Emotion-Focused Psychotherapy 2009 Level One Training

Facilitated by Robert Elliott & Jeanne Watson
Monday 13th July – Thursday 16th July 2009; 9.00 – 16.30
Jordanhill Campus, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow

Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) – also known as Process-Experiential Therapy – is an active, evidence-based, integrative, approach to person-centred/experiential therapy, with particular relevance to working with depression, trauma, and anxiety difficulties. It has gained international recognition through the work of Les Greenberg, Robert Elliott, Jeanne Watson, Rhonda Goldman, Sandra Paivio and others. Thus, the Counselling Unit at the University of Strathclyde is again pleased to offer Level One professional training in this approach to qualified counsellors and psychotherapists (Diploma level or above).

Now in its third year at the University of Strathclyde, this successful, four-day Level One EFT training programme will provide participants with a solid grounding in the skills required to work more directly with emotion in psychotherapy. Participants will receive an in-depth skills training through a combination of brief lectures, video demonstrations, live modelling, case discussions, and extensive supervised role-playing practice. In order to help participants bridge between their previously psychotherapy or counselling training and the more EFT approach, the workshop will begin with an EFT perspective on empathy. It will continue with a discussion of basic principles and the role of emotion and emotional awareness in function and dysfunction. Differential intervention based on process diagnosis will be demonstrated. Videotaped examples of evidence based methods for evoking and exploring emotion schemes, and for dealing with overwhelming emotions, puzzling emotional reactions, painful self-criticism, and emotional injuries from past relationships will be presented and discussed.

Participants will be trained in the skills of moment-by-moment attunement to affect, and the use of methods of dialoguing with parts or configurations of self and imagined significant others in an empty chair. This training will provide therapists from person-centred, psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioural and related backgrounds with an opportunity to develop their therapeutic skills and interests.

Educational Objectives

Participants on the training programme will learn:
1. To implement the basic principles of EFT
2. To identify different types of emotional response;
3. When to help clients contain and when to access emotion;
4. How to help clients reprocess difficult emotions;
5. To facilitate emotional processing to resolve self-critical splits and unfinished business.

Programme Outline
Monday:
Foundations, Emotion, Empathy, & Alliance Formation:
• Distinctive features of the EFT: neo-humanism & therapeutic principles
• Process-experiential emotion theory: emotion schemes
• Emotion response types & emotional change principles
Therapeutic Tasks, Accessing and Managing Emotion
• Therapeutic tasks and process formulation
• Emotion regulation
• Focusing and Clearing a Space
• Skills practice

Tuesday:
Reprocessing Problematic Experiences
• Empathic exploration, evocative empathy, empathic conjecture
• Evocative unfolding, Narrative Retelling, and Meaning Creation
• Skills practice
Active Expression Processes - I
• Dialectical constructivist models of self
• Two chair dialogue and splits
• Accessing adaptive and problematic emotional responses
• Skills practice

Wednesday
Active Expression Processes – 2
• Accessing core problematic emotion schemes
• Varieties of splits
• Adapting two-chair work to different kinds of clients
• Skills practice
Accessing Primary Adaptive Emotions & Restructuring Emotion Schemes
• Empty chair dialogue and unfinished business
• Supporting the emergence of primary needs
• Helping clients use adaptive emotions to challenge core problematic emotion schemes
• Letting go of unmet needs
• Skills practice

Thursday:
Identifying Tasks; Empirical support,
• Summary of Research evidence
• Review of tasks; strategies for identifying and selecting tasks
• Skills practice
Personalized Applications
• Practical parameters
• Depression, Post-traumatic stress difficulties
• Social anxiety
• Borderline processes
• Question & answer period

About the Facilitators

Robert Elliott, Ph.D.: Robert is professor in the Counselling Unit at the University of Strathclyde, where he teachers on the postgraduate diploma and MSc courses in Person-Centred Counselling. He taught at the University of Toledo 1978-2006, where he was Professor of Psychology, Director of Clinical Training and Director of the Center for the Study of Experiential Psychotherapy. He has also been a guest professor at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, University of Sheffield, UK, and La Trobe University, Australia. He is co-author of Facilitating Emotional Change (1993), Learning Emotion-focused Therapy (2004), and Research Methods for Clinical Psychology (2003), as well as more than 100 published scientific articles or book chapters. He is the 2008 recipient of the Carl Rogers Award by the Division of Humanistic Psychology of the American Psychological Association, and the Distinguished Research Career Award, Society for Psychotherapy Research. He is editor emeritus of the journal, Person-Centered Counseling and Psychotherapies and directs the Scottish Consortium for Psychotherapy and Counselling Research and the Strathclyde Centre for Psychotherapy and Counselling Research.

Jeanne Watson, Ph.D.: Jeanne is professor in the Department of Adult Education, Community Development and Counselling Psychology, at OISE at the University of Toronto, Canada. Dr. Watson was the recipient of the Outstanding Early Achievement Award from the Society for Psychotherapy Research in 2001. She has co-authored and edited several books on counselling practice, including Learning Emotion Focused Therapy (2004), Client-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapy in the 21st Century (2002), Handbook of Experiential Psychotherapy, Emotion-focused Therapy for Depression (2005), and most recently Case Studies in Emotion-Focused Therapy for Depression (2007). Jeanne conducts research on empathy, depression and psychotherapy process and outcome in EFT. She conducts workshops in EFT and teaches courses in counselling theory and practice to Masters and Ph.D. students in the postgraduate course in Counselling Psychology at the University of Toronto. Dr. Watson maintains a part-time private practice in Toronto.

Application Information
If you would like to reserve a place on this training course, please complete and return the application form overleaf. Places are strictly limited so book early to avoid disappointment. The fee for this four-day event is has been set at £445. Please note that to keep costs to a minimum, catering is not included in this fee.

We are pleased to offer an Early Bird Discount of £50.00 to those who book before 31st March 2009. To take advantage of this offer, applications must be received by this date with no exceptions.

For further information on this event, please contact Karen McDairmant, Professional Development Unit on 0141 950 3734 or at karen.mcdairmant@strath.ac.uk.