92 Tooley St
London SE1 2TH
UK
This is the second of two separate CPD days on this topic - this second day will deepen and develop the learning from the first day on 1 November 2015, extending it from the perception and understanding of enactments into how to work with them. This second day can nevertheless be taken independently, as we are dealing with dilemmas and dynamics that occur in everyday practice for all practitioners.
If you have not worked with Michael before, this 1-day workshop is an ideal introduction to the basic principles of embodied, relational psychotherapy, looking at the bodymind phenomenology of the therapeutic relationship as an intersubjective system. Subtitled "embodied pathways towards resolving impasses, breakdowns and enactments", we will explore the rupture-repair cycles of the working alliance, which - if they can be survived and transformed - generate the deepening of the process at the 'intimate edge'.
Considering that working in the psychological therapies should carry a health warning (a 2015 staff wellbeing survey by the BPS found that 46% of psychological professionals report depression and 49.5% report feeling they are a failure), how is it possible to enjoy working in an 'impossible profession'?
How can we be deeply engaged without being wiped out (by vicarious traumatisation, burn-out, failure, self-exploitation, etc)?
I suggest that by understanding how the client NEEDS the therapist to fail, we can apprehend the inherent conflicts, tensions and paradoxes of the therapeutic position as parallel processes to the client's conflict, and can learn to manage them in a way which enhances the transformative process.
This is a workshop I have been running repeatedly over recent years, in different places, for different audiences, for therapists from across the approaches and modalities. It introduces the underestimated complexities and paradoxes of the working alliance in an accessible way, drawing attention to the rupture-and-repair cycles that occur throughout the therapeutic process, and the inherent coming and going of the working alliance.
For full details and background information, see the dedicated page.