Women’s social history is considered, before moving on to look at the mother-daughter relationship through the lens of attachment theory as well as the impact on a daughter’s development when she has been raised with an avoidant mother, a preoccupied mother, a secure mother, a traumatised mother.

Most of the video considers a more attachment based psychodynamic and psychoanalytic clinical focus in exploring the impact of the maternal on a daughter and the issues around the identification that each has to one another.  Potential projections, hopes, desires, fears, and the separation-individuation process are looked as well as a consideration of how we might work with these dynamics in the consulting room.

This training is suitable for experienced therapists as well as those new to the profession and those in-training. Please be aware that an in-depth examination of the four main attachment styles will not be offered as part of this workshop, but you may want to familiarise yourself by reading our blogpost, which can be found by clicking here

Testimonials:

“Tori’s excellent knowledge around attachment styles and the mother- daughter dyad has fired up my interest in attachment even more and I have come away with so much to reflect on both professionally and personally. Thank you!”

“Excellent training – trainer immediately captured my interest and conveyed information in an empathic and conversational way which really appealed to the way I learn. lots of very helpful information too.”

“A really enjoyable, informative and thought-provoking workshop. I came away with a wider perspective of attachment theory, more relevant to my work as a psychotherapist.”

Please note  that any mention in the videos about “handouts” or “printouts” by trainers, are in reference to printouts of the PowerPoint slides, which were made available to delegates who attended the LIVE workshop. These slides are included within the videos and are the property of the trainers. They are not available for download or redistribution with any video rental purchase.

The post Mothers and Daughters: a complex couple rooted in Love and Pain first appeared on Therapy Education Online.

During this training sibling relationships in all their diversity are considered from an attachment-based perspective as well as the the idea that no two children have the same parenting. Freud’s notion of sibling rivalry is considered, as is the impact of rivalry and competition between siblings. The impact of the wider social world on siblings is explored, and  issues such as race, sexuality, disability, and social class are looked at. This video also look at how experiences within the family have an impact on sibling relationships. This might be the impact of loss and/or bereavement within the family, adoption, birth order, blended families, and extended families.

In this training how people in the same family can have different attachment styles is explored as well as how the projection and transference of parents, and parental expectations, make a difference to how siblings attach.

This video is suitable for any counsellor or psychotherapist (including those in-training) who is curious about the impact of siblings and the sibling relationship on their client.

Testimonials:

“A very wide-ranging look at siblings. i had thought it would be helpful to a few of my clients but in fact it was helpful to all of them.”

“Truly engaging and thought provoking! It provided a wider perspective and introduced new dynamics that have enriched my self-awareness and my client work.”

“Really absorbing and informative. Helped me formulate areas in which to explore with clients around sibling relationships and dynamics within their history. Hugely valuable.”

Please note  that any mention in the videos about “handouts” or “printouts” by trainers, are in reference to printouts of the PowerPoint slides, which were made available to delegates who attended the LIVE workshop. These slides are included within the videos and are the property of the trainers. They are not available for download or redistribution with any video rental purchase.

The post Siblings: same parents, different experience? first appeared on Therapy Education Online.

While some patients welcome time out, perhaps introducing extra breaks by missing sessions, others protest or collapse in the absence of the therapist.

Unexpected breaks due to therapists’ life events are particularly challenging and sometimes catastrophic. But, while the regularity and rhythms of therapy help to create a secure base, the spaces between appointments are essential, holding different meanings at different stages of the work.

Drawing on both Attachment Theory and the work of Winnicott, this presentation also considers the aim of psychotherapy and how breaks, including the therapist’s holidays and sabbaticals, provide essential developmental opportunities.

Testimonials:

“I think Linda was excellent, deep thinking, challenging and helpful.”

“Really welcomed Linda’s case study material and loved the ‘Begonia’ example! Really lovely interaction between her and her client!”

Please note  that any mention in the videos about “handouts” or “printouts” by trainers, are in reference to printouts of the PowerPoint slides, which were made available to delegates who attended the LIVE workshop. These slides are included within the videos and are the property of the trainers. They are not available for download or redistribution with any video rental purchase.

The post Breaks in Therapy: From Separation Anxiety to Security first appeared on Therapy Education Online.

After running through the basics of Attachment Theory in the first session, Tori brings clinical vignettes from their own work for us to consider. We will look at some typical presentations of avoidant and preoccupied attachment patterns in our clients and think about how to work with these different styles to enable our clients to form an earned security. We also think about our own attachment style, and how our attachment style impacts on our therapeutic interventions. We examine how patterns of care-seeking from our clients and patterns of care giving from us come together dynamically in the care exchange.

In the third and final session we think more specifically about how trauma disrupts our attachment patterns and how the complexities of working with trauma get expressed in the consulting room. We consider the impact of fear – in both clients and clinicians – on clinical work, and explore how to identify and work with dissociation.

