2-Day Infidelity Recovery Treatment Training

Credit

Program Information

All members of the PESI, Inc. planning committee have provided disclosures of financial relationships with ineligible organizations and any relevant non-financial relationships prior to planning content for this activity. None of the committee members had relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies or other potentially biasing relationships to disclose to learners.  For speaker disclosures, please see the faculty biography.

Speaker

Lauren LaRusso, MSEd, LMHC, LPC Related seminars and products

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Lauren LaRusso, MSEd, LMHC, LPC, is a psychotherapist in private practice specializing in extramarital affairs. She has helped countless individuals and couples process the unexpected and inalterable impact of infidelity on their lives. Lauren’s recent social media endeavor to bring a voice to the largely unspoken but widely experienced impact of infidelity has amassed over 154K followers and counting despite the private nature of the topic. Lauren’s account reaches 8 million accounts per month, user traffic that reflects a hunger for confidentially consumed support and insight.

Lauren has created courses, resources, and supportive coaching communities for all three parties involved in and affected by an affair, to make education and help available to all. She is committed to helping people understand themselves more fully, to changing the narrative around infidelity, and to reduce the stigma of shame and facilitate compassionate growth for all involved.

Lauren is the author of Beyond Infidelity: How to Turn the End of Your Relationship Into the Beginning of Your Life (published by Penguin Random House, January 2026 and Bloomsbury Tonic, 2026), the first book that helps people transform the experience of infidelity into a catalyst for unparalleled personal growth.

Lauren holds a bachelor's degree in psychology and creative writing from The College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. She received her master’s degree in professional counseling from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Lauren is licensed in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and New York, and she also works with clients on a consulting basis around the world.

Learn more about Lauren’s work at www.laurenlarusso.com

Additional Info

Program Information

You will have access for 90 days after the program for review. For live CE credit, you must watch the live webcast in its entirety at its scheduled time and complete the CE quiz and evaluation within one week. Please note that this requirement may vary by credit type. Please see detailed credit information for specific requirements for each credit type.

Please note: There will be a 70-minute lunch and two 15-minute breaks; one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Lunch and break times will be announced by the speaker and at their discretion. A more detailed schedule is available upon request.

Visit our FAQ page at https://www.pesicanada.ca/faq or contact us at https://www.pesicanada.ca/contact-us.

Objectives

1. Describe how trauma from infidelity is stored in the body, identify physical manifestations of betrayal trauma in individual clients during assessment and treatment, and help clients self-regulate and self-soothe during this early phase. 
2. Assess attachment styles in individual betrayed clients and understand how infidelity disrupts attachment security, leading to heightened anxiety, avoidant coping patterns, or disorganized attachment responses that require specific therapeutic interventions. 
3. Identify and work with protective and exiled parts in individual betrayed clients using IFS methodology, helping clients access Self-energy to process trauma and make decisions about their relationship from a grounded, centered place. 
4. Apply IMAGO principles in individual therapy to help betrayed clients understand how childhood attachment wounds intensify the impact of infidelity and explore their unconscious partner selection patterns.
5. Identify and address one-down shame and one-up grandiosity in individual betrayed clients, helping them move toward self-worth and personal empowerment using RLT principles adapted for individual therapy.
6. Help betrayed clients shift from an external locus of control to an internal locus of control through increased and improved self-connection, self-compassion, and self-discovery.
7. Differentiate between shame and guilt in individual unfaithful clients and facilitate movement from defensiveness and self-loathing to genuine accountability, self-compassion, and authentic personal remorse/ other empathy.
8. Identify and address the underlying exiled parts and protective mechanisms that contributed to infidelity in individual clients using an IFS framework, helping clients develop self-compassion while maintaining accountability.
9. Integrate mindfulness-based interventions, here-and-now focused techniques, and present-moment awareness practices to help unfaithful clients interrupt dissociation and compartmentalization, build genuine empathy, recognize choice points, tolerate discomfort without escape behaviors, and cultivate authentic accountability through somatic and present-centered work.
10. Learn how to support individual clients (both betrayed and unfaithful) through evidence-informed decision-making processes about staying, leaving, or pursuing reconciliation, while helping them distinguish between trauma-driven decisions and Self-led choices.
11. Facilitate individual healing processes including rebuilding self-worth, processing forgiveness (of self or other), developing healthy boundaries, and reconstructing identity after infidelity for both betrayed and unfaithful clients.
12. Identify and cultivate post-traumatic growth in individual clients, helping them develop new relational patterns, personal strengths, and deeper self-knowledge from the crisis of infidelity, regardless of whether they stay in or leave the relationship.

