Purpose and scope of group

This ongoing integrative group for counsellors and psychotherapists from different therapeutic approaches, orientations and trainings, meeting 6 times per year, has been running since 2019 in varying configurations and with various members.

There is an established group dynamic and cohesion, and as new participants join, you, me and the existing group would have to work with how you would fit into that, to develop a new shape and a new group.

Michael’s supervision style is integrative, so therapists from all modalities and orientations are welcome, and will find plenty of opportunities to learn from the diversity within the group.
Michael pays attention to parallel process on all levels (see resources on ‘Fractal Self’ for how he has extended the notion of ‘parallel process’, for the purposes of supervision, as well as an organising principle for therapy generally), including how the client-therapist dynamic is picked up by the group and reflected within it. He is welcoming of experiential exploration of ‘charged moments’, via roleplay, within participants’ need and willingness for exposure in the group.

He will focus on speaking in the language of each supervisee’s approach, but an exploration of transference-countertransference dynamics is likely to be included, unless a supervisee explicitly declines this. In his approach to supervision, Michael pays attention to the embodied, non-verbal communications and unconscious processes, how they oscillate between working alliance and enactment, and how the therapist’s habitual stance/position becomes involved in these conflicts and tensions. Whilst the exploration of the therapist’s relational entanglement is an important aspect of the supervision, the focus is on the deepening of the client’s process, and the therapist’s continuing learning process. Michael believes that by embracing whole-heartedly the difficulties, paradoxes, shadow aspects and complexities of the therapeutic process, therapists stand the best chance of doing justice to their clients, as well as their own authority, effectiveness and satisfaction as a practitioner.

Participants (currently maximum 3 places)

The group invites new members from April 2023. Two participants have been with the group since the beginning, others joined since then. Most members come from integrative training backgrounds, but there is considerable diversity and richness in different orientations. There is a solid emphasis on the relational dynamic between client and therapist, including transference, countertransference and enactments.

Currently we have one man and four women.

Format and ways of working

The idea is for the work of the group to be grounded in clinical experience and to have a solid supervision element, but to include additional reflections and theoretical input arising from the process - this will be from an integral-relational perspective, but always stay relevant and applicable to your own style and modality. Working with the general notion of the 'reflective practitioner', we will try to integrate individual and group process as well as experiential and theoretical learning and clinical reflection.

Michael will attempt to make explicit and accessible some of his internal process and working models as a supervisor and group facilitator, including hand-outs and references, depending on your individual learning needs and development goals as a person and as a therapist.

Practicalities

The times are established and fixed (bi-monthly Tuesdays 10.00 – 16.30 on Zoom), but apart from that the group is open to the needs and interests of further participants.

If you are interested in joining this group, an interview with Michael is required. You can contact him on: michael.soth@gmail.com or 07929208217.

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Purpose and scope of group

This ongoing integrative group for counsellors and psychotherapists from different therapeutic approaches, orientations and trainings, meeting 11 times per year, has been running since 2022.

To some degree, there is an established group dynamic and cohesion, and as new participants join, you, me and the existing group would have to work with how you would fit into that, to develop a new shape and a new group.

Michael’s supervision style is integrative, so therapists from all modalities and orientations are welcome, and will find plenty of opportunities to learn from the diversity within the group.
Michael pays attention to parallel process on all levels (see resources on ‘Fractal Self’ for how he has extended the notion of ‘parallel process’, for the purposes of supervision, as well as an organising principle for therapy generally), including how the client-therapist dynamic is picked up by the group and reflected within it. He is welcoming of experiential exploration of ‘charged moments’, via roleplay, within participants’ need and willingness for exposure in the group.

He will focus on speaking in the language of each supervisee’s approach, but an exploration of transference-countertransference dynamics is likely to be included, unless a supervisee explicitly declines this. In his approach to supervision, Michael pays attention to the embodied, non-verbal communications and unconscious processes, how they oscillate between working alliance and enactment, and how the therapist’s habitual stance/position becomes involved in these conflicts and tensions. Whilst the exploration of the therapist’s relational entanglement is an important aspect of the supervision, the focus is on the deepening of the client’s process, and the therapist’s continuing learning process. Michael believes that by embracing whole-heartedly the difficulties, paradoxes, shadow aspects and complexities of the therapeutic process, therapists stand the best chance of doing justice to their clients, as well as their own authority, effectiveness and satisfaction as a practitioner.

Participants (currently maximum 4 places)

The group invites new members from March 2024. Most members come from integrative training backgrounds, but there is considerable diversity and richness in different orientations. There is a solid emphasis on the relational dynamic between client and therapist, including transference, countertransference and enactments.

