Helping people to change is the easy part, relatively speaking; the really tough job is to make the changes last. Many people with chronic, intractable problems - those with addictions, personality disturbances, behavioral problems, unhealthy lifestyles - manage to make some progress and meet initial goals. Bet alas, the changes are not maintained. This is not only discouraging for clients but frustrating for clinicians.
Based on interviews with over a hundred of the most prominent theoreticians in the field, as well as studies of famous individuals (Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Sylvia Plath, Vaslav Nijinsky, Lenny Bruce, Charles Mingus) who have had spectacularly negative outcomes in therapy, this workshop explores what can be learned from failures as well as successes. Participants will explore the nature of their own consistent errors and misjudgments, how we all tend to deny and disown these experiences, and what we can do to be more accepting of our failures and more proactive in preventing them in the future. There will be opportunities to identify personal and professional struggles that are going on right now and work through impasses and frustrations through a peer supervision model that can be applied to any work setting.