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Over recent years the most exciting developments in our field have come to us via neuroscience, psychotherapy integration (i.e. cross-fertilisation between approaches) and the inclusion of the body.
We now understand that whatever psychological wounds the client is bringing to us and into the consulting room, we will in some ways become involved and implicated with them, in ways that go far beyond verbal interaction. The term ‘enactment’ is being used to describe the ways in which the therapist is - inevitably and necessarily - drawn into the client’s wound, leading to impasses and breakdowns in the working alliance.
There is great therapeutic potential in these cycles of rupture and repair that occur in the client-therapist relationship, but much of it happens subliminally. So if it takes place unconsciously, outside of awareness, how can we perceive and understand enactment and respond creatively from within it?
This CPD workshop is dedicated to deepening our engagement with difficult enactment dynamics in the therapeutic relationship, and to finding ways of accessing the therapeutic potential locked within them.
What you can expect to learn on the day …
- perceive the ways in which the client’s wound enters the consulting room
- register significant and charged moments in the relationship
- understand these moments in the context of the three kinds of contact
- collect in these moments bodymind information which would otherwise remain subliminal
- link these moments to the client’s habitual relational patterns
- process the charge and pressure impacting on the therapist
- consider interventions for relieving or intensifying the transference-countertransference enactment pressure
This group is for experienced therapists only (practising for 8 years or more), and has had a consistent core group of participants for the last few years, meeting 4 days per year. There is a pool of 18 participants, and 2 more places are available from 2016. See the dedicated page for detailed info.
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.
Especially in the global financial crisis, taking money off people in distress raises ethical and moral questions. Is therapy about love and healing? Or is it about business and money?
In practice, the answer for most of us could be that we operate comfortably in some middle zone of ambiguity, but many counsellors and therapists struggle to do that. We all know that - unless we charge silly rates - we will not get rich in this profession, but we might achieve a comfortable degree of income and security, without selling our soul in the marketplace.
Most workshops for therapists on the topic of finance focus on the actual business skills needed, or your own ambivalence about charging money which is seen as connected to your self-worth.
This workshop will focus instead on the vastly underestimated inherent contradictions of therapy as the ‘impossible profession’, the emotional stress of dealing with these contradictions as they manifest in the intricacy of each client-therapist relationship and how this hooks into the therapist’s ‘habitual position’. Especially for recently qualified therapists who are slowly building up their practice, many find certain thresholds of client numbers which they seem to get stuck at. This is to do with you own self-regulation within the – inherently conflicted - therapeutic position.
Most training does not sufficiently prepare therapists for the day-to-day reality of the vicissitudes, paradoxes and complexities, the psychological ‘load’ that derives from this, and how to process the emotional aftermath of a day’s work.
Over the years, Michael has helped many supervisees increase the client load they are able to sustain, and thus make a proper living from being a therapist. In this workshop he will help you explore what he has concluded are the factors and obstacles which hold the key to making the business of therapy viable and comfortable.
When it comes to shifting the focus of therapeutic interaction from 'talking about' to 'exploring the experience', there are few techniques more useful than 'empty-chair' or 'two-chair' work (this applies to supervision as well as therapy).
However, when therapists risk using the technique, it often does not produce the intended or intuited results. Having started with what seemed a burning, vibrant issue, the spark gets lost, and the interaction ‘goes flat’ or starts going round in circles.
From years of using the technique myself, as well as supervising it, I have concluded there are some built-in recurring pitfalls which we can anticipate and prepare for; when understood and addressed, these pitfalls can actually enhance our use of the technique and make it more elegant.
These two CPD days are designed to engender both detailed knowledge and skill as well as confidence, whatever level of experience you are currently bringing to this type of work.
I am expecting that in terms of the nitty-gritty detail of technique (what you actually do and say as a therapist and how and in what sequence), these days will be amongst the most specific and useful you will ever do. In terms of this particular technique, it's as close to a 'recipe book' or ‘manual’ of therapeutic intervention as is feasible when what we are really interested in is the aliveness and spontaneity of the client-therapist interaction.
