In this workshop, we will watch a 50 minute therapy session recorded by the host with an actor, pausing the video regularly to reflect, share thoughts and discuss what we are seeing.
You will be encouraged to focus on the ‘client’ as though you are their therapist, and invited to reflect and share what you are noticing and the types of responses you would feel inclined to share with this client, if you were in the session with them. We’ll pause regularly to engage in a discussion based on these reflections and also on the actual responses offered by the host during the recording.
This isn’t an example of a ‘perfect’ session, or of a ‘perfect’ therapist, and from past experience it is likely that people may find that they would respond in different ways to what happens on the recording. This is all fine and is what the workshop is about!
In the past, offering workshops like this has helped participants appreciate how everyone can experience things differently. It has also shown how the unique empathic responses of various therapists could theoretically lead to slightly different therapeutic sessions with the same client.
My belief is that this is not due to one therapist doing it ‘right’ and the others doing it ‘wrong’, but rather due to us all having our own idiosyncratic process that we are drawing from in the therapy room.
The recording was made as part of an online course about person-centred therapy, which is available on my Youtube channel.
Learning Objective Participants Can Expect From This Event
- An expanded knowledge and appreciation of the various ways that Person-Centred Therapy can look in practice.
- An expanded appreciation for difference and multiplicity in how we experience things.
- A greater acceptance of your own idiosyncratic process as a therapist.
Who is This Workshop Appropriate For?
- Person-Centred therapists; trainees, and also anyone who is interested in Person-Centred Therapy.
How May This Workshop Impact Your Practice?
- Hopefully greater acceptance of your own idiosyncratic process as a therapist.
Course Content
Presenter
David is a BACP accredited person-centred therapist, teacher and writer. He has been practising since 2016 and has worked with adults, young people and children. He has also recently qualified from an accredited EMDR course, having decided to train after benefiting from EMDR himself, and is still in the process of working out how EMDR can fit in with his person-centred practice.
Alongside seeing clients in private practice, he also works as a Crisis Specialist Worker for a service that offers an alternative to a hospital, where people in acute mental health crisis are given person-centred support in a residential setting and can stay for up to a week. Past roles also include managing a counselling service in a primary school, and teaching on the Level 4 Counselling Diploma, supporting students to become qualified counsellors. In a previous life he was also a primary school teacher.
