The Return of Saturday Adventures: Skelmorlie Aisle

After seven weeks in California helping care for my mother in her final illness, I finally returned to Scotland this week.  Today, after a long break, Diane and I took the train to the seaside town of Largs, on the Firth of Clyde, where we were finally able to see the Skelmorlie Aisle.  Apparently, in Scots, the word "Aisle" refers to the transept or side-arm of a cruciform church.  In this case the nave was torn down more than 200 years ago, leaving this lovely chapel, with unusual painted wooden ceiling, in primitive allegorical style, from 1638, along with an ornate carved stone tomb, both in amazingly good shape.  To get in, you have to sign in and borrow the key from the Largs Museum, which is only open 2-5pm in the summer months.  The ceiling panels depict Largs through the 4 seasons of the year.  Above and between these are allegorical paintings depicting Biblical stories like Adam & Eve and packed packed with obscure symbols.  Another hidden gem!  I'm looking forward to more Saturday Adventures this summer.  And of course its good to be back to my normal life again!

Emotion-Focused Therapy Level 2 Workshop Series for 2012-13

Facilitated by Robert Elliott & Colleagues

Professor of Counselling, University of Strathclyde

Six Friday-Saturday Sessions, 9.30-16.30:

9-10 November 2012; 8-9 February 2013; 3-4 May 2013

John Anderson Campus (Glasgow City Centre)

University Of Strathclyde

 (Sponsored by HASS Research & Knowledge Exchange,

University of Strathclyde)

The Counselling Unit at the University of Strathclyde is offering further training in Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) for counsellors and psychotherapists (Diploma level or above) who have completed Level One training in EFT.  This series has been restructured from its previous format and will now follow a schedule of three two-day Friday-Saturday sessions spread over the 2012-13 academic year, beginning in November.  The format will be a mixture of brief lectures, videos or demonstrations, experiential practice exercises in small groups, supervision of cases seen by course members, and discussion.

The specific topics to be covered will feature material not covered in the Level 1 course, including

·      Therapist experiential response modes

·      Client case formulation and modes of engagement

·      Relational Dialogue for Alliance difficulties

·      Creation of Meaning for meaning protests

In addition, the Focusing and different forms of Chairwork will be particularly emphasized:

·      Focusing with difficult or painful experiences

·      Clearing a Space for overwhelming or chaotic experiences

·      Two chair enactment for Self-interruption splits

·      Two chair conflict split work for depression and self-damaging behaviour

·      Compassionate Self-soothing for painful self states

·      Empty chair work for unfinished business

This series is scheduled for the following dates:

Autumn 2012:

9-10 November

Winter-Spring 2013:

8-9 February

3-4 May

• Enrolment is set for a minimum of 15, with variable staffing to accommodate up to 30. 

• Course fee: Until 15 Oct: £395; after 15 Oct: £445.  Please send a non-returnable deposit of £50.00 to secure a place if not paying the whole fee at time of booking. Online booking and payments can be made at the following link:  http://onlineshop.strath.ac.uk/browse/product.asp?catid=45&modid=2&compid=1

• The course could be taken for continuing professional education credit.

Please direct enquiries and requests for applications to HASS Research & Knowledge Exchange, Jan Bissett (jan.bissett@strath.ac.uk, 0141 548 3418).

Emotion-Focused Psychotherapy: 2012 Level One Training

Facilitated by Robert Elliott, Lorna Carrick, and Anja Rutten

Tuesday 28th – Friday 31st August 2012, 9.30 – 17.00

University of Strathclyde, Glasgow

(Sponsored by HASS Research & Knowledge Exchange,

University of Strathclyde)

Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) – also known as Process-Experiential Therapy – is a humanistic, evidence-based form of psychotherapy/counselling that integrates person-centred and gestalt therapies, 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, Antonio Pascual-Leone and others.  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 seventh year at the University of Strathclyde, this successful, four-day Level One EFT training programme will provide participants with a solid grounding in the theory and 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. The workshop will begin with an overview of EFT Emotion Theory, including basic principles and the role of emotion and emotional awareness in function and dysfunction; this will be illustrated by Focusing-oriented exercises. Differential intervention based on specific process markers 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.