Download leaflet: http://www.integra-cpd.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/leaflets/20150523_Bristol_Two-Chair_Work_Leaflet_72.pdf
Solutions to the technique's recurring pitfalls - second of two one-day workshops
The history of the humanistic approaches includes a plethora of creative ways of working which are capable of expanding ‘talking therapy’ into experiential exploration. One of the most widely-used techniques is two-chair work which allows the client to psychodramatically enact, role-play and externalise particular relationship difficulties they feel caught in. There are many variations and approximations of this technique, not all of them necessarily leading to a full-blown two-chair interaction as made famous by Fritz Perls’ Gestalt demonstrations. Just imaginatively putting the boss or the partner or the parent onto a chair, giving them a place in the room, can be a sufficiently powerful intervention, without it evolving into swapping chairs and attempting an actual dialogue.
One of the advantages of the technique is that it can be applied fluidly to both external and internal relationships, often helping the client to not only see, but feel the parallels and connections between internal and external ways of relating which are at the root of what perpetuates unsatisfying, polarised or destructive relationships.
Whilst the technique has undoubtedly many therapeutic uses and benefits, when using it, therapists frequently report in supervision that it did not work, that it ‘went flat’, or that the client self-consciously refused to ‘perform’.
This workshop (two separate days, one in October, one in March 2014) is an opportunity to comprehensively enhance your confidence in using the technique, by understanding and familarising yourself with the inherent pitfalls and recurring stumbling blocks. Our starting point will be that the very moment you think of using the technique, the pitfalls are always already necessarily constellated. This helps us anticipate and deal creatively with those moments of impasse that are likely to arise. We will use therapeutic considerations from outside the Gestalt paradigm (which initially developed the technique), to complement and deepen our understanding of its pitfalls, i.e. considerations of the bodymind aspects and the transference implications.
As the use of any technique is very much about the detail of the actual delivery as well as the underlying principles, we will proceed sequentially during the course of the workshop, addressing the various stages of two-chair work: perceiving the polarities, setting up the dialogue, directing it and facilitating resolution, including the possibility of taking a third position.
Whilst psychotherapy integration has been one of the most necessary, creative and productive developments in our field over the last 20 years, 'integrative' is in danger of becoming another meaningless sound-bite.
What does our integration include, and what doesn't it? What holds it together?
How broad and deep is the integration we are pursuing and therefore capable of offering to our clients? Many therapists quite rightly ask: does it do justice to the integrative principle to cherry-pick a couple of different approaches and call this 'integrative'? Are we not aiming at an integration that includes the strengths and gifts of the whole field, including all the theories and techniques?
If this is your aim, or you feel confused or disjointed as an integrative therapist, or you have misgivings about the effectiveness of your integration, this day is for you.
Many therapists do not feel sufficiently prepared to hold a robust, broad-spectrum, coherent integrative position. Too often integration is taught whilst disregarding the irreconcilable contradictions between the approaches in terms of underlying paradigms, theories, stances and assumptions. This inevitably leads to a too pragmatic attitude which reduces integration to an eclectic pick'n mix of techniques, with therapists switching between different approaches in ways that are confusing and uncontaining for the client.
So how can we access the full wealth of therapeutic ways of working, without becoming everything to all people, diluting our therapeutic stance and losing coherence?
Michael has been working on this conundrum for the last 20 years, and developed a formulation which he calls the 'diamond model of the modalities'. Based upon the different modalities of therapeutic relatedness (Clarkson/Stark), it can provide a framework for your own ongoing journey towards integration between the diverse approaches and polarities within the still fragmented psychotherapeutic field.
This group is for experienced therapists only (practising for 8 years or more), and has had a consistent core group of participants for the last few years, meeting 4 days per year. There is a pool of 18 participants, and 2 more places are available from 2016. See the dedicated page for detailed info.
Dancing between risk and stability in psychotherapy
A CPD weekend workshop for counsellors & psychotherapists with Nick Totton & Michael Soth
Download the leaflet: click here.
According to many complexity theorists, creativity and growth occur 'at the edge of chaos': in the border zone between the known and the unknown, where small changes can lead to big effects. A bit like the intertidal zone of the seashore, where large amounts of energy are available, more than can be found either on the beach or in the ocean.
What does this suggest for therapy? Many clients - and therapists - believe that therapy is all about change.
On the other hand, many clients feel victimised by change, and long to maintain the status quo, or return to a previous experience.
The polarity of risk and stability touches upon and overlaps with other polarities: stillness and movement, being and doing, non-attachment and passion, state and process.
