Training
Workshops for All Therapists

Resolving Blocked Therapy

Managing Client Resistance

1 DAY LIVE ONLINE WORKSHOP

PREREQUISITES:

No prerequisites. All therapeutic orientations are welcome.

Upcoming Live Training Sessions

No upcoming live training sessions at this time.

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Who is this Workshop for?

Mental Health Practitioners seeking strategies to understand and resolve therapies that have become stuck or blocked.  This is an approach I wish I had known at the beginning of my career- it’s of broad applicability and useful to everyone who offers therapy. The focus is on adult therapy clients.

Is there any Practicum?

Yes. This workshop includes:

  • Private self-reflection on participants’ own sources of resistance in therapy
  • Role Play opportunity to practice conversations with clients about managing resistance; it’s important to craft these conversations with diplomacy and develop phrasing that lowers the risks of a defensive response.

What will I learn?

Participants will:

  1. Learn how to formulate blocked therapy compassionately as a form resistance, which is defined as: any strategy employed by the client, often unconsciously, to avoid experiencing pain, where confronting that pain is necessary to make therapeutic progress
  2. Understand resistance in therapy from a trauma informed framework
  3. Identify sources of resistance in both clients and therapists, with strategies to discuss and overcome the resistance
  4. Practice addressing resistance within a role play to ensure that diplomatic language is honed for addressing and managing resistance
  5. Understand how therapists’ capacity to manage resistance in therapy is a key foundation to both therapist and client wellbeing; stuck therapies demoralise us, understanding resistance defines our therapeutic targets

Summary / Overview

Do you recognise these challenges in your work?

  • A client presents with such emotional vulnerability that you can’t bring yourself to begin your intervention
  • A client is working hard on their therapy, but things aren’t improving for them, and they report a confusing “technical” problem that prevents the strategies that work for others from working for them
  • No matter what you propose, your client reports it won’t work for them
  • You feel like you are doing more work on the therapy than a client

It’s possible that resistance is the source of these challenges. This workshop unpacks sources of resistance and provides you with strategies to address and overcome it.

Detailed Content Summary

Learning to recognise and manage resistance as a process in therapy helps your clients to make more progress, and also enhances your wellbeing as therapist.  Resistance refers to all the ways that people try not to feel their pain (and all the ways we let our clients do that), when facing the pain is what is needed for change.

In this workshop, Catherine walks you through:

  • Theories of resistance in the context of complex trauma
  • Self-reflection on your caseload and your own profile of resistance
  • Practicum to develop skills in addressing and managing resistance in your therapies.

Part 1

Manifestation and Theories of Resistance in Therapy

Part 2

Self Reflection on Caseload

Self Reflection on Therapist Resistance

Strategies to Manage Resistance

Part 3

Practicum Managing Resistance

Group Debrief

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