Format and ways of working

The idea is for the work of the group to be grounded in clinical experience and to have a solid supervision element, but to include additional reflections and theoretical input arising from the process - this will be from an integral-relational perspective, but always stay relevant and applicable to your own style and modality. Working with the general notion of the 'reflective practitioner', we will try to integrate individual and group process as well as experiential and theoretical learning and clinical reflection.

Michael will attempt to make explicit and accessible some of his internal process and working models as a supervisor and group facilitator, including hand-outs and references, depending on your individual learning needs and development goals as a person and as a therapist.

Practicalities

The dates and  times are established and fixed (monthly Friday evenings 18.30 – 21.30 on Zoom), but apart from that the group is open to the needs and interests of further participants.

If you are interested in joining this group, an interview with Michael is required. You can contact him on: michael.soth@gmail.com

The post Monthly Supervision & Professional Development Group (Friday evenings, online) appeared first on INTEGRA CPD.

Purpose and scope of group

This group is open to experienced counsellors and psychotherapists from different therapeutic approaches, orientations and trainings. It is an ongoing integrative group, meeting 6 times per year, and it has been running since 2015 in varying configurations and with various members.

There is an established group dynamic and cohesion, and as new participants join, you, me and the existing group would have to work with how you would fit into that to develop a new shape and a new group.

Participants (1 more place potentially available from April 2023, two from September 2023)

Three participants have been with the group since the beginning (all three are experienced TA therapists). Two embodied-relational therapists joined a couple of years ago. Other members have been from various modalities, including Gestalt, transpersonal, Core Process. There is a solid emphasis on the relational dynamic between client and therapist, including transference, countertransference and enactments.

Currently we have one man and six women, so potential male participants are especially welcome.

Format and ways of working

The idea is for the work of the group to be grounded in clinical experience and to have a solid supervision element, but to include additional reflections and theoretical input arising from the process - this will be from an integral-relational perspective, but always stay relevant and applicable to your own style and modality. Working with the general notion of the 'reflective practitioner', we will try to integrate individual and group process as well as experiential and theoretical learning and clinical reflection.

I will attempt to make explicit and accessible some of my internal process and working models as a supervisor and group facilitator, including hand-outs and references, depending on your individual learning needs and development goals as a person and as a therapist.

The way the group has developed over recent years has been to increasingly include participants’ own process, and how that shapes their therapeutic position as well as their impact on the group dynamic and the relationships we have with each other. So there is a considerable degree of self-disclosure and corresponding emotional intensity between group members, and anybody joining the group would probably need to be curious about and open to that kind of engagement.

Practicalities

The times are established and fixed (bi-monthly Tuesdays 10.00 – 16.30 on Zoom), but apart from that the group is open to the needs and interests of further participants.

For more detailed information about the background, format and content of the group, download the leaflet.

If you are interested in joining this group, an interview with Michael is required. You can contact him on: michael.soth@gmail.com or 07929208217.

The post Bi-monthly Supervision & Personal-Professional Development Group appeared first on INTEGRA CPD.

Would you want a qualification (CPCAB accredited), or just the learning through participating in a course? Because of its unique integrative-embodied-relational perspective, this course would also be of interest to supervisors who are already qualified and practising.

TherapyWorks Pakistan is organising an online supervision training, which will be delivered mainly by Dr Jan Mojsa and myself, with the first module intensive starting in November (Nov 9 - Nov 15; 4 or 5 hours every day in two blocks, times to be confirmed).

You can find an outline of the curriculum below.

If you want to enrol in the full course, and fulfil all the academic and qualification requirements, you need to book and pay through TherapyWorks.

If you just want to participate in the modules, you need to book and pay through me, Michael: michael.soth@gmail.com.

This training course for becoming a supervisor, designed by one of the most experienced trainers in the field of integrative psychotherapy in the UK, aims at extending your therapeutic skills into the supervisory role in the most comprehensive and efficient way possible.

This training is focusing on acquiring and practising of the crucial awarenesses, skills and models through experiential learning, to support you in becoming an integrative supervisor, able to work with therapeutic practitioners from across a range of orientations and modalities. 

Drawing from both humanistic and psychoanalytic traditions, we will focus especially on the way that dilemmas and conflicts in the therapeutic relationship become reflected in supervision as parallel dilemmas and conflicts for the supervisor. This in turn will involve a focus on the embodied experience of conflict, enactment (rupture and repair) in the working alliance, situating both therapy and supervision firmly in a relational paradigm, based on the recognition that it is the relationship that matters. However, we will not let ‘quality of relationship’ remain an abstract, amorphous and vague notion, but investigate and deepen it using your already developed perceptive, reflective and creative skills as a therapist.