So is therapy 'really about' risk and change, or stability and safety?
The paradoxical theory of change - “change happens when we (and our therapist) accept what is” - conveys an attitude that is neither attached to the status quo nor invested in forcing change. This workshop invites you to push the paradox further. The more we include our spontaneous embodied, emotional, imaginal and mental processes in our awareness, the more paradoxical the tensions between risk and stability become: co-creating each other, deconstructing each other, until each subtly turns into the other.
Following the therapeutic process at this level of paradox requires attention to bodymind and systemic micro-detail and a therapeutic presence that is anchored and stable as well as nimble and mercurial. The weekend is an opportunity to dance at your own growing edge as a person and a therapist, to deepen your own idiosyncratic therapeutic style and find your own way to inhabit the paradox of risk and stability.
When it comes to shifting the focus of therapeutic interaction from 'talking about' to 'exploring the experience', there are few techniques more useful than 'empty-chair' or 'two-chair' work (this applies to supervision as well as therapy).
However, when therapists risk using the technique, it often does not produce the intended or intuited results. Having started with what seemed a burning, vibrant issue, the spark gets lost, and the interaction ‘goes flat’ or starts going round in circles.
From years of using the technique myself, as well as supervising it, I have concluded there are some built-in recurring pitfalls which we can anticipate and prepare for; when understood and addressed, these pitfalls can actually enhance our use of the technique and make it more elegant.
These two CPD days are designed to engender both detailed knowledge and skill as well as confidence, whatever level of experience you are currently bringing to this type of work.
I am expecting that in terms of the nitty-gritty detail of technique (what you actually do and say as a therapist and how and in what sequence), these days will be amongst the most specific and useful you will ever do. In terms of this particular technique, it's as close to a 'recipe book' or ‘manual’ of therapeutic intervention as is feasible when what we are really interested in is the aliveness and spontaneity of the client-therapist interaction.
Download leaflet: http://www.integra-cpd.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/leaflets/20150523_Bristol_Two-Chair_Work_Leaflet_72.pdf
An ongoing, integrative group
This group, led by one of the most experienced integrative trainers in the UK, will provide an ideal relational container for your ongoing development as a therapist. By immersing yourself in a diverse group of colleagues from different schools and orientations, you will widen your perspective, deepen your practice, draw both inspiration and challenge and have a reference point as well as resources and teaching to support your further development.
You can find a detailed description of the format and objectives of this group on the dedicated page.
for Chiron-trained Body Psychotherapists
An integrative bodymind approach to developmental theory
A practical & experiential CPD course for counsellors, psychotherapists, helping professionals & complementary therapists
The origins of repetitive patterns
Our clients bring to us limiting, self –defeating and destructive patterns which keep repeating themselves.
They ask for our help in overcoming these patterns. In order to help them we rely on theories of childhood development. The central assumption of this approach is: adult patterns of being and relating to oneself and others are rooted in childhood development. A child’s experience of its early environment becomes a blueprint for relating and managing himself and the world.
These patterns manifest in the way we think, feel and behave; they also manifest in our body, its shape and structure, from our physiology through our muscular system to brain anatomy. The body is a frozen map of our emotional histories, reflecting our major wounds as well as our creative adaptations to environmental disappointments and challenges.
The body remembers
‘Character structure theory’ - as developed by Wilhelm Reich and others - is a comprehensive method of diagnosing and working with those habitual patterns. It offers insight into clients’ issues that arise from different stages of psychic development.
How can it help your practice
It outlines the therapeutic tasks and challenges that can be anticipated in working with each type and structure, as well as providing the therapeutic tools and techniques for productively addressing the client’s specific wounds.
In this course you will learn about:
◆ integration of various developmental theories, including Reichian and object relations perspectives
◆ the common ground of the various psychodynamic theories
◆ the basic steps of character formation
◆ the major developmental phases
◆ the varieties of emotional wounding arising in each of these phases
◆ the ‘character structures’ pertaining to each of these phases
◆ defensive and self-protective aspects of the various ‘character structures’
◆ the therapeutic tasks and challenges presented by each ‘character structures’
◆ what constitutes ‘working-through’ of the emotional wounding ?
Learning style and methods:
The learning on the course will build on participants’ previous experience. It will be both practical-experiential as well as theoretical, and supported by references.
