In this presentation, we’ll examine the notion of “connection” and its correlation with mental health. When we feel disconnected from our inner life, we suffer; when we are disconnected relationally—from people and nature—we can become anxious, depressed, despondent. What is this powerful “connection” actually made of, what is it, and how can we take the science of connection and inform the practice of psychotherapy? In many ways, the experience of a separate, solo-self may underly the many challenges we face, from racism and social injustice to environmental destruction. The field of mental health can play a pivotal role in how we help our human family move toward a new way of living on Earth by addressing the modern cultural excessive focus on individuality in the separate sense of self.
Mindfulness isn't a therapy in its own right, but its capacity for improving the quality of people's lives has received substantial empirical support as a class of meaningful interventions, particularly when embedded in a substantive therapeutic framework. Guided mindfulness meditation as a focusing strategy shares some key characteristics with clinical hypnosis, guided imagery, positive psychology, and other such focus-related approaches, but usually has a different aim in its application. This speech explores these overlaps when mindfulness is applied to a goal-oriented treatment process. This is NOT a speech about spiritual exploration with mindfulness. Rather, the focus is entirely on clinical applications of key aspects of mindfulness by deconstructing the hypnotic elements of such processes. We will identify the therapeutically relevant components of guided meditations, and how we can construct more meaningful interventions by incorporating them in novel ways.
Clients generally understand what they need but fail to comply with their own directives and those of the therapists. Resistance will be analyzed from three different therapeutic models.
When grief becomes painfully preoccupying and protracted, the problem often arises at the intersection of the death and the relationship it interrupted. Drawing on attachment-informed and Two-Track models of bereavement, we will begin by considering grieving as a process of reconstructing rather than relinquishing our bonds with those who have died, and the complicating circumstances that can interfere with this natural process. We then turn to a close analysis of a single session of therapy that releases an adult daughter from an anguishing grief that has persisted unchanged for many years, and that has insinuated itself into her life with intimate others. We begin this work by attending closely to "quality terms" in the client's narrative that poignantly convey the character of her connection with her mother, that symbolically signal the devastation caused by her death, and that function as harbingers of a more hopeful reconstructed relationship
Most of us feel reasonably intact and continuous, despite the constant commotion in our lives, our relationships, and our cells. But what exactly is a "Self?" In this talk I'll explore how the brain becomes the mind, and how it builds a sense of self (even a secret society of selves), to manage the everchanging mental fantasia in which we spend our days.
Well Being remains, in spite of Covid’s interruption, a plausible personal, corporate and planetary goal. I review the Age of Progress until Covid along with the barriers to continued progress. The belief in individual and collective Agency will determine our future. Efficacy, Optimism, and Imagination, the three parts of agency can be taught in the clinic, the classroom, and the corporation. Juliana of Norwich (1365) will be our beacon.
"Sometime between the years 2030 and 2050 Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) will become a numerical majority in society. It will become increasingly difficult for mental health professionals, and educators not to encounter clients and students who differ from them in terms of race, ethnicity and culture. Difficult dialogues on race and other sociodemographic identities (gender, sexual orientation or identity) have often served to polarize and obstruct mutual understanding rather than to clarify and increase mutual understanding. Most well intentioned people (mental health providers, educators and others) find themselves ill prepared to deal with the often-explosive race or gender related emotions that manifest themselves in interpersonal interactions and in employment and other public spaces.
After a detailed description of emotional abandonment, Claudia will discuss a variety of behavioral responses to the internalized shame. The need for control, perfectionism, procrastination, the dynamics of victimization and compartmentalized depression are many such examples that she will describe.