Staying Where It’s Hard
Conditions, Not Character: Working with Distance, Mistrust, and Aliveness in TherapyStaying Where It’s Hard
Conditions, Not Character: Working with Distance, Mistrust, and Aliveness in Therapy
Lori Marchak
Experiential Training for Mental Health Professionals
Chico Hot Springs, Pray, Montana
Tuesday morning-Friday afternoon, October 27-30, 2026
21 Credit Hours*
Limited to 32 Participants and 8 Assistants
For therapists who sense there is more happening in the room than they were trained to see.
Most therapy models teach us what to do.
They offer maps for emotion, meaning, and behavior. They help us understand patterns, organize interventions, and guide change.
And still—something often remains just out of reach.
Clients speak openly, yet feel far away.
Sessions move forward, yet something essential does not shift.
Moments that seem flat, resistant, or unclear quietly organize the entire relationship.
This training begins from a different question:
What if the most important thing in the room is not what is being said—but how close someone is to their experience, and to you?
A Different Way of Working
This work has evolved from earlier “Better Together” trainings, with a deeper focus on mistrust, distance, and the conditions that allow experience to emerge.
This is not a training in techniques or a new therapeutic model. It is a reorientation of how you see—and how you respond to—what is happening in the room.
Drawing from—and moving beyond—Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and Internal Family Systems (IFS), this work focuses on the conditions under which anything we do can actually work.
Rather than focusing on intervention or outcome, we will explore what becomes possible when therapists shift their role:
From helping clients achieve change → to creating the conditions where experience can safely emerge.
Across four days, we will explore how change occurs not through insight or intervention alone, but through the conditions that allow new experience to take shape.
This training may change how you understand your role as a therapist.
What We Will Work With
Distance, Not Just Emotion
Track presence and absence in real time—where a client is close, where they are far, and how that shifts moment to moment.
Mistrust as Intelligence
Understand resistance as an accurate assessment of conditions. Learn how naming mistrust can deepen, rather than disrupt, connection.
Cold States and Collapse
Work with numbness, emptiness, fog, and disconnection without forcing activation. Discover what becomes possible when these states are not treated as problems to solve.
Fire, Play, and Aliveness
Recognize when energy returns—and how to meet it without shutting it down or escalating it. Explore play as a condition for flexibility and movement.
Conditions, Not Outcomes
Shift therapist responsibility away from producing change and toward supporting what is actually possible in the moment.
How We Will Learn
This training is primarily experiential.
You will:
- Participate in structured exercises that reveal your own patterns of intervention
- Practice tracking distance and mistrust in real time
- Stay present in moments where you would normally act, fix, or redirect
- Work directly with intensity, collapse, and relational movement
- Apply these concepts to your own clinical cases
Didactic teaching will be brief and focused. The emphasis is on direct experience.
For Therapists Trained in EFT and IFS
Many participants come with strong training in EFT, IFS, or other relational or parts models.
These models offer powerful frameworks for understanding emotion, attachment, and internal systems.
At the same time, many therapists begin to notice limits:
- Moments where emotion is present, but something deeper remains out of reach
- Clients who understand their patterns but do not shift
- Interventions that are skillful, yet do not fully land
- A growing sense of responsibility for outcomes that cannot be controlled
This training does not replace EFT or IFS.
It expands what is possible within them.
We will focus on areas that are often underdeveloped across models:
- working directly with mistrust
- tracking relational distance in real time
- supporting collapse and “cold” states without pushing activation
- recognizing when intervention interrupts rather than supports
- redefining therapist responsibility around conditions, not outcomes
You will leave with greater flexibility—able to move within and beyond the models you know, without losing their strengths.
What Makes This Training Different?
Many trainings offer new interventions.
This one focuses on what happens before intervention matters.
We will not be building toward mastery, certainty, or a set of correct moves.
Instead, we will:
- Slow down enough to see what is actually happening in the room
- Work directly with what therapists often override—mistrust, distance, collapse
- Explore where responsibility has been misplaced—and what changes when it is realigned
- Create conditions where both therapists and clients can experience something new
This is not about doing more.
It is about seeing differently—and trusting what follows from that.
What Therapists Often Notice After This Training
Many therapists come into this training expecting to learn something new.
What they often notice instead is a shift in how they see and respond to what is already happening.
Over time, this can show up as:
- Less pressure to produce change
A clearer sense of what is actually yours to carry—and what is not - Greater ease in moments that used to feel stuck
The ability to stay with distance, confusion, or non-movement without needing to resolve it - More precise use of intervention
Acting less often, but with better timing and impact - A different relationship to mistrust and resistance
Recognizing these as meaningful responses to conditions, rather than obstacles to overcome - Increased flexibility within existing models
Moving more freely within EFT, IFS, or other approaches without losing their strengths - More aliveness in the room
Moments of spontaneity, humor, or intensity that are not managed away
These shifts emerge as therapists begin to track conditions more closely and to respond to what is actually present rather than what they expect to happen.
For many therapists, this changes not only how they work, but how they experience being in the room.