An integrative bodymind approach to developmental theory
A practical & experiential CPD course for counsellors, psychotherapists, helping professionals & complementary therapists
The origins of repetitive patterns
Our clients bring to us limiting, self –defeating and destructive patterns which keep repeating themselves.
They ask for our help in overcoming these patterns. In order to help them we rely on theories of childhood development. The central assumption of this approach is: adult patterns of being and relating to oneself and others are rooted in childhood development. A child’s experience of its early environment becomes a blueprint for relating and managing himself and the world.
These patterns manifest in the way we think, feel and behave; they also manifest in our body, its shape and structure, from our physiology through our muscular system to brain anatomy. The body is a frozen map of our emotional histories, reflecting our major wounds as well as our creative adaptations to environmental disappointments and challenges.
The body remembers
‘Character structure theory’ - as developed by Wilhelm Reich and others - is a comprehensive method of diagnosing and working with those habitual patterns. It offers insight into clients’ issues that arise from different stages of psychic development.
How can it help your practice
It outlines the therapeutic tasks and challenges that can be anticipated in working with each type and structure, as well as providing the therapeutic tools and techniques for productively addressing the client’s specific wounds.
In this course you will learn about:
◆ integration of various developmental theories, including Reichian and object relations perspectives
◆ the common ground of the various psychodynamic theories
◆ the basic steps of character formation
◆ the major developmental phases
◆ the varieties of emotional wounding arising in each of these phases
◆ the ‘character structures’ pertaining to each of these phases
◆ defensive and self-protective aspects of the various ‘character structures’
◆ the therapeutic tasks and challenges presented by each ‘character structures’
◆ what constitutes ‘working-through’ of the emotional wounding ?
Learning style and methods:
The learning on the course will build on participants’ previous experience. It will be both practical-experiential as well as theoretical, and supported by references.
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.
Charged Moments in Supervision – recognising and engaging with embodied parallel process
Conference keynote at 1st National Conference: Israel Association for Body Psychotherapy "Is there anybody home?"
by Morit Heitzler
23 Oct - 24 Oct 2014 Tel Aviv
In this keynote, Morit will discuss the past, present and future developments of the Body Psychotherapy field, and its research, practice and application in mental health worldwide.
Description TBC
An ongoing, integrative group
This group, led by one of the most experienced integrative trainers in the UK, will provide an ideal relational container for your ongoing development as a therapist. By immersing yourself in a diverse group of colleagues from different schools and orientations, you will widen your perspective, deepen your practice, draw both inspiration and challenge and have a reference point as well as resources and teaching to support your further development.
Towards an embodied holistic 21st-century psychotherapy
All the work of the group will have a strong emphasis on the bodymind connection and embodiment, extending our awareness beyond verbal communication. A significant number of participants will bring some training and experience of various body-oriented perspectives to the group. By grounding everything that happens in the therapeutic dynamic in the corresponding psycho-somatic processes (in both client and therapist and the relationship), we will be applying cutting-edge principles of modern neuroscience regarding right-brain to right-brain attunement, implicit relational knowing and multi-modal communication.
Integration on the basis of relational modalities
Embracing the validity of different kinds of therapeutic relatedness, we will attend to the therapeutic relationship as a multi-dimensional space where different modalities of relating reveal and open up different therapeutic avenues and possibilities. Michael is building upon models of relational multiplicity by Petruska Clarkson and Martha Stark, and has developed these further into what he calls his ‘diamond model’, recognising the paradoxical nature of enactment as central to the therapeutic endeavour. This will form a theoretical backdrop to the work of the group, allowing integration of humanistic, psychoanalytic, behavioural, systemic and other traditions.
The therapeutic relationship - systems within systems
We can think of client and therapist as forming a semi-closed system which – as we know – can be paralleled in the supervisory system (parallel process between therapist and supervisor). In a similar way, therapy is nested within other systems past and present which constitute its context and both restrict and resource the process. Thinking systemically – what Michael calls the ‘Fractal Self – will be a background perspective which may occasionally become part of the teaching, drawing on complexity theory and various systemic theories and approaches.
Fluid, experiential ways of working – integrating theory and practice
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. We will value different learning styles and use different formats and structures flexibly, in response to the group’s unfolding needs. There will be space for you to bring the issues and dilemmas arising in your practice, and address these in terms of specific clients as well as general theoretical themes.
