Live Workshop | PACT in 50 Minutes: Preserving Secure Functioning in Shorter Clinical Frames
At the PACT Institute, we get one question from clinicians more than any other: Can I do PACT in a standard 50-minute session? The answer is YES. Seasoned PACT cliniciians and PACT Level 1 Instructors Eda Arduman, MA, and Allison Howe, LMHC, MA, EdM, are going to show you how. This workshop will help licensed clinicians, all aspiring PACT trainees, and any couple therapist hoping to increase their imPACT in a brief format.
PACT was designed within a 90–100 minute clinical frame, allowing time for live enactments, micro-analysis, and regulatory interventions. However, many clinicians work in systems that require 50-minute sessions. The question becomes: How do we preserve secure functioning principles, moment-to-moment tracking, and down-the-middle positioning without diluting the model?
This innovative and practical 2.5 hour workshop gives you the ability to become more selective and precise by choosing one meaningful issue and one clear intervention so fidelity to the PACT model gets sharper, not thinner, when the clock is short.
Eda and Allison will teach the same organizing sequence they use live in their own sessions:
- LAND: Settle three nervous systems. Establish a joint mission.
- PLANT A FLAG: Choose one consequential pattern, task, or repair.
- INTERVENE: Engage, test, and observe.
- LAUNCH: Consolidate the learning and agree on one shared practice.
Both Eda and Allison present a real-life case as an example, demonstrating how to establish a shared task immediately, orient couples toward governance, and use rapid enactments and cross-tracking to assess attachment style, arousal regulation, developmental injury, and threat perception.
You’ll be able to see how they integrate current interpersonal neurobiology research with secure-functioning principles, emphasizing how shorter sessions require greater clarity of therapist stance, sharper tracking of nonverbal behavior, and disciplined time management.
Across two case presentations, you’ll observe this sequence at work with two different therapists working with two different couples, two different issues, two different interventions — and see what holds steady underneath: the therapist observing, cross-questioning, mentalizing, corroborating, and protecting both partners as they move toward secure functioning.
Your Workshop Takeaways
Learn how to structure your PACT session into four distinct phases.
- Land: Assess the couple in the first minutes.
- Plant Your Flag: Determine what you will focus on.
- Intervene: Stay on task while moving the couple toward secure functioning.
- Launch: Close sessions strategically by consolidating learning and reinforcing secure functioning.
Regardless of your session length, this workshop will help clinicians plan more precisely and get more clear results from every couple session.