We will use concepts and models from across a broad spectrum of therapeutic approaches, trying to develop a language and an experience-near awareness, that is not restricted to particular traditions, but draws from and embraces the wisdom of the whole therapeutic field.

Outline of topics to be covered

Phenomenological introduction to supervision

• participants’ own experiences of being supervised as therapists - a phenomenological exploration (what has worked for you – what hasn’t?)
• the delicate and ambiguous working alliance between supervisee and supervisor
• shaming and empowerment in supervision: recognition of supervisee’s tendencies towards unconscious misrepresentation and deliberate concealment of session material
• how does a supervisor gain information about what actually happened in the sessions between therapist and client?
• a neuroscience-informed (mirror neuron) understanding of parallel process
• an object relations informed understanding of parallel process via empathic and projective identification and evacuation

Models of supervision

• the paradigm clash between humanistic and psychodynamic supervision
• Hawkins/Shohet standard 7-eye 2-matrix parallel process model
• Soth extended ‘fractal self’ 5-matrix parallel process model
• supervisee as reflective practitioner – supervision developmental model in response to supervisee’s evolving therapeutic competence
• mode of therapeutic action of supervision: spectrum from collegial support to containment of unconscious process
• the 5 conflicting roles inherent in the supervisor position

Skills, theories & techniques of supervision:

Supervisor’s perception:

• perceiving the therapist’s conflict as bodymind process
• assessing and estimating degrees of working alliance and its oscillations
• two kinds of countertransference: habitual countertransference - situational countertransference

Supervisor’s understanding:

• perceiving & understanding the supervisee’s ‘habitual position’ as a therapist
• the characterological origins of the therapist’s habitual position/habitual countertransference (the therapist’s construction of the therapeutic space) – the therapist’s therapeutic ‘credo’ as a defence / the therapist’s counter-resistances / how the therapist’s habitual position reacts against paradox and enactment

Focusing on the paradoxical nature of the working alliance:

• the client’s wound enters the therapeutic space - three kinds of contact between client and therapist - charged moments in therapy
• enactment: the client’s conflict becomes the therapist’s conflict
• what is the enactment ? - fractal parallel process of levels/dimensions of enactment
• a complex characterological model of the client’s conflict
• two kinds of transference: the client’s unconscious construction of the therapeutic space - transference specific to the therapist
• two kinds of countertransference: habitual countertransference - situational countertransference
• gathering the fragments of the enactment ?

Supervisor’s interventions:

• which level of parallel process to focus on as most helpful/charged?
• countertransference amplification
• countertransference disclosures (incl. countertransference dilemmas)
• parallel process interventions (embodied parallel process / mirror neurons)

Experiential supervision:

• session recall: embodied memory/visualisation; recalling charged moments; transcript/verbatim notes;
• two-chair work / role-plays of charged moments

Problems and difficulties of supervision:

• diversity (self and other): differences in socio-cultural-racial background, heritage and status; similarities and differences in therapeutic approach between supervisor and therapist (working within the supervisee’s modality - stretching towards integrative diversity)
• multiple supervisor functions/roles: supervisor – consultant - colleague - tutor/teaching - mentor - therapist - organisational
• different supervisory styles and modalities
• the dilemmas between the therapist’s therapy and supervision / therapeutic versus supervisory process – splitting between therapy and supervision
• power dynamics between supervisor and supervisee (supervisor as super-ego of the profession; reverse parallel process: giving advice, interfering in the work, etc)
• lack of working alliance between supervisor and therapist: different roots of ruptures/levels of difficulties in alliance
• the dangers of collapsing the triadic space: maintaining client advocacy
• supervisor unable to support and get behind therapist’s practice / challenging unethical and ‘not-good-enough’ practice
• containing clients’ extreme states: suicide, complaints, borderline, etc

The post Level 6 – Supervision Diploma: Becoming an integrative supervisor appeared first on INTEGRA CPD.

9.30 – 12.30   (free - donations to charity)

“The most important thing in art is The Frame. For painting: literally; for other arts: figuratively – because without this humble appliance, you can’t know where The Art stops and The Real World begins. You have to put a ‘box’ around it because otherwise, what is that thing on the wall?”                                       Frank Zappa

One of the main points that has come out of recent discussions on the topic of working online is the following: transitioning from working face-to-face in therapy to working remotely online via meeting on screens throws up all kinds of boundary issues, as the therapeutic frame needs to be re-negotiated in order to do justice to the new format. With the therapist less in control of the working environment and unreliable technology mediating the communication, all kinds of traditional assumptions and working practices are no longer maintainable and enforceable. We have heard many recent examples where traditional boundaries are not straightforwardly applicable or get compromised and broken, creating dilemmas for the therapist.