Developing your own unique style and approach – the ‘wounded healer’
Unlike your original training, this group is not beholden to a particular approach and its paradigm and assumptions. You can work, learn and practice within your existing modality, or you can stretch, expand and explore other approaches, without any obligations or loyalty issues. We will be working from an inclusive integral-relational perspective, but the priority is for your learning to always stay relevant and applicable to your own style and modality and evolving practice.
Recognising that it is your self that the work hinges upon (and not much else), we will aim at helping you develop an idiosyncratic therapeutic presence that ‘suits’ you and matches who you are as a person and your life. Inevitably, this will include your own history and pathology, so discovering what the archetype of the wounded healer means to you and embracing it as well as inhabiting it as a therapist will be one of the opportunities which the group offers.
For further details download the leaflet:
This group is for experienced therapists only (practising for 8 years or more), and has had a consistent core group of participants for the last few years, meeting 4 days per year. There is a pool of 18 participants, and 2 more places are available from 2016. See the dedicated page for detailed info.
An integrative bodymind approach to developmental theory
A practical & experiential CPD course for counsellors, psychotherapists, helping professionals & complementary therapists
Module 2: 14 - 16 November 2014 - Vilnius
Also available during the weekend: individual supervision with Morit
The origins of repetitive patterns
Our clients bring to us limiting, self –defeating and destructive patterns which keep repeating themselves.
They ask for our help in overcoming these patterns. In order to help them we rely on theories of childhood development. The central assumption of this approach is: adult patterns of being and relating to oneself and others are rooted in childhood development. A child’s experience of its early environment becomes a blueprint for relating and managing himself and the world.
These patterns manifest in the way we think, feel and behave; they also manifest in our body, its shape and structure, from our physiology through our muscular system to brain anatomy. The body is a frozen map of our emotional histories, reflecting our major wounds as well as our creative adaptations to environmental disappointments and challenges.
The body remembers
‘Character structure theory’ - as developed by Wilhelm Reich and others - is a comprehensive method of diagnosing and working with those habitual patterns. It offers insight into clients’ issues that arise from different stages of psychic development.
How can it help your practice
It outlines the therapeutic tasks and challenges that can be anticipated in working with each type and structure, as well as providing the therapeutic tools and techniques for productively addressing the client’s specific wounds.
In this course you will learn about:
◆ integration of various developmental theories, including Reichian and object relations perspectives
◆ the common ground of the various psychodynamic theories
◆ the basic steps of character formation
◆ the major developmental phases
◆ the varieties of emotional wounding arising in each of these phases
◆ the ‘character structures’ pertaining to each of these phases
◆ defensive and self-protective aspects of the various ‘character structures’
◆ the therapeutic tasks and challenges presented by each ‘character structures’
◆ what constitutes ‘working-through’ of the emotional wounding ?
Learning style and methods:
The learning on the course will build on participants’ previous experience. It will be both practical-experiential as well as theoretical, and supported by references.
This advanced group for experienced practitioners (maximum 7 participants) meets about every two months over the year, and there is now only one more place available from December 2014. This group currently has 3 TA therapists and 3 integrative Body Psychotherapists.
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.
Dates for 2014-2015:
2 December 2014
3 February 2015
14 April 2015
19 May 2015
7 July 2015
Clients who experienced sadistic dynamics - whether they were on the victim or the perpetrator end of the spectrum - bring into the therapeutic space many shadow aspect of the human psyche. Cruelty, domination, humiliations, manipulation, aggression are only a few of the emotions that will be expressed and often manifest in the therapeutic relationship whilst working with the patterns and implications of sadism. The re-enactment of the power dynamic and the pain-pleasure see-saw will often dominate the therapeutic space itself.
As most of the psycho-biological stress of this dynamic is communicated non-verbally, via right-brain-to-right-brain attunement, the process relies largely on the therapist's own sense of embodiment and internal body-mind regulation.
In this presentation, based on case material, Morit will explore the various ways in which Body Psychotherapy can enhance the therapist's ability to engage fully with their spontaneous reactions in the countertransference, and how working relationally in an embodied way provides the therapeutic dyad with resources and capacities that can support them in this challenging endeavour.
For full details and booking information for this and other events in the CONFER series on Working Psychotherapeutically with Sadism, visit the CONFER website.