TAMFT 2027 ANNUAL CONFERENCE

Marriage and family therapy was built on a disruptive idea: problems do not reside neatly inside individuals, and meaningful change often requires more than insight, empathy, or the application of a technique. Drawing from cybernetics and the strategic, structural, experiential, and self-of-the-therapist traditions, this keynote explores what happens when therapists intentionally interrupt the recursive patterns that keep systems organized as they are.

Difficult conversations are often the moments when those patterns become most visible. Anxiety rises, familiar roles harden, and everyone in the room (including the therapist) feels pressure to return to what is known. Through clinical examples and the history of systemic practice, we will examine why an intervention can be transformative in one relational context and reckless in another, and why effective disruption requires therapists to distinguish clinically purposeful action from their own reactivity.

That distinction takes on new importance as AI systems become increasingly capable of delivering structured therapeutic interventions and identifying relational patterns. The challenge of systemic work is not simply seeing the pattern, but knowing when and how to interrupt it: understanding the therapist’s position within the system, tolerating the uncertainty that follows, and making a move that cannot be separated from timing, context, and relationship.

At a moment of significant change for psychotherapy, this keynote invites MFTs to reclaim the intellectual audacity (and occasional clinical absurdity) of our field and lean into the demanding work of creating second-order change.

What happens to us when another person touches one of our deepest fears—of not being enough, not mattering, being rejected, or not being lovable?

It happens in intimate partnerships, families, friendships, workplaces, and professional relationships. When something important feels at stake, even the most thoughtful among us can become defensive, critical, controlling, accommodating, withdrawn, or shut down. We may say things we don’t mean, fail to say what matters, or lose our ability to listen.

Drawing from Internal Family Systems (IFS), Intimacy from the Inside Out® (IFIO), and themes from her new book The Myth of Unlovability, Toni Herbine-Blank will explore what happens beneath these familiar patterns—and how we can respond differently.

Courageous Communication® begins with a simple but challenging premise: before we can communicate differently with another person, we need to understand what is happening within ourselves.

Rather than reacting automatically, we learn to pause and turn our attention inward: What has been activated in me? What am I protecting? What am I afraid might happen? What do I need or want the other person to understand?

From this more grounded place, we can return to the conversation able to speak more clearly for ourselves while remaining open to the experience of the other person. We do not have to choose between staying true to ourselves and staying connected.

At the heart of Courageous Communication are three capacities: turning toward ourselves before reacting to another; speaking for our feelings, needs, and reactions rather than from them; and staying connected to ourselves while remaining curious and open to someone else.

Through teaching, stories, and experiences participants will explore how deeply held beliefs about worth, belonging, and lovability shape the ways we protect ourselves in relationships—and how Courageous Communication can interrupt those patterns and create greater possibility for honesty, compassion, repair, and connection.