Trainer Feedback

“I found Victoria Settle excellent in her clinical presentation and assessment.”

“I really liked Tori’s presentation as it brought the ideas discussed back to the practice of doing therapy in the room with a client.”

“I was particularly enthralled by Tori’s presentation.”

“I Particularly enjoyed Tori Settle’s presentation which I found so clearly explained and easy to digest.”

“I found Tori’s presentation to be exceptionally clear and easy to follow. I am very interested in Attachment theory so I gained much from her presentation.”

Please note  that any mention in the videos about “handouts” or “printouts” by trainers, are in reference to printouts of the PowerPoint slides, which were made available to delegates who attended the LIVE workshop. These slides are included within the videos and are the property of the trainers. They are not available for download or redistribution with any video rental purchase.

The post The Nuts and Bolts of Attachment Theory first appeared on Therapy Education Online.

In this training our three speakers explore the experience of anxiety, and how we can effectively work with clients experiencing these symptoms in therapy.

The neuroscience of anxiety, the function of anxiety in everyday life and the experience of collective anxiety experienced in response to world events are all explored.

The training offers ideas about why some people become overwhelmed with anxiety and panic, including early causes around attachment rupture, and also offers some ways to work with anxiety and panic, including somatic/body-based approaches.

Victoria Settle: Care Giving or Scare Giving?

 In this presentation Tori Settle discusses the neuroscience of anxiety, and explores anxiety from an attachment perspective.

The impact of parental anxiety on sons and daughters can be profound, and adult children of these parents can often suffer from all sorts of seemingly irrational fears later on in life.

Our sense of safety in the world is a learnt security from our primary attachment figures and when those attachment figures fill us with insecurity, we equally learn that the world is a frightening place in which to live. With this fundamental underlying existential sense of insecurity, learnt from the adults around us, seemingly small events can induce a panic in some of us which can literally feel life threatening.

Attachment theory can offer fresh insights into the source of panic attacks in adults and can offer ways of working therapeutically to mitigate these fears.

Smita Rajput Kamble – Case Studies in Anxiety

In this presentation Smita Rajput Kamble shares some of Freud’s original ideas on anxiety, and discusses how we might define anxiety, how it manifests and how it functions.

She explores a number of case studies that show how early traumatic experiences can lead to separation (attachment-related) and castration anxiety (body parts and its internalised components) and its role in human development.

Smita also explores how psychotherapy can contribute to the ‘lessening/reduction’ of anxiety disorders.

Suzanne Worrica – Anxiety as a Whole-Body Experience

Suzanne Worrica  examines the whole-body experience of anxiety drawing on contemporary research, clinical vignettes and inviting viewers to reflect on their own embodied experiences of anxiety.

She looks at the function of anxiety as a way of informing us about how we are experiencing the world now.  Through vignettes she links chronic anxiety as a secondary symptom of childhood relational rupture and discusses the ways in which it can present in adults.

Suzanne also considers collective anxieties of the CoVid pandemic and recent socio-cultural changes (e.g. BLM, war in Europe) and explores the impact this has on our threat system and how we relate to others.

Finally, Suzanne discusses ways in which to work experientially with clients who present with chronic anxiety.

Testimonials:

“This event touched me more personally than some of the online training I’ve attended before and has given me new theory, useful new applications for client work, and material for personal and professional reflection also. How lovely to have all this in one event.”

“Grounding & uplifting!”

“Amazing, insightful, well delivered training. I came away with so much to think about.”

Please note  that any mention in the videos about “handouts” or “printouts” by trainers, are in reference to printouts of the PowerPoint slides, which were made available to delegates who attended the LIVE workshop. These slides are included within the videos and are the property of the trainers. They are not available for download or redistribution with any video rental purchase.

The post Anxiety Conference first appeared on Therapy Education Online.

“Avoidant” or Dismissing individuals can appear self-sufficient, aloof, and cut off from their emotions. They are often self-controlled and perfectionist, demanding high standards of themselves and other people.

They struggle to make and maintain intimate connections with others, including their therapists. But their relationship with themselves is equally fraught, with shame often at the core of their being underneath the defences. A spectrum from mild to extreme avoidance will be described, and also the coexistence of unresolved trauma.

In order to work effectively with these clients, we need to find ways to empathise with them and understand their defences.

From the perspective of contemporary attachment theory, this training focuses on assessment, presentation in therapy, and potential pitfalls. It proposes specific aims and areas of focus in our work with clients who can be difficult to engage, to warm to or to hold onto.

Testimonials:

The post Working with Avoidant Attachment first appeared on Therapy Education Online.

The philosopher Martin Buber continually spoke about valuing the other through an “I-thou” relationship; Freud referred to psychoanalysis as “a cure through Love”; and Carl Rogers unreservedly stated that the kind of relationship that he hypothesized and experienced as healing was one in which the client is offered “unconditional love”.

