These developmental deficits are like holes in the mind: they result in a person who struggles to feel whole and healthy and is always having to allow for the missing bits inside themself. At the same time, the presence of holes puts more strain on the parts of a person’s mind that are well-developed and leads to overused resources and coping strategies. This means that the person is also having to keep a firm grip on the resources they have and have no capacity left to make the changes required as part of the therapeutic process. As a consequence, processes of therapeutic change are markedly slowed down.

At this engaging seminar, Dr Kathrin Stauffer – author of ‘Emotional Neglect and the Adult in Therapy: Lifelong Consequences to a Lack of Early Attunement’ draws on her rich clinical experience to highlight how therapy for addressing developmental deficits requires a therapeutic stance which is relational and well-attuned to often unresponsive clients, in order to avoid catapulting clients into unmanageable shame and deepening the inner isolation that they are already suffering from.

The seminar explains practical facilitating and therapeutic skills, draws on body psychotherapy techniques and specifically explains how:

• we can work effectively with emotionally neglected clients who appear to be strongly resistant to change; while avoiding conflict in the therapeutic alliance
• we can handle the relational dilemmas that are concomitant with the provision of therapy for emotionally neglected clients
• we can distinguish between and apply selectively the concepts of both conflict-oriented and resource-oriented approaches to therapy

• we can find middle ground- so that we can fill in the deficits of emotional neglect while avoiding too much strain on the client
• we will also work on specific exercises aimed at bringing gentle activation to low-energy parts of our own and our client’s bodies

© nscience 2022 / 23