Online CPD Zo om Weekend for practising counsellors\, therapists\, psychologists from ac ross all the therapeutic approaches

Sat & Sun\, 13 & 14 April 2024\, 15.00 – 21.00 EET

in English (with expert simultaneous Greek translation)

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Organisation & Booking for therapists from Gree ce: Dimitris Tzachanis - info@gestaltsynthesis.gr

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Booking & Payment for therapists from UK\, US and elsewhere: Michael Soth - michael.soth@gmail.com

\n\n< h3 class='article-editor-content__heading'>The therapist’s position: “I'm not a doctor.”\n

Even tho ugh counsellors and psychotherapists are traditionally expected to focus p redominantly on emotional\, mental and verbal communications\, many client s invariably do bring their physical and psychosomatic symptoms i nto the therapeutic space.

After all\, bein g ill and suffering symptoms and bodily pain very quickly goes beyond the physical and becomes an emotional issue\, too. Illness makes us regress an d we tend to feel helpless\, scared or out of control\, and most of us bec ome more needy of emotional support. As therapists\, we have\, of course\, no hesitation to offer that support\, and that in itself is fairly straig htforward.

When symptoms\, illness and disease come into the ther apy room

However\, this workshop addre sses those situations where the work goes beyond pure emotional support\, and the therapist gets drawn into the tricky territory of the psycho-somat ic and body-mind connection. Often\, the recognition becomes unavoidable t hat the psychological and the somatic cannot remain neatly distinguished\, but are in a constant mutually co-creative reciprocal feedback loop\, in both illness and health. The psyche is embodied\, and illness is a bodymin d process: emotional conflict creates muscular tension and physiological s tress\; trauma creates intense neuro-biological activation affecting our h ormonal and immune systems down into the microbiology of every cell. Our m ental states are manifest and mapped into our bodies\, and the state of ou r body in turn shapes and conditions our capacity for feeling and thought. It is now well established that developmental trauma early in life can cr eate a life-long internal bodymind atmosphere that is detrimental to physi cal health and a predictor of chronic illness and psychosomatic symptoms l ater in life.

Because emotional and men tal well-being are so interconnected with physical health\, maybe the clie nt has a point when they are bringing their illness\, physical symptoms an d bodily suffering to the therapist?

The minefield of the psychos omatic connection

So how can the field of therapy keep its task and focus only on the psychological processes as entirely separate from the body and its tendencies to manifest the emotio nal and mental subjective realities? How can the therapist turn a blind ey e to the element of emotional suffering inherent in psychosomatic symptoms and illness?

As many practitioners kno w\, this can become a minefield: on the one hand the client easily feels a ccused and shamed\, as if the message is that they have created their own symptom and are responsible for it. In reaction against this common guilt and shame\, many clients feel relieved by the idea that their illness is a purely organic\, genetic\, random physical affliction that can happen to anybody and has no emotional correspondence at all. The first category of clients feels totally responsible for their own symptom in an exaggerated irrational way\, the second category refuses all connection and accountabi lity in an exaggerated irrational way.

Getting involved with the body-mind problem in health and illness

As therapists we get caught and involved in these dualisms which are par t and parcel of the client’s inner world. We cannot refuse to get entangle d with these dichotomies\, without the client feeling that we have removed ourselves to a comfortably safe\, disengaged position\, where we restrict ourselves to dealing with the psyche and leave the medical profession to deal with the body. The client will feel that this is an artificial distin ction that fails to engage with the body-mind-psyche wholeness of their ex perience. They can only feel held by our care if we actively relate to the totality of their reality\, and what matters to them. Physical pain and s ymptoms\, psychosomatic disease and illness constitute a significant part of human suffering\, and our clients need us to engage profoundly and comp etently.

The validity of the psychosomatic connection

With some illnesses - like hypertension\, chest a nd heart problems\, digestive illnesses\, symptoms of the immune system - it is scientifically established that emotional stress contributes to thei r origin. With many other psychosomatic problems\, like all kinds of pain\ , tinnitus\, insomnia\, chronic fatigue and many other unexplained symptom s\, it is known that the intensity of the suffering can be ameliorated thr ough psychological therapy that addresses the regulation and expression of emotion and de-stresses the mind.

Stre ss is the catchall phrase that supposedly explains the influence of our ps ychological body-emotion-mind state on illness. However\, what is less wel l understood\, is how our bodymind does not just respond to stresses in ou r current situation and lifestyle\, but carries accumulated stress from th e past\, reaching all the way back to childhood. A holistic and bio-social -psychological understanding of stress needs to include lifelong patterns of the bodymind including developmental injury and trauma (what Wilhelm Re ich originally called character structures).