Our three expert speakers are Victoria Settle (CEO, The Bowlby Centre), Robin Shohet (Centre for Supervision & Team Development), and Professor Divine Charura (York St. John University), share their thoughts on aspects such as the very foundations of love in infancy and the importance of early attachment, the problems we encounter when love goes wrong and the ways in which we block and shield ourselves from loving and being loved, and therapeutic theories of love and how therapy can, through love, provide transformation and change in the human condition.

Professor Divine Charura: Love, interconnectedness, trauma and therapy

In this presentation Divine draws on some of the themes from his own practice as a psychotherapist, and his co-edited book (with Stephen Paul) Love and Therapy.

He outlines the different contemporary theories of love and how human psychological and relational development as well as trauma can be understood. He explores questions including:

• What do we mean by love?
• What emerges and what is the impact when love is not available?
• What is the research that illuminates the impact of love as well as the impact of a lack of love?

Divine also focuses on Love in therapeutic settings and the psychotherapeutic frame. Many influential figures of religious faith, philosophers, psychologists and psychotherapists are known to have pointed to the importance of love and the traumatic impact of its absence on the human psyche.

However the issue of Love in relation to working therapeutically with clients often raises cautionary conversations, despite so many key figures in the field of therapy referring to a relational approach being a curative dimension of the therapeutic encounter.

Thus, Love in the psychotherapeutic context is not referring to unethical practice but rather to experiencing a process in which the client moves from a position of seeing her or himself as unworthy and unlovable, to realizing that s/he is deeply accepted, respected, deeply understood, in contact and connection, an authentic-encounter.

Questions that are considered include:

• In what ways do we love our clients?
• How does our love for our clients manifest in the therapeutic relationship?
• Can we hope/believe that love is all you need?
• How are the risks of love managed within and beyond therapy?
• What ethical and professional boundaries govern this ‘Love’ to ensure it remains healing and therapeutic?

Victoria Settle: A Theory of Love

Love lies at the heart of John Bowlby’s theory of Attachment and starts with the love between an infant and their primary caregiver.

From the cradle to the grave, secure attachments with family, friends and partners remain key to our sense of safety and contentment. An attuned parental response to their baby’s cues begins to lay down the foundations for the adult’s attachment security. One of the most powerful factors in the development of insecure attachment patterns lies in the failure of the parent to read their infant’s states of mind.

In this presentation, Tori focuses on the attachment perspective on love and explores the care exchange between care giver and care seeker which can either build security, if it goes well, or undermine and compromise security if it goes badly.

Drawing on both Attachment theory and research and over two decades of clinical experience as an attachment-based psychoanalyst Tori delves into what is effectively a “Theory of Love” and uses clinical vignettes to illustrate the complexities of the care exchange and the impact of our fear systems on that exchange when working with traumatised client groups.

Questions considered include:

• How do our attachment patterns impact on our capacity to work effectively as professional care givers?
• How can we use attachment theory to better understand the complex and often contradictory patterns of seeking care that our clients adopt?
• How do the therapist’s and client’s fear systems interact and derail the care exchange?

Robin Shohet: Love Never Fails

“Love is patient. Love is kind. Love… rejoices with the truth… Love never fails”. (Corinthians 13)

 What’s Love Got to Do with It?  (Tina Turner)

Six year old, Albert, is learning to read and reads out the title of the book on his mother’s desk. ‘In Love with Supervision’ he reads.

“Do you know what supervision means,” she asks.

“Oh yes”, he says “Super – Vision.  It’s when you can see through things and you can see what’s really there.”

She didn’t ask him what he thought was really there, but he might well have replied, “Love.” It is the basis of A Course in Miracles, where a miracle is described as seeing another through new eyes.  It’s what supervision offers to help the practitioner do, which is why I see supervision as spiritual practice.

And here is the paradox.

Much of Robin’s presentation looks at how and why we block this love from our awareness in our daily lives and in our work. And because we block it, we don’t trust ourselves and each other and we create rules to take the place of connection.

Having ‘othered’ each other, these rules are held in place by a fear of being shamed and blamed. The fantasy that without them we would all be having sex with clients, breaking boundaries, abusing power. If we knew ourselves as love, then none of these dysfunctional behaviours would attract us because they come from a place of lack.

Testimonials:

“Glorious, stimulating and profound presentations.”

“It felt like an incredibly important topic in the light of current world events. It helped ‘reset’ my values and commitments as a therapist!”

“What a wonderfully comprehensive take on love. The three speakers complemented each other brilliantly.”

Please note  that any mention in the videos about “handouts” or “printouts” by trainers, are in reference to printouts of the PowerPoint slides, which were made available to delegates who attended the LIVE workshop. These slides are included within the videos and are the property of the trainers. They are not available for download or redistribution with any video rental purchase.