Lori Marchak, MS, Ph.D, LMFT, LCPC
Lori is a psychotherapist, teacher, and writer whose work explores how nervous systems adapt to impossible conditions—and what becomes possible when those conditions change.
Drawing from decades of clinical experience and training in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), Internal Family Systems (IFS), and neuroscience-informed approaches, she has developed a relational framework that centers mistrust, distance, and the full range of human emotional experience as intelligent and necessary.
Her work focuses less on changing people and more on shifting the conditions that make change possible.
She lives and practices in Bozeman, Montana.
More Details
Who This Is For
This training is designed for therapists who:
- Have prior clinical training (EFT, IFS, or other relational or parts models)
- Feel both supported and constrained by those models
- Want to deepen their capacity to work with what feels stuck, distant, or unreachable
- Are interested in working with what emerges, rather than directing it
- Are willing to examine their own patterns of helping, fixing, or withdrawing
- Are open to uncertainty, discomfort, and not-knowing
Training Structure
This is a four-day immersive training (21 CE hours), organized around a developmental arc:
Day 1 — Seeing Clearly
Distance, mistrust, and what is often missed
Day 2 — Staying Present
Working with cold states and non-movement
Day 3 — Allowing Movement
Fire, play, and aliveness
Day 4 — Releasing Control
Conditions, not outcomes
Includes:
- Teaching and conceptual framing
- Live clinical demonstrations
- Dyadic and small group experiential work
- Process groups for integration
Learning Objectives
Participants will be able to:
- Differentiate between outcome-based and condition-based therapeutic approaches
- Recognize and work with client mistrust as adaptive intelligence
- Track and respond to relational distance in clinical interactions
- Work more effectively with dissociation, collapse, and “cold” emotional states
- Distinguish between defensive and protest anger and respond appropriately
- Apply a therapist stance that supports safety without overriding client protection
- Integrate these principles into their existing clinical framework
Is there any risk in this kind of training?
Yes.
Not in the sense of harm—but in the sense of being asked to question assumptions that many therapists rely on.
This training involves:
- examining where responsibility for change has been placed—and what happens when that shifts
- noticing the impulse to fix, guide, or move the process forward
- staying with moments of uncertainty, non-movement, or intensity without immediately resolving them
- allowing familiar frameworks to loosen, at least temporarily
For many therapists, this can feel disorienting at times.
You may find yourself:
- unsure of what to do in moments where you would normally intervene
- questioning approaches that have previously felt reliable
- encountering your own patterns of helping, controlling, or withdrawing more directly
This is not a problem to overcome. It is part of the work.
The training is structured to support you in these experiences:
- clear boundaries and pacing
- consent-based participation
- a strong emphasis on staying within what is workable for each person
You will not be pushed to perform or to go beyond your capacity.
At the same time, this is not a passive or purely observational training.
It asks for engagement—with your work, your assumptions, and your experience in the room.
For many participants, this level of engagement is what makes the training meaningful—and what allows something new to become possible.
Is this couple or individual therapy training?
Both.
While many demonstrations and exercises may involve couples (to make relational dynamics more visible), the principles apply equally to individual therapy. The focus is not on a specific modality, but on how experience is met in the room.
How experiential is the training?
Highly experiential.
Each day includes demonstrations, dyadic exercises, and small group process work. Participants are invited—but not required—to engage at a personal level.
There is no expectation to share beyond what feels appropriate. Respect for individual pacing and boundaries is central to the structure of the training.
The group size is limited to 32 participants and 8 assistants.
Is this an advanced training?
Yes.
This training assumes that you already have a clinical framework (EFT, IFS, or similar) and experience working with clients.
We will not be teaching foundational skills or step-by-step protocols.
Instead, we will focus on:
- what happens when your training is not enough
- how to work in moments where there is no clear next move
- how to stay present when you cannot produce change
Will this help with clients who feel stuck, distant, or hard to reach?
Yes—this is a central focus.
Much of the training is devoted to working with:
- clients who feel emotionally flat or disconnected
- clients who understand their patterns but do not shift
- moments where nothing seems to be happening
- situations where traditional interventions do not land
Rather than trying to overcome these states, we will explore how to work within them.
What if I feel uncertain or “not good enough” in this kind of work?
That experience is expected—and useful.
This training includes working with:
- not knowing
- not being able to produce change
- moments where your usual ways of helping do not apply
You will not be asked to perform or get it right.
You will be supported in staying present in places where certainty is not available.
How is this different from EFT or IFS training?
This work is informed by both EFT and IFS, but it is not a combination, comparison, or extension of those models.
EFT and IFS offer powerful frameworks for understanding emotion, attachment, and internal systems. Many therapists find that these models significantly deepen their work.
At the same time, there are moments in practice where something remains out of reach:
- Clients can access emotion, but still feel far away
- Parts can be identified and understood, but not shift
- Interventions are skillful, yet do not fully land
This training focuses on those moments.
We will work with areas that are often underdeveloped across models:
- tracking relational distance in real time
- working directly with mistrust
- staying with collapse and “cold” states without moving to activation
- recognizing when intervention interrupts rather than supports
- understanding how conditions shape what is possible
The goal is not to replace your model, but to expand your range within it.