Therapists who have long specialised in working online -  and who have established themselves as experts for a whole new set of codifications and guidelines for this new format of therapy - can easily be found on the internet, along with dedicated CPD training. Much of the training that is available is trying to transfer the established ethical and working principles of our discipline and professional organisations to the online format. However, in their current form, much of those professional guidelines is based on questionable assumptions regarding the therapeutic relationship and especially the therapeutic frame, that do not fully take into account unconscious processes, ruptures in the working alliance, enactments and the deeper dilemmas of the ‘impossible profession’. Most of our trainings and professional organisations work on the unrealistic assumption that therapy is ‘possible’ and ‘doable’ in a linear way without any of these vicissitudes and can be arranged, negotiated and conducted within a ‘safe’, fixed professional therapeutic frame. When a therapist finds themselves falling short of these unrealistic assumptions, they typically feel additionally shamed and incapacitated.

The focus of the online workshop: established assumptions around the therapeutic frame and its inherent paradoxes

What I would like to offer in this free CPD session is a deeper consideration of the established assumptions around the  therapeutic frame and its inherent paradoxes. Rather than attempting to provide a fixed set of guidelines that can be applied across the board to all your online clients, I will want to pay attention to the idiosyncratic features of each unique client-therapist relationship, and help you formulate some principles that you can use to work out an arrangement and  therapeutic frame that fits and supports the particular work that needs and want to happen with each client.

More importantly, we may want to look at some principles to help you reflect on the therapeutic and counter-therapeutic aspects of your responses to boundary breaks if and when they do occur.

How 'meta' is meta-level communication?

One way of languaging negotiations around the therapeutic frame is to call them meta-level communication - it’s not the therapy interaction itself, but communication about the therapy. Most people - including therapists - easily assume that this kind of meta-level communication is - by definition - an adult-adult conversation and negotiation. However, under the guise of valid and important interactions about the frame, all kinds of unconscious dynamics manifest in these apparently rational interactions and pervade them. Rather than helping to contain the therapy, meta-level communication can become a distraction and avoidance which lends itself to all kinds of enactments, which manifest via parallel process the very dynamic which it is apparently seeking to frame and contain.

The practical upshot for the therapist is:

- how do I respond to necessary and legitimate needs and requests for frame and meta-level communications with the client - which arise abundantly in the transition form face-to-face to working online - without ignoring or being blind-sighted by the unconscious dynamics which manifest via meta-level communication?

- how much credence do I give in my response to the legitimate frame issues that do indeed need to be discussed, clarified and agreed, without losing sight of the enactments for which they are a vehicle and which compromise the therapeutic position and working alliance?

The dilemmas of meta-level communication

The dilemmas of meta-level communication are not particular to online work - they are always one of the most tricky and confusing aspects of therapy, partly because we usually try to approach them via our traditional assumptions which ignore these very dilemmas. I have been thinking about the paradoxes of holding and losing and re-gaining the therapeutic frame for many years. You may find the following slides helpful, which I put together for a 2010 presentation and workshop I gave for CONFER - please take into account that these are 10 years old now, and could do with updating and refining: The Therapeutic Potential of Broken Boundaries (CONFER 2011)

In this online workshop we can consider and clarify some of these ideas and explore how helpful they could be to your practice. We will probably also want to make them more immediately relevant to your practice, by one of the participants volunteering a client-therapist dilemma which we can explore in a supervision demonstration online.

Additional comments:

As in therapy generally, many conundrums, frame difficulties and meta-level questions about the format of therapy are driven by underlying emotional and relational issues, in simple terms: suspicion and mistrust and misconceptions which present themselves as if they are about therapy, its frame and format. However, much of the suspicion and mistrust pre-exists in the background of the client’s emotional reality, and only comes to the fore at the prospect of opening themselves up to ‘help’ (whatever that means) and sharing themselves with some degree of vulnerability and transparency.

So a crucial question when confronted with meta-level concerns is always how we understand and  access and engage and access with both levels: the apparent, explicit, superficial level of valid concern, and the deeper, habitual pre-existing dynamic for which the meta-level is only a specific instance, and to some extent a distraction and defence.

When shifting online, there are many opportunities for similar distractions regarding the technology, the format, the new boundaries, etc. Please give headlines for clinical examples that you have encountered that illustrate the issues and topics of the workshop.

The meeting was recorded on Zoom, will be edited for confidentiality and then the recording will be made available to subscribers.

