Transitioning from any life-stage into the next comes with emotions and needs. Elderhood is a stage that has become increasingly denied or medicalised, rather than acknowledged as an integral part of being alive, with older people being respected for their accumulated wisdom and supported rather then pressured to enjoy aliveness.
Many clients seek therapy for the first time faced with leisure time, with loss of parents, with changes in family dynamics. How to age well? How to die well? How to enjoy ‘now’, knowing rather than avoiding the fact that life-span is finite? These are all questions they might be facing, and might bring us as therapists to face ourselves.
Learning Objective Participants Can Expect From This Event
Increased ease talking about the process of ageing and the meaning of ageing
Awareness of personal fears and relief in sharing
Collective exploration into a largely taboo topic
How May This Workshop Impact Your Practice?
Increase confidence in being with a client’s fears rather than attempting to ‘fix’
Resources: Staring at the Sun – Irvin D. Yalom, MD
Course Content
Presenter
Jane qualified as a Therapeutic Counsellor in 2000, and accredited with UKAHPP in 2010 as a Psychotherapeutic Counsellor. In addition she has trained in Somatic Trauma Therapy with Babette Rothschild, and in the Boarding School Experience with Nick Duffell and Joy Shaverien.
Since 2010, working with adults who went to boarding school, partners of boarder, and children of boarders has been her specialised client group. Passionate to raise awareness and bring to light the abuse inherent in the continued practice of sending children away to elitist establishments under the guise of ‘privilege’, she was a director of Boarding Concern from 2012-2015, and has published a number of articles, including ‘Class, Prejudice and Privilege’ in Self & Society, the journal for Humanistic Psychology Practitioners.
