Getting trained in Intensive Couples Therapy
Training Therapists to Deliver Intensive Couples Therapy: Ethically, Effectively, and With Confidence
If you’re interested in offering Intensive Couples Therapy to your clients, you’re in the right place. At the Intensive Couples Therapy Institute (ICTI), we train clinicians in a structured yet flexible model for delivering intensive couples work, grounded in clinical judgment, ethical decision-making, and real-world application.
Our training pathway supports therapists at each stage of learning, from foundational education to supervised practice. Below you’ll find our current offerings, including foundational training, supervision, and advanced development opportunities.
Our Training Pathway
ICTI offers a comprehensive training sequence for therapists at different stages of learning intensive couples therapy.
Level 1: 2-Day Intensive Couples Therapy Training
This two-day training provides clinicians with a clear structure for conducting intensive couples therapy. You’ll learn how to assess client fit, prepare couples for the intensive format, structure multi-hour sessions, select and pace interventions, manage dysregulation, and plan for ethical closure and follow-up.
Supervision for Intensive Couples Therapy
Supervision through ICTI supports clinicians who are actively offering—or preparing to offer—intensive couples therapy. Supervision focuses on real cases, clinical judgment, pacing deep work, managing escalation, and navigating ethical complexities unique to intensive formats.
Certification in Intensive Couples Therapy
ICTI offers a certification pathway for clinicians who want to demonstrate advanced training and supervised competency in intensive couples therapy.
Certification reflects completion of foundational training, supervised clinical practice, and successful application of the ICTI model in real-world cases. This certification signals advanced professional training and adherence to ethical standards for intensive couples work.
Details about certification requirements and timelines are available below.
Certification in Intensive Couples Therapy (ICTI)
ICTI offers a certification pathway for clinicians who want to demonstrate advanced training, supervised experience, and competency in delivering Intensive Couples Therapy using the ICTI model.
Certification is designed to reflect both foundational training and real-world clinical application. It signals that a clinician has not only learned the model, but has implemented it thoughtfully, ethically, and with appropriate supervision.
Certification Pathway
Level 1: Foundational Training
Clinicians begin by completing the 2-Day Intensive Couples Therapy Level 1 Training, which provides the core framework for assessing fit, structuring intensives, selecting interventions, managing dysregulation, and planning ethical closure and follow-up. This will designate you as an ICTI Therapist in Training.
Level 2: Supervised Clinical Practice
Level 2 certification is earned through real-world experience, not additional coursework. Clinicians complete this level by:
Participating in ICTI supervision focused specifically on intensive couples cases
Completing at least four full intensive couples therapy cases that meet ICTI certification requirements
Supervision emphasizes case conceptualization, clinical decision-making, pacing deep work, managing escalation, and navigating ethical considerations unique to intensive formats.
Completing this level will designate you as an Advanced ICTI Therapist.
What Certification Represents
ICTI certification reflects:
Completion of structured training in intensive couples therapy
Supervised application of the ICTI model in real clinical settings
Commitment to ethical standards and appropriate case selection
License or license equivalent in your state/province/country
Certification does not confer licensure or expand clinical scope of practice. It represents advanced professional training and demonstrated competency within the clinician’s existing licensure. In order to be certified with ICTI you must be licensed, however you can begin your training while pre-licensed.
The Clinician’s Guide to Intensive Couples Therapy
The Clinician’s Guide to Intensive Couples Therapy provides guidance and training for therapists to offer intensive couples therapy with their clients. This book guides the reader through:
Training and preparation
An overview of the structure of Intensive Couples Therapy
Information on assessment and evaluation
Exercises and Interventions to utilize during the session
Guidance for navigating complex issues during ICT, such as responding to domestic violence, suicidality, and substance use.
PESI: 2-Day Intensive Couples Therapy Level 1 Training: An Accelerated Approach to Repair, Stabilize, and Strengthen Couples in Crisis
Traditional 50-minute sessions often limit the progress couples can make—particularly when emotional flooding, conflict cycles, and unfinished conversations stall momentum. Intensive couples therapy offers a longer, uninterrupted format that allows couples to fully engage in deep clinical work, practice regulation skills in real time, and leave with a clearer path forward.
In this training, Elizabeth Earnshaw, LMFT, CGT, will present a structured framework for conducting effective couples intensives. You’ll learn how to determine client fit, set up the logistical and ethical foundations, facilitate change-oriented interventions, and close intensives with a plan for ongoing support.
You will gain practical, applicable skills for:
Structuring an intensive: purpose, goals, clinical indications, and contraindications
Assessing fit: identifying when intensives are appropriate and when they are not
Pre-session preparation: informed consent, scheduling, payment, and consult calls
Day One protocols: joining with couples, conducting assessments, and presenting feedback
Day Two protocols: facilitating enactments, managing dysregulation, and pacing deep work
Ethical decision-making: knowing when to pause or discontinue an intensive
Closure and follow-up: planning, referrals, and clinical handoffs
Elizabeth will walk you through detailed case conceptualizations to provide several examples of how to utilize the format. These examples will show how assessment, intervention selection, enactment facilitation, and regulation skills unfold across the two-day intensive format.
This training is hosted by PESI’s training nationally and internationallyrecognized training platform to grant you access to CEU credits across the U.S.
CEU’s Available
Intensive Couples Therapy Supervision
Providing intensive couples therapy requires advanced clinical judgment, careful case selection, and the ability to manage high emotional intensity while maintaining structure and safety. This supervision offering through the Intensive Couples Therapy Institute (ITCI) is designed to support clinicians who are learning to implement intensive formats with confidence, clarity, and ethical integrity.
In this supervision experience, clinicians receive guidance on how to conceptualize cases for intensives, assess fit and contraindications, structure multi-hour sessions, and respond effectively to dysregulation, rupture, and impasses that commonly arise in accelerated work. Supervision emphasizes clinical decision-making in real time, pacing deep work, and knowing when to pause, pivot, or slow the process.
Supervision focuses on practical application, including:
Determining client readiness and appropriateness for intensive formats
Structuring intensive sessions with clear goals and clinical sequencing
Managing emotional flooding, escalation, and shutdown during extended sessions
Selecting and timing interventions to maximize impact without overwhelming clients
Navigating ethical considerations unique to intensive work
Planning closure, follow-up, and integration into ongoing therapy
Supervision is well-suited for clinicians who have completed introductory training in intensive couples therapy or who are actively offering intensives and want additional support refining their clinical approach.
Every supervisor on our team has offered Intensives for at least four years and has undergone their own ITCI training and supervision.