As an introduction to the topic, and to illustrate the wide variety and contradictory opinions present across the field of therapy, in the following slides you can find a selection of relevant quotes: https://www.slideshare.net/MichaelSoth/soth2010-confer-the-therapeutic-potential-of-broken-boundaries-introductory-quotes

Underlying discussions around therapeutic boundaries are a diversity of assumptions as to how 'containable' the process is, or in other words: how strongly do both partners in the relationship become subsumed by the waters of 'unconscious processes'? https://www.slideshare.net/MichaelSoth/soth2010-confer-the-therapeutic-potential-of-broken-boundaries-water-images

You can find some of the notes, comments and graphics from the meeting here.

The post Re-negotiating the therapeutic frame for working online appeared first on INTEGRA CPD.

A CPD day in Oxford - 19th January 2019

After the OTS training day we had in Oxford on September 16th (on ‘Relational Dilemmas of First Sessions and Initial Assessments') we have had several enquiries and requests to take the topic further and deeper. There was a clear sense that we needed a Part 2, and it was understood that Michael’s principle that the client’s conflict becomes the therapist’s conflict is just the first step in exploring the connection between the client’s and the therapist’s inner world in the context of the working alliance.

So this email is inviting you to register by reply your interest in us organising a follow-up day (prior attendance not required) to take the ideas from the day deeper into your practice, and help you embed the skills you will learn more deeply (more details at the end of this email). If there is sufficient interest, as we expect there will be, we will be doodling for a preferred date within the next few months.

Three things stood out from the work we did in the small groups, as born out by some of the feedback:

1. as therapists we don’t always know when we are in conflict;
2. when we do know, we often hit a blank wall - what to do or how to understand what’s going on;
3. in order to avoid the discomfort of the conflict, we take refuge in default therapeutic interventions, routine manoeuvres and habitual stances, i.e. mechanisms which dilute the necessary charge and tension in the relationship - in doing so, we abort the therapeutic process or precipitate ruptures in the alliance

Some of the feedback was: ‘It is scary to feel like you don’t know what to do as a therapist, so it can be a relief to not know you are in conflict.’ (this is rather reminiscent of Bion’s statement: “In every consulting room there ought to be two rather frightened people.”)

Being aware of and acknowledging our internal (countertransference) conflict as therapists feels like we’re losing our therapeutic position, and a sense that we are failing. In order to avoid the inherent sense of feeling powerless and vulnerable, we resort to our ‘habitual position’ as therapists, trying to shore up our shaky therapeutic position. One of the most common manoeuvres is to ask more questions of the client in the hope of ‘getting somewhere else’, where we can feel on safer ground. However, in doing so we then manage to fall into two further pitfalls:
- by trying to ‘move on’ or ‘hold on’ to our therapeutic position, we give the implicit message to the client that we can’t bear their pain, and can’t sit in it with them;
- because we are doing so defensively, prematurely and without awareness or preparation, our interventions precipitate us further into enactment: we fall down on one or the other side of our conflict, and fail to ‘hold’ the conflict, or to catch the rupture we are entangled in.

This training day will develop your capacity to be aware of your conflict as a therapist and learn to ‘sit in it’ without being overwhelmed by pressure, fear or shame. It then becomes more possible to extract the precious information which the therapist’s conflict contains about the relational dynamic and the client’s inner world.

The post The Client’s Conflict becomes the Therapist’s Conflict – CPD workshop in Oxford 19 Jan 2019 appeared first on INTEGRA CPD.

These groups have been running for the last few years (since 2012), and there is a consistent core of participants in all three groups, but occasionally places become available - contact Michael if you are interested, to see whether any possibilities are on the horizon.
The monthly frequency of these groups means they are not really a replacement for ongoing regular supervision, but are being used by participants as part of their continuing professional development, to deepen and enhance their practice. The diversity of modalities, orientations and styles provides a rich learning environment.

Different Group Formats

The different groups tend to evolve different formats, according to the needs of participants. Some groups prefer a strict rotation and allocation of supervision time for each participant; others want to allow a more free-flowing, exploratory process, which hopefully balances out over the course of the year. In some groups the focus is predominantly on the exploration of client-therapist dynamics and issues; in others there is more of a mixture between this and discussion of more general or theoretical topics. There is also a variety of group cultures in terms of the therapists’ disclosure of their own issues and how much we attend to the group dynamic within the group itself.

Michael’s Supervision Style

Michael's supervision style is integrative, so therapists from all modalities and orientations are welcome, and will find plenty of opportunities to learn from the diversity within the group.Michael pays attention to parallel process on all levels (see his presentation on 'Fractal Self' at CONFER for how he has extended the notion of 'parallel process' for the purposes of supervision, as well as using it as an organising principle for therapy generally), including how the client-therapist dynamic is picked up by the group and reflected within it. He is welcoming of experiential exploration of 'charged moments', via roleplay of the client-therapist interaction, within participants' need and willingness for exposure in the group.

