For Therapists
Does awakening couples to a conscious state of connection, joy, and intimacy ignite your passion?
Discover a developmental journey that will transform your way of working with your clients and your way of being in the world.
Are you seeking the clinical knowledge to expand your practice and guide couples toward profound progress and healing?
Experience personal growth that will quite possibly impact your own personal and professional relationships.
More and more couples struggle with miscommunication and disconnection.
A deep theoretical understanding of couples' needs in a relationship serves as a map for clinicians to guide these couples to a better connection with themselves and their relationship.
Develop and learn the skills needed to create and hold a space that is safe, gentle, and firm. Nurture a healing environment where couples connect in new ways through the Imago dialogue processes. Here, they can safely learn how to deepen their empathic connection and heal their relationship hurts.
Let Jill transform your life and your practice through the therapy techniques of Imago.
Jill began her Imago journey when she went to a "Getting the Love You Want" workshop in 1989. She began training with Harville Hendrix, the founder of Imago, that same year. Her career path took a hard turn, from being a social worker with Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) wards of the state to starting a thriving private practice.
Jill has helped thousands of couples and individuals co-create healthy and loving relationships. Through Imago workshops, private sessions, and clinical training, Jill continues her Imago journey of helping transform the world, one relationship at a time.
Become part of a worldwide community of practitioners that support each other and their individual paths of continual development of Imago theory and practice.
Your complete Imago Training Program for certification as an Imago Relationship Therapist consists of three modules of four days each plus nine hours of online study (Level One), followed by six months of clinical consultation to a required level of competence for certification (Level Two). The modules must be attended in sequence. Sessions are offered online and in person in the Chicago area.
Level One (made up of three modules) of the next Imago Clinical Training will be announced and will be held in person in Chicago.
Begin your Imago practitioner journey with Jill Wolf, LCSW. For an application:
Connect couples, connect to a community, and connect with your best self.
Learn the tools and techniques that have guided, awakened, and transformed thousands of couples around the world. Introduce couples to the tools that will transform their relationships from conflict, frustration, and disconnection to a partnership filled with healing, growth, intimacy, and connection.
Couples begin to learn from each other and see each other in new ways. The Imago therapist helps them go from enemies to allies. They recognize it's not by accident they're together, but rather they are setting up situations that, when brought to consciousness, are opportunities for healing and growth. Many couples find this approach and realization more effective than other previously experienced couples' therapy.
The Imago principle will improve and strengthen your personal relationships, and as a result, your confidence in the Imago model will grow as you do.
"If you feel led to helping people learn how to love and be loved, I'd be delighted to be a fellow traveler and teacher on your path. Together, we can help transform the world, one relationship at a time!"
Jill's teaching style is genuine, warm, clear, and supportive. With her wonderful sense of humor, her trainees and workshop attendees enjoy an experience that is both transformational and fun!
Jill's teaching style is genuine, warm, clear, and supportive. With her wonderful sense of humor, her trainees and workshop attendees enjoy an experience that is both transformational and fun!
Learn More About Jill
Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., and Helen LaKelly Hunt, Ph.D., co-created the Imago Relationship Therapy to promote the transformation of couples and families by creating a relational culture that supports universal equality.
Learn more about Imago, Harville, and Helen.
Imago Relationship Therapy
The Imago Relationship Therapy, originated by Dr. Harville Hendrix with his wife, Helen Hunt, offers a unique theory of love relationships, one that many of us find really makes sense.
"Imago" is the Latin word for image and refers to the composite image in our unconscious of our caretakers - mom and dad or whoever raised us. This composite image includes the positive and negative character traits of our caretakers, our experiences with them, our best memories, our most painful ones, and most importantly, our unmet childhood needs. We take this composite image into adulthood where we find ourselves attracted to and attractive to an "Imago match."
You may think of this as nature providing you with a partner uniquely incapable of meeting your needs! This is not done to frustrate you but to provide an environment where the old issues can get triggered with the intention of having a different outcome.
Unfortunately, without becoming conscious of this process and learning some key skills to resolve the frustrations, many relationships seemed destined to be painful. The core principles of Imago therapy are:
- Repetitive conflicts are rooted in our past.
- Dialogue is the vehicle that takes a couple from conflict to connection.
- We are both responsible for creating a conscious, safe relationship.
- As we stretch into gradually meeting our partner's needs, we both experience healing and growth.
- There are always two perspectives to the story.
- We avoid shame, blame, and criticism.
How Does It Work?
The Imago Relationship Therapy utilizes a variety of procedures to teach couples and singles desiring an intimate union some key concepts:
- Identify ways you may be interfering in getting the love you want because of how you've habitually protected yourself.
- See conflict as growth trying to happen and learn how to get needs met in a productive way.
- Learn the core communication skill - the intentional dialogue - which allows you to hear and be heard and restore the connection that gets lost during moments of conflict.
- Re-romanticize a relationship where passion, affection, and intimacy may have become problematic or non-existent.
- Bring out the best in each other and in one's self, turning the relationship from one of conflict and frustration to one of healing and growth.
The Imago Relationship Therapy provides a powerful and productive pathway toward healing and wholeness. As Harville says, "We are born in relationship. We are wounded in relationship. And we are healed in relationship."
Harville Hendrix Addresses Using Imago Therapy
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