Training Topics:  Individuals

If your organisation is interested in approaching me for teaching on working with individuals, please review the descriptions below of the one or two day presentation topics. You might prefer to use a combination of these workshops or presentations in order to meet the particular needs of your group.

Making Change Stick in Complex Individual Work  
In this workshop, I am interested in the work with people where conventional knowledge (psychological, therapeutic and life knowledge) fails to support people to make the changes they want to make. In clinical, super-vision and teaching environments, I have consistently been challenged and stimulated whenever I noticed a persistent tension between the following:
  • People’s (client’s) self and other judgements and the hopes we hold for their lives.
    and
  • People’s stated desire and commitment to change whilst   failing to implement any strategies that might enable this change.

In these instances I have noticed that clinicians are tempted to either:
  1. Instruct, persuade or talk people into a “preferred “life direction thus enacting a process where the people are left feeling silenced, alienated and guilty. In these situations, clinicians, may need to notice when they are either acting as a ‘cheerleader’ for change or deferring or succumbing to a position of hopelessness or certainty.
  2. Find comfort in the psychological labels that “explain” this behaviour whilst giving up on the possibility of change.
  3. Do nothing while hoping for a future opportunity to participate in generating and supporting change.

Inevitably all of the above practises fail to adequately invite the other (clients) to participate in a collaborative exploration where the intricate relationship between thought and experience is explored.

This workshop will focus on a process where we invite participation through the following:
  • The development of a conversational process where we identify and contextually explore experience (sensation, feelings, body tensions) in order to construct a potent location for the development of new change supporting, narrative threads.
  • A process where we negotiate, ‘taking up authority’ for the benefit of the therapeutic or super-vision process.
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Through the use of recordings and interviews, you will observe and then practise the skills required to identify change limiting tensions in therapeutic relationships. Once identified, I will demonstrate the skills we use to facilitate conversations where experience within the therapeutic relationship is used as a location for the construction of new narrative threads.

Challenging Shame, Blame and Guilt. 

A 2 day workshop for practitioners working with people who have suffered traumatic experiences.
Whenever something goes wrong in our lives we inevitably search for an explanation. This search often leads us to an investigation of ourselves or others, such as, ‘What did I do wrong?’ or ‘What did you do wrong?’  People with trauma/abuse histories can conclude this search with a seemingly unshakable resolve that ‘I am bad, wrong or fundamentally flawed’. 

I have found that these life defining ‘truths’, gather strength whenever it is confirmed in several locations, such as, family and significant societal institutions.

In this workshop I will discuss, demonstrate and invite you to practice ways of working with people who struggle to embrace change.  For example,
  • People who continue to ‘go back’ to a relationship where a partner is violent’.
  • People who never feel ‘thin enough’ and consequently their existence is under threat.
  • People who struggle to use or incorporate evidence of resilience or success.
  • People who seem hyper-vigilant to the ‘mistakes’ they make or the ‘mistakes’ the practitioner makes within the therapeutic relationship.
  • People who continue to believe the explanations given to them by the person who has assaulted them.

Finding the Measure that Works for People’s Lives

A one day workshop for practitioners.
If the questions below resonate for the people you work with then its likely that at one time or another they have struggled to ‘measure-up’.
  • Have you ever held a view about yourself that seemed to be contradicted by the external evidence? 
  • Have you ever been surprised when others held a positive opinion about an ability or skill you had?
  • Have you ever acknowledged a positive comment and then moved into a discussion about the deficits or struggles you have?
  • Have you ever been publicly acknowledged while feeling a fraud?
  • Have you succeeded in meeting every life goal you ever set and yet you still feel a failure?
  • Have you ever found yourself repeatedly doing things that you want to stop?

People who are captured by the silencing nature of this kind of failure, respond to this suffering with acts of despair and/or they dedicate themselves to the generation of a ‘good enough self’, through the practices of anorexia, bulimia, perfectionism.

Re-visioning the Therapeutic Relationship 

​A one day workshop for practitioners.
When we consider the question, ‘What contributes to successful therapy?’ the evidence suggests that the experience of the therapeutic relationship significantly influences the outcome. At the subtle moment to moment level, what creates and sustains a strong therapeutic relationship? How to negotiate changing client needs without mis-understandings occurring? How can we use moments of challenge and upset to strengthen, not destroy the therapeutic trust?

When a relational perspective is generated people (therapists and clients) are positioned to explore and negotiate subjective experience within a power relationship.

Through this exploration, opportunities arise for people to experience themselves as active in the creation and maintenance of the therapeutic relationship.  In this presentation I will demonstrate a process for negotiating direct experience within the bounds of the therapeutic relationship.