He will focus on speaking and conducting the supervision within the language and orientation of each supervisee's approach, but an exploration of transference-countertransference dynamics is likely to be included, unless a supervisee explicitly declines this. In his approach to supervision, Michael pays attention to the embodied, non-verbal communications and unconscious processes, how they oscillate between working alliance and enactment, and how the therapist's habitual stance/position becomes involved in these conflicts and tensions.

Whilst the exploration of the therapist's relational entanglement is an important aspect of the supervision, the focus is on the deepening of the client's process, and the therapist's continuing learning process. Michael believes that by embracing whole-heartedly the difficulties, paradoxes, shadow aspects and complexities of the therapeutic process, therapists stand the best chance of doing justice to their clients, as well as their own authority, effectiveness and satisfaction as a practitioner.

The leaflet for the Bristol Supervision Groups gives a more detailed description.

There is also a 2011 hand-out with a condensed description: What do I pay attention to in supervision?

The post Monthly Small Supervision Groups (2 hours, 4 participants, online on Zoom) appeared first on INTEGRA CPD.

This group (maximum 7 participants, meeting once every 2 months on a Tuesday in Hendon, North London 10:15 to 16:45) originally organised by Eamonn Marshall, has been running since 2014, meeting 6 times per year, in varying configurations and with various members. There is obviously an established group dynamic and cohesion, and new participants would have to work with how they fit into that to develop a new shape and group. From autumn 2018 there is more place available in this group, which is open to experienced therapists only from across the modalities. All of the current participants work also as supervisors, tutors or teachers alongside their private practice and share a perspective that draws from both humanistic and psychoanalytic traditions. Please enquire soon if you are interested in joining.

Participants

This group is open to experienced therapists from across the modalities who have been working for at least 12 years. It currently has 6 members; the maximum group size is 7 participants, so from autumn 2018 there is one more place available in this group. Currently we have two men and four women, so potential male participants are especially welcome.

Format and ways of working

All of the current participants also work as supervisors, tutors or teachers alongside their private practice and share a perspective that draws from both humanistic and psychoanalytic traditions. The group has an integrative cross- and multi-modality framework and has developed a supervision style that emphasises reflections on the manifestations of transference and countertransference via enactments.

If you are an experienced practitioner and have a curiosity and interest in relational ways of working as well as psychotherapy integration, stretching beyond the therapeutic approach you originally trained in, then this may be a good group for your further development.

As with all supervisory/learning work, there is an overlap between personal and professional development, and Michael and the group have been working to find a good balance between the two. The group has evolved a culture of sharing our work in an experiential way, through role play and two-chair work alongside traditional presentation and discussion. You would need to be comfortable in sharing yourself in such a group supervision format with an emphasis on experiential learning, which naturally opens up the opportunity to discuss therapeutic perspectives, theory and practice across the modalities.

Several participants, as well as Michael, have an interest in embodied ways of working and are bringing that to the group.

Practicalities

Times: meeting bi-monthly on Tuesdays 10:15 to 16:45.

With 6 participants the fee per day is £110, plus £16 per person for the room we are renting.

With 7 participants the fee per day is £100, plus £15 per person for the room we are renting.

For more detailed information about the background, format and content of the weekend workshop, download the leaflet.

If you are interested in joining this group, an interview with Michael is required. You can contact him on: michael.soth@gmail.com or 07929208217.

The post London: bi-monthly Advanced Supervision Group for Experienced Therapists appeared first on INTEGRA CPD.

Purpose and scope of group

This ongoing integrative group for counsellors and psychotherapists from different therapeutic approaches, orientations and trainings, meeting 6 times per year, has been running since 2019 in varying configurations and with various members.

There is an established group dynamic and cohesion, and as new participants join, you, me and the existing group would have to work with how you would fit into that, to develop a new shape and a new group.

Michael’s supervision style is integrative, so therapists from all modalities and orientations are welcome, and will find plenty of opportunities to learn from the diversity within the group.
Michael pays attention to parallel process on all levels (see resources on ‘Fractal Self’ for how he has extended the notion of ‘parallel process’, for the purposes of supervision, as well as an organising principle for therapy generally), including how the client-therapist dynamic is picked up by the group and reflected within it. He is welcoming of experiential exploration of ‘charged moments’, via roleplay, within participants’ need and willingness for exposure in the group.