The post Love in Psychotherapy first appeared on Therapy Education Online.

Those people who have very strong narcissistic traits often create enormous problems of psychological development for their children and its the children who present as clients to therapists.

This workshop first of all clarifies the genesis of narcissism and describes its different forms. It continues to describe the risks to the child’s development of having a narcissistic parent and it then offers strategies for working with this client group.

Please note  that any mention in the videos about “handouts” or “printouts” by trainers, are in reference to printouts of the PowerPoint slides, which were made available to delegates who attended the LIVE workshop. These slides are included within the videos and are the property of the trainers. They are not available for download or redistribution with any video rental purchase.

The post Narcissism and working with the children of narcissists first appeared on Therapy Education Online.

People who have experienced emotional neglect in the first months and years of life suffer negative consequences into adulthood. As psychotherapy clients, they require long-term work and delicate emotional attunement, as well as a profound understanding of the experiences that have shaped their inner worlds.

In this seminar, Dr Kathrin Stauffer will help us understand how to recognise “ignored children” and will outline some of the dos and don’ts of psychotherapy with such clients. Drawing on broad clinical experience, she will focus both on the client’s experience and possible ways of understanding this, and also on the experience of the therapist and ways of being of use to clients who were ignored children.

This video presentation supports Kathrin’s book “Emotional Neglect and the Adult in Therapy: Lifelong Consequences to a Lack of Early Attunement” (W.W. Norton, 2020), which provides therapists with an in-depth view of the subjective experience of such “ignored children” and a range of possible theoretical models to help understand key features of their psychological functioning.

The Trainer

Kathrin Stauffer PhD, is a UKCP Registered Body and Integrative Psychotherapist. She is the author of Anatomy & Physiology for Psychotherapists: Connecting Body & Soul (W.W. Norton 2010). Originally a research biochemist, Kathrin retrained at the Chiron Centre for Body Psychotherapy in London, and now works in private practice in Cambridge as a body psychotherapist, trainer and supervisor. She uses a humanistic approach to offer one-to-one body and integrative psychotherapy Additionally, Kathrin offers EMDR and biodynamic massage, and she supervises the Counselling and Trauma Service at London Underground.

Kathrin Stauffer is a former chair of the Chiron Association for Body Psychotherapists, and a current member of the Board of the European Association for Body Psychotherapy (EABP).

Buy a copy of Kathrin’s second book, “Emotional Neglect and the Adult in Therapy: Lifelong Consequences to a Lack of Early Attunement”, published in 2020, here.

Testimonials:

Please note  that any mention in the videos about “handouts” or “printouts” by trainers, are in reference to printouts of the PowerPoint slides, which were made available to delegates who attended the LIVE workshop. These slides are included within the videos and are the property of the trainers. They are not available for download or redistribution with any video rental purchase.

The post Emotional Neglect and the Adult in Trauma Therapy first appeared on Therapy Education Online.

Our relationship with our bodies, our skin, our appearance can be complex and challenging.

In this conference our three speakers will consider the many ways we experience the skin we live in, how shame of our bodies influences our sense of self and identity, how men experience their bodies, and the meaning of ‘the gaze’.

Featuring three talks and a Q&A

Linda Cundy: “Attachment, Bodies and Skin”

Early relationships embody us, and skin defines what is inside – “me” – from what is outside – “others.” Skin contains our inner states, protects us from intrusion, and is the sensual interface between two bodies. This talk will explore the ways we experience skin, adorn it, attack it; but also how our skin can “attack” us through eczema, psoriasis, acne, odour and aging. What are the implications for relationships with other people and with ourselves?

Dr Nicole Schnackenberg: “Shame, Identity and the Embodied True Self”

We all have a body and we all have a relationship with that body. Our sense of self, including any embodied shame, impacts on this relationship; both on the felt physicality of the body and the perception of how it looks.

In this presentation we will consider how and why shame impacts on human identity and can come to be pinned onto the physical appearance; and the distress this can cause. We will explore the developmental and neurobiological underpinnings of shame and identity formation and consider how mindfulness-based practices can support the journey through experiences of appearance-focused distress.

Jeff Lane: “Are you looking at me?”

Jeff will explore how men see themselves and other men, how they get a sense of their identity as men and how this might play out in therapy with both men, women and couples. He will explore how men and women are portrayed in the media, art, comedy, music and advertising and will talk about the concepts of the male and female gaze.

Please note  that any mention in the videos about “handouts” or “printouts” by trainers, are in reference to printouts of the PowerPoint slides, which were made available to delegates who attended the LIVE workshop. These slides are included within the videos and are the property of the trainers. They are not available for download or redistribution with any video rental purchase.

The post Skin, Identity and the Gaze in Psychotherapy first appeared on Therapy Education Online.