Outline

Day 1: Understanding Betrayal Grief and Trauma

• Maslow’s hierarchy as framework for grief and betrayal trauma work
• Betrayal trauma stored in the body and its autonomic responses
• Understand complex trauma from gaslighting and manipulation
• Somatic and mindfulness techniques for stabilization
• Normalize grief and its non-liner process

Understand the Client’s Relationship Context

• Decode the hidden relational, psychological and physical impact of affairs
• The unfaithful behaviors and its impact on your client’s experience
• The role of relational ambivalence: should I stay or should I go?
• Best Practices in harm reduction strategies for betrayed clients

Help Clients Navigate Life After Discovery

• Understand loss of self, role of self-protection and withdrawal
• The role of discernment in healthy boundaries and sharing
• Understand relationships as essential to healing
• The risks of seeking revenge with affair partner and other collateral people

Relational Life Therapy Principles in Individual Work

• Understand shame vs. grandiosity and their defense mechanisms
• Clinical Assessment of power imbalances in relationships
• Clinical interventions or moving toward grounded dignity
• Cognitive tools for emotional maturity after infidelity

Identify Client Barries Toward Healing

• Understand how personalization and fault-finding keep clients stuck
• Spot client’s pain points rooted in old wounds
• Understand the dissonance client’s ideal life vs. the reality they’re living
• Understand how control strategies stall progress and block recovery

Early Healing Tools for Immediate Relief

• Radical acceptance strategies and the power of letting go
• Practical recovery frameworks to get clients unstuck and simplify choices
• Utilize mantras, intentions, and focused action to empower clients
• Mindfulness and meditation strategies for self-soothing, resilience, and cognitive strength

Deeper Practices for Client Relief

• 5 most common cognitive errors and how to address them
• Utilize Wise Mind and feelings vs facts tools to reduce emotional overwhelm
• Self-compassion strategies clients can use in between sessions
• Cognitive reframing strategies that create immediate emotional shifts

Day 2: Harness Post-Traumatic Growth Through Self-Discovery

Attachment Theory and Individual Recovery from Betrayal

• Clinical tools for assessing attachment styles and spotting pre-existing attachment wounds
• Spot hyperbonding and trauma bonding patterns
• Clinical strategies for rebuilding sense of self, safety, and security
• Case studies on childhood trauma and its responses to infidelity

IFS and Relational Life Therapy with Betrayed Clients

• Identify protective and exiled parts expressed as shame and grandiosity
• Assess power imbalances in relationships due to early conditioning
• Clinical strategies to access self-energy for steady, non extreme decision making
• Clinical interventions to shift clients from an external to internal locus of control

IMAGO Principles for Individual Healing, Self-Understanding, and Relational Decision-Making

• Understand unconscious partner selection patterns
• Clinical tools for working with childhood wounds and reading relational patterns
• Strategies to help client spot internal repair vs repetition in current relationship
• Strategies to help clients reclaim personal agency without falling to extremes

Support Individual Clients Through Decision-Making

• LaRusso decision-making process
• Marriage vs. affair vs. singlehood decisions
• Spot trauma-driven vs. self-led choices
• Evaluate treatment efficacy and prognosis

Individual Healing, Forgiveness, and Rebuilding Self-Worth

• Evidence-based strategies for rebuilding self-worth and nurturing self-connection
• Clinical skills for processing new relationship contexts after infidelity
• Tools for reconstructing identity after infidelity
• Forgiveness vs. acceptance and when each matter clinically

Post-Traumatic Growth and Learning from Experience

• The five core domains of post traumatic growth after relational trauma
• Clinical strategies for authenticity, self awareness, and attachment wound healing
• Skills for relational leadership, self honesty, and rebuilding an authentic live
• Clinical case studies that illustrate key concepts and skill therapeutic practice

Target Audience

• Counselors
• Therapists
• Occupational Therapists
• School Counselors
• School Social Workers
• Psychologists
• Marriage and Family Therapists
• Social Workers
• Behavioral Health Nurses
• Mental Health Coaches
• Other Mental Health Professionals