series: Process Friday at PTI

Psychotherapy and the Yin-Yang of Qigong

In this presentation we will look at the core principles of Qigong, the intersection possibilities for psychotherapy and correlations to process therapy, and hopefully distinguish the ancient practice of Qigong as a framework for understanding and aligning with Universal processes which heals and balances the human system.

Learning Objectives

  • Name 3 similarities between Qigong and Process Therapy.
  • Identify 3 qigong principles and techniques useful to psychotherapy.
  • Learn and practice 1 qigong method for polarity balance, regulation, emotion and pattern clearing, and energy modulation.
  • Discuss 1 application for the future of psychotherapy and self-healing.

Dear Therapists: What homeschooling families want caring professionals to know about them

An informal survey of homeschooling families and their struggles with caring professionals. Hear what they want you to know about them, common myths and misconceptions about homeschooling, and how you can best serve your clients who also homeschool.

Participants will identify some common homeschooling myths and misconceptions, and identify strategies to untangle the subject of homeschooling from the more universal relational and human struggles.

Resources for working with covert narcissism in ourselves and in our clients.

Let’s explore our own experiences with covert narcissim, and how this impacts our ability to work objectively with the topic as it shows up in session. We will accomplish this through story telling, relaying experience, and experiential enactments.

Participants will identify 3 signs of covert narcissism, identify related counter transference and practice 3 process model skills and enactments.

Brief Introduction to Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy

Nearly three in every four people that seek out your support for therapy embody some form of religiousity or spirituality. And yet how many of us are appropriately trained to work with this powerful and vital aspect of their Being, and the ways in which it informs their wellbeing? This brief workshop will introduce the process of creating a safe space and inviting our clients into holistically exploring, healing and deepening this third arm of the mind-body-spirit essence.

Learning objectives.

To Fight or To Celebrate: Inviting Ownership and Differentiation while Working with Couples

Two main questions that my couple clients present me with are: “How do we stay connected and agree when we want different things?” and “How do we disagree and still stay connected when we want different things?”   In this workshop I will discuss some ways of inviting clients into connection to self and ownership while at the same time being available and open to connection with a partner.

Learning Objectives

Participants will learn skills to invite clients in couples therapy into:

  1. refocusing from the other-blaming to self-ownership,
  2. self-soothing, and
  3. appreciation of individual differences.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Skills for Process Therapist

You’d be surprised just how experiential Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can be.  Come play and learn some new frames that just may inspire more flow and creativity with your enactments and invitations.
We will explore ways for experiential and process based therapists to adapt and take inspiration from methods and principles from two forms of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy TEAM-CBT and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). 

Given the interests of the group, a selection of methods will be demonstrated and practiced.  See some examples below:

  • Setting up a Daily Mood Log as a moment of mindfulness, of “illumination” from the process model
  • Using empty chair techniques within the framework of role plays used in cognitive behavioral therapy.  Externalization of Resistance—siding with the good reasons clients think, feel, and do what they do—supporting allowance and flow
    • Externalization of Voices – taking over the client’s negative thoughts, allowing the client to respond- not as a form of battle but from a position of greater perspective and connection to self
    • Compassionate Double Standard – client speaking as they would to a dear friend who is just like them, accessing compassion through externalization.
    • Paradoxical Double Standard – client speaking to a dear friend in the same harsh way their inner critic speaks
  • Playful methods for unhooking from sticky thoughts- includes singing, dancing, visualizing, lots and lots of fiddling!
  • Straightforward methods for unhooking from sticky thoughts – Thank you Mind, Notice and Name the Story, seeing thoughts as thoughts
  • Self Kindness – Kind words / kind hands
  • Connecting to values and sense of vitality- visualizations, guided imagery of past moments, future moments, your funeral, etc.

Zen Philosophy in Psychotherapy: Non-Agenda, Allowance and Mindfulness

The class will briefly introduce Buddhist psychology and how it can be applied in psychotherapy, particularly utilizing the tenets of releasing attachment to outcomes and allowing the present moment to unfold with clients.

Learning Objectives

Participants will learn the basic philosophy and orientation of zen Buddhism related to psychotherapy. Participants will also learn and practice some applied psychotherapeutic interventions and attitudes, and how they can be used with clients.

Untangling from Clients Using the Drama Triangle

The drama triangle is a very useful shorthand to staying out of client’s systems, both internal and external. Some common places where therapists become entangled with client processes: fees and time, having an agenda and counter-transferance, and systems (internal, couples, families and groups). Therapists can use the drama triangle as an indicator system to re-orient to internal ease and flow in the therapist seat.

Learning Objectives

Participants will:

  1. identify the parts of the drama triangle.
  2. gain experience energetically identifying the parts within themselves and the external, client situations that evoke them.
  3. identify strategies to bring themselves back into connection with themselves, modeling health and wellness for their clients.

Mindful Caregiving of Elders: Applying concepts from the book The Whole-Brained Child

Join us as we explore what caregiving of our elders can look like as we apply concepts from Daniel J. Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson’s The Whole-Brained Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture your Child’s Developing Mind to facilitate a more mindful caregiving experience for all.
This content could be useful for therapists working with caregivers of elders as well as for therapists that are also caregivers themselves.

Learning Objectives:

During this gathering we will:

  • learn about 12 strategies Daniel J. Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson present in their book
  • apply these 12 strategies to the caregiving of elders
  • explore ways to turn these strategies into action to facilitate a more fulfilling and mindful caregiving experience.

*Note: It is not necessary to have read the book in advance.