Sometimes clients bring psychosomatic illness as a presenting issue to the therapy\, sometimes these symptoms actually evolve in direct respon se to the unfolding therapeutic process\, and the therapist gets implicate d in them\, e.g. “After last session I had a headache for three days!”

Direct links to body sensations and sympto ms as well as body image come up as part of our work in sessions every day \, in so many ways: tangible pains\, tensions\, trembling and shaking\, br eathing difficulties (hyperventilation\, asthma)\, the physical side of un bearable feelings like panic\, rage\, dread or terror. There are obvious s omatic aspects to presenting issues such as eating disorders or addictions . And then there are the psychological implications of actual\, sometimes terminal\, illnesses and psychosomatic symptoms and dis-ease.

The integration of embodied and relational ways of working

How do we work with these issues and symptoms in psychot herapy? What experiential ways of working are available to us\, to include the client’s ‘felt sense’\, their embodied self states\, their body aware ness and sensations\, their physiological experience in our interaction wi th them?

Through including body-oriente d ways of working into the talking therapies\, we can learn to work with m any of these symptoms more directly\, more deeply and more effectively (as well as learning to recognise situations where the hope of ‘curing’ illne ss through psychology is an unreasonable idealisation).

This CPD workshop is designed to expand your understandin g of the bodymind connection as well as offering a wide range of creative and body-oriented techniques to include in your practice.

It will give you a framework for thinking about the rol e of the body as it is relevant in your own style of therapeutic work\, ba sed upon the different ways in which clients as well as therapists relate to ‘the symptom’. Throughout the workshop\, we will use roleplay of actual issues and dilemmas brought up by your clients. We will also identify and practice ways in which you can explore the emotional function and 'meanin g' of your client's physical symptom or illness.

The 10 ways of r elating to the (psychosomatic) symptom

Michael has been working with the psychological and bodymind connection o f illness and psychosomatic symptoms for many years. In the 1990s he initi ated a project called 'Soul in Illness'\, offering an integrative psychoth erapeutic perspective\, drawing on the wisdom which the different therapeu tic approaches have accumulated regarding illness\, both in terms of theor etical understanding and practical ways of working. He has run CPD worksho ps for therapists on ‘Working with Illness’ many times\, and has developed a relational and embodied way of engaging with the client’s bodymind. In 2005 he presented for the first time his model of ‘10 ways of relating to the symptom’\, which addresses the client’s own relationship to their symp tom\, as well as giving an overview of the different stances taken by ther apists in the various therapeutic approaches that correspond to each of th e ways of relating to the symptom. These ten ways of relating to the sympt om\, including the corresponding theoretical understandings as well as met hods and techniques for intervention\, will form the underlying framework for this workshop.

This framework is no w almost 30 years old\, and has stood the test of time. It is based on the principle that all ten different ways of relating to the symptom are ther apeutically valid\, but all of them are also limited and partial\, and the y all can be used defensively and therefore become misleading and dangerou s in degrees. It is only their comprehensive integration which brings out their full potential\, in concert with all the other - very different\, so metimes contradictory but equally valid - ways of relating to the symptom. Over the weekend\, we will clarify what these ten different relationships are\, how to be sensitive to all of them as well as fluid between them.\n

This requires an appreciation of all the different techniques and ideas which different psychotherapeutic approach es have developed over the last 100 years in relation to illness. Drawing on a wide range of humanistic and psychoanalytic approaches (including Bod y Psychotherapy\, Process-oriented Psychology\, various schools of psychoa nalysis and Jungian perspectives) as well as the holistic paradigm underpi nning most complementary therapies\, we will weave together an interdiscip linary bodymind approach which is applicable within the therapeutic relati onship as we know it in counselling and psychotherapy.

Format\, learning environment and scope of the wee kend

This will be an online Zo om weekend\, organised in Greece for Greek therapists\, but taking place i n English with simultaneous Greek translation\, so all English-speaking th erapists from across the planet are invited. Michael's work and workshops are integrative\, therefore suitable and of interest for therapists from a cross the diverse therapeutic approaches and traditions. It will be most l ikely the participants will bring very different levels of experience to t his workshop - we will try to do justice to this and attempt to try and tu rn that problem into a productive feature of our work together.

