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Course

Certified Relationship Strategist Level 1

A 16-week professional certification in relationship assessment, ethical practice, relational models, Couples Therapy for One™, and Marriage Recovery ER™.

Certified Relationship Strategist Level 1 is a sixteen-week professional certification program designed to develop the foundational knowledge, ethical discipline, relational-assessment skills, and intervention reasoning required to serve individuals, couples, and families responsibly. The program moves beyond informal advice, motivational language, and technique-driven helping. Students learn how to observe relational patterns, develop structured case formulations, distinguish presenting complaints from deeper relational processes, and determine what level of response is appropriate. Training begins with professional identity, ethics, confidentiality, boundaries, cultural humility, documentation, and the distinctions among counseling, coaching, pastoral care, and therapy. Students then study major relational approaches, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Emotionally Focused Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Bowen Family Systems, Gottman-informed work, Structural Family Therapy, and Narrative Therapy. The final half of the program introduces two distinguishing Holmes Training Academy frameworks: Couples Therapy for One™ and the Marriage Recovery ER System™. Students learn how to work strategically when only one spouse is willing to participate, recognize relational emergencies, interrupt continuing damage, assess relationship acuity, stabilize acute distress, and determine the appropriate next level of care. The goal is not to produce helpers who rely upon instinct, advice, or isolated techniques. The program develops thoughtful, ethical, and disciplined relationship strategists who can understand what is happening beneath relational behavior and respond within the limits of their professional role.

Faculty

  • Professor Cheryll Holmes, PhD, PsyD, MDR

    Founder and President, Holmes Training Academy LLC

    primary instructor

    Dr. Holmes is a psychologist, marriage and family professional, theologian, organizational psychologist, dispute-resolution professional, author, researcher, professor, and creator of Couples Therapy for One™, the Marriage Recovery ER System™, Marriage ICU™, the H.U.M.A.N. Functioning Model™, the M.A.L.E. Therapy Lens™, and the N.E.U.R.O. Behavior Shift System™.

Curriculum

  1. Module 1

    Professional Foundations, Ethics, and the Self of the Strategist

    Weeks 1–4. Professional role clarity, ethics and boundaries, practitioner self-awareness, documentation, cultural humility, and ethical decision-making.

  2. Module 2

    Foundational Models and Relational Case Conceptualization

    Weeks 5–8. Theoretical literacy and application across systemic, cognitive-behavioral, attachment-based, structural, narrative, and strategic lenses. The aim is competent conceptual selection, not mastery of every therapeutic modality.

  3. Module 3

    Couples Therapy for One™

    Weeks 9–12. Conceptual foundations, case selection and risk screening, goals and pacing with the attending partner, and intervention toward relational shift. Couples Therapy for One™ is never presented as a guarantee that one partner can restore a marriage.

  4. Module 4

    Marriage Recovery ER System™

    Weeks 13–16. Operational instruction in the Marriage Recovery ER™ phase, with ICU, Recovery, and Outpatient Care introduced only for continuum and transfer-readiness understanding, followed by full-system case integration.

Sections

  • CRS Level 1, Tuesday Evening

    Tuesdays, 7:00 PM–9:00 PM ET

    September 15, 2026 – January 19, 2027

  • CRS Level 1, Saturday Morning

    Saturdays, 8:00 AM–10:00 AM ET

    September 19, 2026 – January 23, 2027

Section preference is not guaranteed. Holmes Training Academy makes final section assignments based on availability.