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
Verbal conversations alone cannot produce sustainable change: somatic intelligence must be an integral part of sustainable change; verbal conversations are not sufficient. This workshop will experientially explore how to creatively use the related methods of Gendlen's "felt sense" and Gilligan's "relational trance".
This workshop will teach the application of the EFT Tango - and show its use across three modalities - Individual, couple and family therapy. How the Tango process impacts depression and anxiety will be explicated. Clinical sessions will be viewed and experiential exercises offered.
Dr. McWilliams will review ten different psychological lenses through which individual differences have been viewed (temperament, attachment style, observed clinical pattern, defensive structure, affective organization, implicit cognition, motivational tendencies, individual and cultural location on the self-definition versus self-in-relation polarity, central relational theme, level of severity of problem), emphasizing with clinical vignettes the practical value of appreciating each perspective. Intended to be directly relevant to participants' clinical work irrespective of their theoretical orientation or level of experience, this workshop welcomes case material and collaborative problem-solving.
The underlying principles of couples therapy differ from individual therapy for both assessment and treatment. The panelist will discuss and contrast their models.
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.