Will I learn new interventions or ways of working?
Yes—but not in the form of a fixed set of techniques.
As we work, you will see and practice new ways of responding that emerge directly from what is happening in the room.
For therapists trained in EFT, this often includes:
- expanding how you track and work with distance, beyond emotional expression alone
- new ways of staying with and naming mistrust without moving too quickly toward bonding or repair
- working more directly with moments where emotion is present, but not fully accessible or integrated
- working more slowly with individuals in couples therapy
- expanding your conceptualization of enactments in couples therapy
For therapists trained in IFS, this often includes:
- a more fluid, relational way of engaging with parts as they arise in real time
- working with protectors through mistrust and distance, rather than primarily through access or permission
- allowing parts to organize the interaction without needing to guide or structure the process
Across both approaches, therapists often find that:
- interventions become less scripted and more responsive
- timing becomes more precise
- less effort is required to move the process forward
These are not techniques to apply, but ways of working that develop as you begin to track conditions more closely.
Will this conflict with how I practice EFT or IFS?
No—but it may change how you relate to your model.
Many therapists come in expecting to integrate new techniques. That is not the focus here.
Instead, you may find:
- you intervene less quickly
- you track more of what is happening beneath the content
- you feel less pressure to move the process forward
- you become more selective about when and how you use interventions
This often makes your existing EFT or IFS work more effective—not less—because it is better matched to the conditions in the room.
Will I still be able to use my EFT or IFS skills?
Yes.
Nothing in this training removes or replaces the skills you already have.
Instead, it helps you discern:
- when an intervention is supported by the conditions in the room
- when it is premature
- when something else needs to happen first
Many participants report that their interventions become more precise, and that they rely less on technique to carry moments that require presence instead.
What if I’m used to being more active or directive in sessions?
That’s welcome here.
This training is not about becoming passive or withholding.
It is about recognizing:
- when activity supports the process
- when it overrides something important
- what becomes possible when you do less, but stay more precisely engaged
You will not be asked to give up your style.
You will be invited to see it more clearly.
If you've attended a previous Better Together training
Participants returning from earlier “Better Together” trainings will notice:
- a more clearly articulated and independent framework
- expanded focus on mistrust, distance, and cold states
- new experiential exercises and process structures
- greater emphasis on therapist orientation and responsibility
While the core spirit of the work remains, the focus and clarity have deepened.
Schedule
Tuesday, October 27
Prerequisites
To get the most from this training, participants should (1) understand the Emotionally Focused Therapy model and have practice working with either individuals or couples in that model. Ideally, participants will have completed an EFT Externship. Likewise, participants will have (2) basic understanding and experience with the Internal Family Systems model through formal or informal learning or personal therapy. Experience using IFS in your practice is not required.
Interest and curiosity in exploring emerging ideas in experiential therapy is more important than prior training and experience.
Policies and Procedures
Confidentiality of Participant Information and Breaches of Confidentiality
Trusted Journeys, Inc. will ensure that participant information, including name, contact, and payment information, will be kept confidential. In the case of a breach of confidentiality, Trusted Journeys will contact the participant.
Program Complaints
If a participant or potential participant would like to express a concern about Lori Marchak or a continuing education program provided by Trusted Journeys, the individual may email Lori Marchak at trustedjourneys@gmail.com, Laura Spiller, drspiller@lauracspillerphd.com, training coordinator, or Tahlia Rainboldt, t.rainboltphd@gmail.com, training coordinator. Although we do not guarantee a particular outcome, Trusted Journeys will consider the complaint, make any necessary decisions, and respond within 30 days.
Fees, Refunds, and Cancellation
The fees, refund, and cancellation policy are located on the registration form, below.
Attendance
Credit will be given for live attendance only. Partial credit will be given based on hours in attendance, when the participant attends at least 6 hours of the live training.
Disclosure or Use of Client Information in a CE Program
Client information must not be disclosed by a presenter or participant unless proper informed consent has been obtained for use in a continuing education program.
Getting to Chico Hot Springs
For those traveling from outside the region, plan to fly into Bozeman or Billings, Montana, airports. Plan for an additional driving time of 1 hour from the Bozeman airport or 2 hours from Billings.
There is no public transportation to Chico; a car ride will be necessary. As the date approaches, we will use email announcements to promote ride-sharing.
Staying at Chico
Chico Hot Springs
Pray, Montana is 30 minutes north of Yellowstone National Park.
Check-in is Monday afternoon or evening. Contact Chico directly to book your room. They have a block of rooms reserved, along with additional options. Please mention “Better Together” when reserving a room.
This training includes extended midday breaks to rest, reflect, and take in the surrounding landscape.
Visiting Yellowstone National Park
Chico Hot Springs is 30 miles from the north entrance to Yellowstone National Park. As the park is roughly the size of the state of Connecticut, it is ideal to plan a multi-day visit if you go. Lodging in the national park fills up well in advance. Nearby Gardiner, Montana, has many private lodging options.