He will focus on speaking in the language of each supervisee’s approach, but an exploration of transference-countertransference dynamics is likely to be included, unless a supervisee explicitly declines this. In his approach to supervision, Michael pays attention to the embodied, non-verbal communications and unconscious processes, how they oscillate between working alliance and enactment, and how the therapist’s habitual stance/position becomes involved in these conflicts and tensions. Whilst the exploration of the therapist’s relational entanglement is an important aspect of the supervision, the focus is on the deepening of the client’s process, and the therapist’s continuing learning process. Michael believes that by embracing whole-heartedly the difficulties, paradoxes, shadow aspects and complexities of the therapeutic process, therapists stand the best chance of doing justice to their clients, as well as their own authority, effectiveness and satisfaction as a practitioner.

Participants (currently maximum 2 places)

The group invites new members from March 2024. Two participants have been with the group since the beginning, others have joined since then. Most members come from integrative training backgrounds, but there is considerable diversity and richness in different orientations. There is a solid emphasis on the relational dynamic between client and therapist, including transference, countertransference and enactments.

Currently we have 2 men and 5 women.

Format and ways of working

The idea is for the work of the group to be grounded in clinical experience and to have a solid supervision element, but to include additional reflections and theoretical input arising from the process - this will be from an integral-relational perspective, but always stay relevant and applicable to your own style and modality. Working with the general notion of the 'reflective practitioner', we will try to integrate individual and group process as well as experiential and theoretical learning and clinical reflection.

Michael will attempt to make explicit and accessible some of his internal process and working models as a supervisor and group facilitator, including hand-outs and references, depending on your individual learning needs and development goals as a person and as a therapist.

Practicalities

The times are established and fixed (bi-monthly Tuesdays 10.00 – 16.30 on Zoom), but apart from that the group is open to the needs and interests of further participants.

If you are interested in joining this group, an interview with Michael is required. You can contact him on: michael.soth@gmail.com .

Fees (depending on how many people participate on a day):

4 participants: £125

5 participants: £120

6 participants: £115

7 participants: £110

8 participants: £100

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These weekend CPD events, initiated in 2016 by experienced TA therapist Judy Shaw near Exeter in Devon, with a view to forming an ongoing group, provide an ideal container for your continuing professional development, rooted in your own embodied process. The residential weekend format allows for a safer, more cohesive group experience than ordinary CPD workshops and is designed to facilitate deeper personal-professional learning. The group will continue running throughout 2019 and into 2020, with different weekends led by Michael Soth and occasionally other trainers.

These particular 3 weekends led by Michael will constitute a mini-series on 'relational stances, spaces & modalities', bringing embodied therapeutic awareness to the foundations of relational psychotherapy. There will be two other weekends in May and September 2020, a particular request for a CPD event on working with the breath.

Dates for 2019 - 2020

• 1 & 2 December 2018: Embodied Approaches to Therapeutic Theories of Developmental Wounding and Habitual Patterns: Michael
• 30 & 31 March 2019 - Weekend 1 of 'Relational Stances, Spaces & Modalities': Michael
• 25 & 26 May 2019 -  Working with the Breath in Psychotherapy - CPD Weekend with Michael
• 14/15 September 2019 - Weekend 2 of 'Relational Stances, Spaces & Modalities': Michael
• 8/9 February 2020 - Weekend 3 of 'Relational Stances, Spaces & Modalities': Michael
• 9 & 10 May 2020 -  Working with the Breath in Psychotherapy - CPD Weekend with Michael
• 19 & 20 September 2020 -  Working with the Breath in Psychotherapy - CPD Weekend with Michael

The Embodiment of Relational Stances, Spaces & Modalities

A 3-weekend course with Michael Soth

The notion of 'relational modalities' originated in the early 1990’s with Petruska Clarkson, and was one of the most coherent manifestations of the paradigm shift towards two-person psychology. However, whilst it usefully shifts the ‘talking cure’ towards the ‘relating cure’ (thus organising the therapeutic profession around the principle that “it is the relationship that matters”), what is lacking in this formulation of relationality is the bodymind connection.

That particular lack of embodiment then tends towards lending all the diverse kinds of therapeutic relating - and the search for meaning through them - a decidedly mental-reflective bias across the talking therapies. Without embodied presence, we can reflect on relational dynamics until we are blue in the face, it’s unlikely to engender sustained bodymind process and development, let alone holistic transformation. Embodied trauma and character defences are unlikely to yield towards recovery or wholeness through the dominance of insight. Circular, disconnected thinking, intellectualising, rationalising and plain dissociation are then given too much weight in the therapeutic process, depriving it of spontaneity, authenticity and emergent process, as well as the felt sense of depth and coherence.