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.  To help clients reprocess difficult emotions;

5.  To facilitate emotional processing to resolve self-critical splits and unfinished    business.

Programme Outline

Tuesday:

Morning: 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

Afternoon: Therapeutic Tasks, Accessing and Managing Emotion:

 • Therapeutic tasks and process formulation

• Emotion regulation 

• Focusing and Clearing a Space

• Skills practice

Wednesday:

Morning: Reprocessing Problematic Experiences

• Empathic exploration, evocative empathy, empathic conjecture

• Evocative unfolding, Narrative Retelling, and Meaning Creation

• Skills practice

Afternoon: Accessing Primary Adaptive Emotions & Restructuring Emotion Schemes; Empirical support

• 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

• Summary of Research evidence

Thursday:

Morning: Active Expression Processes - I

• Dialectical constructivist models of self

• Two chair dialogue and splits

• Accessing adaptive and problematic emotional responses

• Skills practice

Afternoon: Active Expression Processes – 2

• Accessing core problematic emotion schemes

• Varieties of splits

• Adapting two-chair work to different kinds of clients

• Skills practice

Friday

Morning: Identifying Tasks; Open marker work

• Review of tasks

• Strategies for identifying and selecting tasks

• Skills practice

Afternoon: Personalized Applications

• Practical parameters

• Depression, Post-traumatic stress difficulties

• Social anxiety, Borderline processes

• Question & answer period

 About the Facilitators

Robert Elliott, PhD

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.  In 2008 he received both the Carl Rogers Award, 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. 

Lorna Carrick, MSc

Lorna is a lecturer in the Counselling Unit at the University of Strathclyde. She is the course director for the Postgraduate Certificate in Counselling Skills and teaches on the Postgraduate Diploma in Counselling courses. Lorna’s background is in mental health and project development and as a founder member of the first Health Board-funded person-centred counselling service in Scotland, Lorna has over sixteen years experience in counselling, supervision and service development within the field of counselling and psychotherapy. Lorna is currently the director of the Glasgow Counselling in Schools Project and Chair of the Counselling Unit’s management group. Lorna’s research has focused on working with clients in crisis within the Person-Centred-Experiential approach and the use of counselling and Pre-therapy skills in the field of autism services. She has been practicing EFT within a broadly Person-Centred relational approach since 2006, and has also participated as an EFT therapist in the Social Anxiety research protocol of the Counselling Unit’s research clinic.  She is committed to helping counsellors/therapists bridge the perceived gap between EFT and nondirective Person-Centred ways of working with clients.

Anja Rutten, MSc

Anja is an experienced and practising counsellor and supervisor and works as a Senior Lecturer in Psychology and Counselling at Staffordshire University. She is director of the final year of the MSc Psychotherapeutic Counselling. She also teaches undergraduate psychology modules on psychological interventions, counselling and autism. Before she joined Staffordshire University, Anja worked for the National Autistic Society, where she was responsible for leading and developing two UK-wide national services schemes, offering nation-wide befriending and social opportunities to people on the autism spectrum. She is currently combining her research interests in counselling and autism by studying for a part-time PhD at Strathclyde University under the supervision of Professor Robert Elliott, investigating therapy experiences of clients with Asperger syndrome and working towards the evaluation of person-centred/emotion-focused therapy for this group of clients.

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 £495. 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 1st July 2012.  To take advantage of this offer, applications must be received by this date with no exceptions.

For further information on this event, please contact Jan Bissett, HASS Research & Knowledge Exchange (jan.bissett@strath.ac.uk, 0141 548 3418).

Please also contact Jan Bissett for other events and courses on our advanced professional training and psychological therapies knowledge exchange programmes.

Reflections on Review in PsycCritiques of Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature

Entry for 13 April 2012:

See: http://psyccritiquesblog.apa.org/2012/04/it-seems-so-counterintuitive.html

This is a really interesting book review and it sounds like an even more interesting book, by Steven Pinker: The Better Angels of Our Nature.  Pinker argues that contrary to what we commonly believe, human beings are actually becoming not more violent but less violent over historical time, and especially over the past several centuries, including the most recent 100 years. 

