Stress is ubiquitous these days — it plays a role in the workplace, in the home, and virtually everywhere that people interact. It can take a heavy toll unless it is recognized and managed effectively and insightfully.
When grief becomes painfully preoccupying and protracted, the problem often arises at the intersection of the death and the relationship it interrupted. Drawing on attachment-informed and Two-Track models of bereavement, we will begin by considering grieving as a process of reconstructing rather than relinquishing our bonds with those who have died, and the complicating circumstances that can interfere with this natural process. We then turn to a close analysis of a single session of therapy that releases an adult daughter from an anguishing grief that has persisted unchanged for many years, and that has insinuated itself into her life with intimate others. We begin this work by attending closely to "quality terms" in the client's narrative that poignantly convey the character of her connection with her mother, that symbolically signal the devastation caused by her death, and that function as harbingers of a more hopeful reconstructed relationship
This workshop will focus on themes of love and dependence, love and anxiety, love and power in exploring how the interplay of these factors govern whether an intimate relationship thrives or fails. The importance of these themes for both individual and couples therapy.
What does it mean to be intraconnected? In weaving the internal and external, the subjective and objective, this workshop will reveal how modern culture, as well as how our brain is wired, may give us a message of separation as a solo, isolated self; yet a wider perspective unveils that who we are, what a deeper reality actually is, may be something more—broader than the brain, bigger even than the body—fundamental to the social systems and the natural world in which we live. We will explore the nature of how our experience of what we often call, self, emerges across the lifespan and how this journey into identity and belonging can help weave our personal reflections with scientific discussions into how the mind, brain, and relationships shape who we are.
Resilience is the ability of individuals to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions and to regain and maintain a sense of equilibrium. Achieving resilience during challenging times requires the development and strengthening of a variety of resources on different levels. These include emotional intelligence, behavioral flexibility, the ability to balance "dreamer" with "realist," and the capacity to connect with something bigger than ourselves. This session will address a number of important skills and processes that support the deepening of people's capacity for resilience – behaviorally, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.
In offering effective psychotherapy there are times for being informative and other times for being evocative. Use information when needed; use evocative means when the target is the realization of a concept, such as responsibility, motivation, or connection.
Evocative methods are used in all performing arts because the goal is to prompt a change in mood and perspective. Evocative methods will be extracted from art and applied in clinical practice.
Demonstration, lecture, practice groups.
Clients coming for Couples Therapy have often been impacted by early developmental trauma, systemic or intergenerational trauma, or acute interpersonal trauma. Partners with early developmental trauma or acute trauma at young ages are complex to work with and take patience, and persistence from the therapist to recognize moments of exposure and self-expression in order to develop a stronger sense of self. Yet, couples therapy can be a very powerful form of therapy for alleviating shame and developing a much stronger and more integrated sense of self.
"This workshop deals with the challenges of treating clients with personality disorders, clients who, for example, fail to engage in treatment, miss sessions, feel hopeless and stuck, become angry in session, engage in self-harm, use substances, blame others, avoid homework, experience continual crises, and so on. Special attention will be paid to how to help clients get out of the ""personality disorder mode"" and into the ""adaptive mode.""
Through discussion and demonstration roleplays, we'll cover identifying clients' values and aspirations, creating positive experiences and helping clients draw positive conclusions about them, engaging clients in treatment, repairing ruptures in the therapeutic relationship, applying lessons learned from the therapeutic relationship to relationships outside of therapy, learning and using adaptive coping strategies, and developing positive (i.e., more realistic) beliefs about themselves, other people, their worlds, and the future.
Carl Jung pointed out that "Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to a better understanding of ourselves." Dealing effectively with challenging relationships and interactions requires the ability to perceive and integrate a number of different perspectives, or "Perceptual Positions." The Meta Mirror Format acknowledge the fact that, typically, clients have the most difficulty communicating with others who mirror back to them what they have difficulty relating to in themselves. This workshop will show that when clients can be helped to shift perspectives and see how the problem they are experiencing with respect to the other person is really a reflection of their relation with themselves, it can bring both significant insight and new possibilities.