule above and plan your travel accordingly to ensure full attendance to the program.
Travel Advisories
All attendees are advised to purchase travel insurance that includes a cancellation for any reason option to protect your travel plans.
If for any reason you are unable to attend, please contact us immediately:
Email: retreatinfo@pesi.com • Phone: 800-844-8260
Please check with your local government to see what advisories are in place before you travel. All flights are subject to the terms and conditions of your airline carrier’s policy travel plans.
From purchase date until January 27, 2026: Cancellation results in a full refund less a $100 administrative fee
From January 28, 2027: Cancellation results in a 50% penalty of the total purchase amount
5-Day Treating Stressed Out Couples
An Immersive Retreat for Clinicians to Help Couples Reconnect, Regulate and Repair
LIVE in Sedona, Arizona: Wednesday, February 24 - Sunday, February 28, 2027
All-Inclusive package for $3,199!
Plus, earn up to 18 CE Hours — included in your tuition. Click here for Credit details
Credit hours may vary by board and profession. Don't see your state profession listed? Contact us.
Click here for cancellation policy details
Credit hours may vary by board and profession. Don't see your state profession listed? Contact us.
Click here for cancellation policy details