The APA blog folks are asking for comments on why Pinker’s point seems so counter-intuitive.  It seems to me to be obvious and implicit in Pinker's point about the role of the mass media in overall violence reduction: that learning in detail about others’ lives through accounts in books and newspapers enables us to find empathy and compassion instead of demonizing or dismissing others who appear to be very different from us.  It seems to me that the flip side of this is perceiving violence as more prevalent than it actually is: We recognize ourselves in the Other's suffering, accessing both compassion for the Other and fear for ourselves.

In the 1990's I did a treatment development study comparing CBT to Process-Experiential therapy for crime-related PTSD.   Given how high profile criminal victimization is in the media, and how preoccupied people in our culture are with crime, we were very surprised at how hard it was to recruit participants.  We ended up concluding that there is an exaggerated cultural preoccupation with crime, fed by the news accounts continually boosting criminal victimization into our awareness, making it psychologically more available than would be expected from actual frequency.  And that was before the CSI and NCIS franchise really took off after the 9/11 attack! 

And then there is the very human tendency to experience things as generally going to hell.  This is nothing new: it dates back to our ancient myths about the Garden of Eden and the lost Golden Age.  It seems that we have been convinced that things are getting worse for a very long time!

Six Days of EFT Training

Blog Entry for 18 March 2012: 

While Diane went the US to see our son Kenneth and to take care of business, I travelled to the Netherlands and Belgium to run six days straight of EFT training.  I'd never before done this for as long, and I was concerned that I might run out of energy or inspiration before I got to the end, so I decided that I would pace myself and to do my best to get enough sleep along the way.  

Monday and Tuesday I started a new EFT Level 2 training at Apanta, a large psychotherapy group practice and training centre in Veldhoven, in the southeastern part of the Netherlands.  Juliette Becking, a Dutch psychologist, coordinates this, and Anja Rutten comes over to help with the training. This was the second Level 2 that we've run here, and we again had a good number of participants, about 20, most of whom I hadn't met before, since I was unable to travel last Fall for the Level 1 training, which Jeanne Watson ended up running.  I’m still not completely satisfied with the day 2 session on client processes and case formulation, but the other sessions went really well.  I went away convinced that we need to include emotion schemes as a key element of EFT case formulation.

Wednesday was the next installment of the seven session EFT Level 3 group supervision series.  This was hard work but went really well: (a) We started with a round robin, in which each person checked in re: how many clients they are currently seeing in EFT, and how they are doing with the recording and monitoring requirements, which are actually a lot of work. (b) Then, four of the 15 participants presented and got feedback on 15 minute segments, transcribed and translated into English, of diverse clients in various stages of therapy. (c) Between case presentations, I discussed scoring and interpreting outcome measures and talked about Meaning Creation for meaning protests.  (d) Once again, a high point was role playing ("embodying") a client that one of the participants was struggling with.  (Note on EFT Level 3: Include embodied client work regularly as part of the group supervision sessions.)

After EFT 3 finished, Kurt Renders took me back to Antwerp with him for the rest of the week.  Fortunately, I had Thursday morning off, allowing me some recovery and time for a run, before I met up with Greet Vanaerschot, who took me off to the University of Antwerp medical school, where she runs an Integrative Psychotherapy course that emphasises humanistic (person centred, EFT, Gestalt) and third generation CBT. The students there (half psychiatrists, half psychologists) had already had quite a bit of input from Greet on EFT, so I was doing a specialist workshop on Social Anxiety.  For me, the high point of this was a practice session on working with Anxiety Splits, which involved participants enacting various sources of anxiety, including birds and telephones!  I forgotten how challenging and fun this kind of work can be. Afterwards, Greet and I had a late dinner, where we spent a long time catching up and reminiscing about our time and friends in Leuven.

Then, somewhat worse for the wear after late evening with Greet, it was off to Turnout, 30k east of Antwerp, with Kurt again, for the final two days of the EFT level 1 that I'd begun last month.  The group, both students and teaching staff of the Faculteit voor Mens and Samenleving, was even more enthusiastic and involved than the previous time, and we had a great two days of Two Chair Work and Open Marker Work, with lovely big processes.  I had made it through my long run of six days straight of EFT training!  