Although we will be online\, communicating via co mputer screens\, Michael's teaching and workshops aim to be as experientia l as possible within these limitations. Over the course of the weekend\, M ichael will invite participants to volunteer examples from their work for supervision demonstrations in the middle of the group. Some of the work wi ll take place in small groups. Experiential work and theoretical input and discussions as well as group process and skills practice will interweave in response to the emerging needs and priorities of the group and its part icipants. We want to be especially mindful of confidentiality\, and commit to a shared undertaking that nothing from the workshop will be indiscreet ly shared with others\, other than your very own personal-professional res ponses to the workshop. Based on that understanding\, we are proposing to record the workshop\, so the recording can be shared amongst participants for future reference.

Some of t he possible learning objectives:

sharpen and enhan ce your perceptiveness of non-verbal processes in general\, and those rele vant to the symptom in particular\;
begin to understand the two- way communication between body and mind\, and the holistic foundation of t he psychosomatic connection\;
learn to notice and monitor the 'c harge' of the client's bodymind\, as well as the mechanisms of how the 'ch arge' is diluted and how that conflict is communicated
learn to apprehend the symptom in the context of the client's characterological org anisation\;
take steps towards recognising the atmosphere\, narr ative and dynamic of the client's body-mind relationship\;
under stand the framework of the ten ways of relating to the symptom\, and learn to apply it in practice\, being able to identify the currently dominant w ay of relating to the symptom which the client is manifesting\;
begin to appreciate the symbolic communication of the body in illness\, an d its poetic dreambody psycho-logic\;
learn how to facilitate he re & now 'felt sense' exploration of the symptom\;

Michael Soth - biography and background

Michael Soth is an integral-relation al Body Psychotherapist\, trainer and supervisor\, who studied\, lived and worked in the UK between 1982 and 2021. During those four decades\, he ta ught on a variety of counselling and therapy training courses\, alongside working as Training Director at the Chiron Centre for Body Psychotherapy.< /p>\n

Inheriting concepts\, values and ways o f working from both psychoanalytic and humanistic traditions\, he is inter ested in the therapeutic relationship as a bodymind process between two pe ople who are both wounded and whole.

In his work and teaching\, he integrates an unusually wide range of psychotherapeutic approaches\, working towards ful l-spectrum integration of all therapeutic modalities and approaches\, each with their gifts\, wisdoms and expertise as well as their shadow aspects\ , fallacies and areas of obliviousness.

His original training at Chiron in the early 1980’s was based on body-ori ented holistic psychotherapy\, strongly rooted in the Reichian and post-Re ichian tradition (including Alexander Lowen's Bioenergetics\, David Boadel la's Biosynthesis and Gerda Boyesen's Biodynamic Psychology). These approa ches gave him a strong grounding in bottom-up\, energetic\, bodymind ways of thinking and working\, which were supplemented by Gestalt\, Process-ori ented Psychology and a variety of complementary holistic bodywork therapie s. Towards the end of the 1980s - through his practice and his own process - he began developing psychoanalytic understandings across a variety of p sychodynamic orientations\, including Jungian analytic psychology and Hill man's archetypal psychology. During the 1990s\, he became one of the early pioneers of psychotherapy integration in the UK\, reaching further into o ther traditions and approaches like existential\, systemic and family cons tellations.

In the mid-1990s he initiated the holistic health consultancy\, a pro ject exploring soul in illness\, offering a unique integrative holistic ap proach to psychosomatic symptoms\, dis-ease and chronic illness. Based on his experiences and work with clients who came to him through this avenue\ , he began distinguishing the 10 different relationships to the symptom\, which form the foundation for this workshop which was previously entitled 'Working with Illness in Psychotherapy'. For many years he used to run thi s workshop annually\, for counsellors and psychotherapists from across the various approaches\, supporting their attempts to integrate bodymind pers pectives and bottom-up ways of working into the talking therapies. Over th e last 25 years\, the somatic trauma therapies have made these perspective s and ways of working much more accessible and widespread\; however\, they often do not include psychoanalytic\, systemic and relational considerati ons in their work with the body's spontaneous processes. Therefore\, in ma ny regards\, this weekend offers an original and still rare opportunity to transcend the limitations of the fragmented traditions as we find them in the field of psychotherapy\, as well as the dualistic assumptions and par adigms inherent in the talking therapies.

In 2021 Michael left the UK\, and is no w living near the rainforest in Central America\, where he continues to wo rk online as well as building a sustainable regenerative retreat and refug e\, which will host workshops and trainings in the future.

He has written numerous articles and is a frequent pre senter at conferences. He is co-editor of the Handbook of Body Psychot herapy and Somatic Psychology\, published in 2015. Extracts from his published writing as well as hand-outs\, blogs and summaries of presentati ons are available through his website for INTEGRA CPD: www.integra-cpd.co. uk.

Fees

150€ + VAT until March 10

210€ + VAT until March 30

270€ + VAT until workshop date April 13