An expanded model of relational modalities

Clarkson originally differentiated five modalities: working alliance, person-to-person, reparative, transference-countertransference, transpersonal. We will add to that the ‘medical model’ as a valid way of helpful relating in therapy, and then explore how our habitual assumptions and positions – inherited down the generations of therapeutic subcultures – open up, limit or close down particular relational spaces between client and therapist. Michael has been extending and developing further Clarkson’s model into his ‘diamond model’, which will be the foundation for this course.

The bodies’ spontaneous, pre- and non-verbal perceptions as the ground of relational reflections

Our main avenue into such exploration will be via attention to the bodymind detail of relational stances of client and therapist in relation to each other, leading to reflections on relational dynamics between them. These dynamics manifest and are represented in our mind and communicated between our minds in terms of metaphors and images: largely of figures and characters and their scenarios and stories. However, these images, fantasies and narratives which populate our therapeutic descriptions and reflections are rooted in bodymind gestures, feelings and sensations - the ground and raw material of our imagination lies in spontaneous, pre- and non-verbal perceptions and body awareness.

Learning through our bodies

As is the case with character, it is only when we grasp relational stances and positions in our own bodymind that relational modalities start to become meaningful and useable tools for the therapist. It is only our moment-to-moment bodymind experience which gives us full access to the co-creation and co-construction of the relational space. Therefore this short course will be strongly experiential in its focus, and rooted in attention to bodymind processes.

Rooting and grounding the relational dynamics of the helping relationship in the body

The course is open to any interested practitioners of psychotherapy, counselling and/or other bodymind approaches, indeed anybody who wants to ground their understanding of the relational dynamics of the helping relationship in bodymind process, at every step of the therapist's stream of consciousness: perception, understanding and reflection, as well as therapeutic responses and interventions.

Towards an integrative embodied-relational therapy

For about 100 years after Freud first developed the ‘talking cure’, modern psychology, counselling and psychotherapy has remained focused on verbal communication and the cognitive, reflective mind (insight, understanding, rational choices, mental meaning-making). The talking therapies – for all their profound models and gifts accumulated over the decades – are limited in their perspective and effect, for example, in terms of relation to raw distress and deep feelings, developmental and engrained character patterns, psychosomatic issues and trauma as well as creative personal development.

Beyond the talking therapies

For the last 20 years, however, we are beginning to understand that therapy is not mainly a left- brain activity: right-brain-to-right-brain attunement (A. Schore), ‘implicit relational knowing’, the ‘feeling of what happens’ (D. Stern), mirror neurons and non-verbal communication, and the non-dualistic re-visioning of the body-mind relationship (e.g. A. Damasio, D. Siegel) have put embodiment at the heart of the therapeutic endeavour. As implied in the title of Nick Totton’s new book “Embodied Relating” (October 2015), embodiment is the ground of psychotherapy. The challenge now is how to (re-)integrate embodiment into the ‘talking therapies’, to the benefit of both traditions.

Embodiment - the ground of psychotherapy

Attending to embodiment in the consulting room – the client’s and the therapist’s, and the embodied field created between them – has far-reaching implications for everything we experience, think, feel and do in everyday practice, allowing us to re-conceptualise transference and countertransference as embodied experiences. The whole spectrum of the bodymind (sensation-emotion-imagination-cognition-intuition) becomes available as communication channels, allowing creative and spontaneous ways of working that are experience-near, deeply felt and therefore more engaging and potentially transformative. However, with the body now ‘in fashion’, the undifferentiated inclusion of new ‘body techniques’ can also create new and deeper problems for therapists. Rather than grafting embodiment onto established practice as one more eclectic tool, Michael has been working towards a non-dualistic embodied way of being and relating in the therapeutic relationship for many years.

Experiential process-oriented learning

These workshops are an opportunity to work with one the most experienced trainers at the forefront of bringing embodiment into psychotherapy in the UK. The learning process in the groups will be based on the same embodied-relational principles, working experientially with emerging process individually and collectively, modelling the therapeutic approach itself.

References

Soth, M. (2010) The Return of the Repressed Body – Not a Smooth Affair. UKCP Journal 'The Psychotherapist', Autumn 2010
Totton, N. (2014) Embodied Relating. International Body Psychotherapy Journal, 13(2)
Totton, N. (Karnac, October 2015) Embodied Relating: The Ground of Psychotherapy

For full booking information, including venues and costs, download the leaflet (including booking form)

Booking enquiries - Judy Shaw:

e: judyshawuk@icloud.com T: 01404 831007
w: http://indianlilac.co.uk

Administration enquiries - Clare Brook:

e: clare_brook@yahoo.co.uk

The post Exeter: Body-oriented CPD Weekend Group 2019-2020 with Michael Soth appeared first on INTEGRA CPD.