That evening, Kurt checked out a City Bike for me, so we could go to his favourite restaurant, in the centre of Antwerp, where we sat at the counter, mesmerised by the drama of the chef and his assistant as they danced around the little kitchen.  It had been a really good week, full of meaningful work, connections new and old, even a few tears along the way.  I was exhausted to the bone but also energised and happy to be doing this sort of work, which feeds me at many levels.  

Toward the end, on the last day at Turnout, someone asked me how I work with clients with narcissistic processes, who suffer from a huge sense of inner emptiness.  I paused, and said to start with that I don't challenge their grandiosity, because reflecting it empathically makes space for the emptiness and vulnerability to emerge.   Also, I recognise and share that I too know what that inner emptiness feels like, from my own experience.   Someone else remarked, but isn't isolation and inner emptiness an existential given of being human?  Answering, I said that I used to think this.  Now, however, I believe that the emptiness comes from our isolation from one another: separation makes us empty.   Furthermore, citing Eisenstein in The Ascent of Humanity, I now wonder if this isolation and emptiness is really a modern phenomenon.  And just as disconnection from each other makes us feel empty, so does connection with others fill us.  As I get older, I said, I am increasingly convinced that this separation is an illusion, and that we are all much more deeply connected than we can imagine.  

After our amazing dinner, as I cycled back through the darkened streets of Antwerp with Kurt leading the way, I reflected on this, and many of the other things that had happened this week, and was filled with wonder at all the connections that were made and deepened. 

A Dream of Running

Entry for 7-11 March 2012

This year I finally made to the Full-time Counselling Diploma course residential. Thursday
night, Maggi ran a workshop on working with dreams. Here are my notes on the dream I
worked on:

I have a recurrent dream in which I'm on a long run:   I'm out in the country, on a country
road, but there's little or no traffic, and the day is sunny but not hot.  Maybe there is a
light breeze, just enough to keep me from overheating.  I run for miles, without getting
tired, swooping down around bends in the road, running, running, feeling the ground pass
beneath my feet, moving through the countryside, running into new places where I haven't
run before.   Sometimes I get a bit lost, but I keep running, and eventually find my way
back.  It's a feeling of flow.  I have  a feeling of exhilaration and freedom, and it feels like I
could keep running forever,  just flowing along the road. 

I'm aware that I don't have much  interest in interpreting this dream; I just want to enjoy it.
I suspect that it comes to me now perhaps because I've been doing interval training lately,
increasing my speed by sprinting for one minute out of five.  But that is pretty hard work –
in fact that is the point of it, to build capacity by pushing myself to my limit.  The dream is
different from the actual experience of running, because it feels relatively effortless.  There
is no jarring sensation of my feet hitting the ground, no careful monitoring of my body's
state and my surroundings. Instead, in this dream, I have the opposite feeling, of flow.

In fact the dream is more like the dreams I used to have as a kid of flying through the air
as if swimming, using the breast stroke, but instead in this dream I'm running rather than
swimming, and it's easier than the swimming in the childhood flying dream was. However,
the exhilarating feeling of swooping, gaining speed as I drop down through small dips in
the road and the centripetal force of rounding tight corners, that is part of the flying dream
also, and fills me with joy.

What in my life is like this?  Of course this is like the feeling of finishing one of my long
weekend runs, the burst of speed  at the end, or even more the afterglow of enhanced
aerobic capacity that lasts for several hours after I've successfully stretched my capacity, a
sense of accomplishment, of enlargement. But I think more generally it's about the feeling
of flow, when I'm immersed in meaningful work, whether it be a good therapy session
where everything seems to come together, or a productive bout of writing where the ideas
and words just flow. Heaven!

Theophany (for Brenda Wood)

Sitting in church this morning,

Out of the story of the Transfiguration,

Distant memory of you

Returns, fifty years later:

We are ten years old,

At George Washington Elementary School.

Standing in the lunch line:

Suddenly, my classmates part,

And I glimpse a vision of you,

Eternally in that instant,

Incan princess,

Luminous in brightly coloured brocade,

Goddess glowing

Through your temporal person.

I blink, and you are your ordinary self again.

But for me forever after,

You are imbued

With the Divine,

And the Divine with You.

And so I wonder:

Where are you now?

                        -4 March 2011