The Self-Esteem, Confidence & Resilience Toolkit

This one-day online workshop is aimed at providing us, as therapists, a set of practical, creative, physical and sensory tools that can be applied in clinical settings not just for encouraging self-esteem and resilience in clients but also for our own regulation and well-being. The toolkit that we discuss includes:

• Understanding and learning to read the signs as to how the lack of self-esteem and confidence manifests in different individuals. We specifically discuss the identification of cognitive signs in children and adults with low self-esteem
• Understanding the cycle of negative self-talk and beliefs, how to cut through this cycle and replace it with positive thoughts that can build self-esteem
• Discussing and reflecting on our client’s resilience and emotional strength that has helped them to overcome challenges and obstacles in the past. Often, they may be underestimating their own emotional resilience
• Creative ways of working with children with low self-esteem who may find it hard to accept praise, or struggle with the expectations of good labels being pinned on to them
• Understanding the importance of and validating the cheerleaders and supporters in our lives (who we might be overlooking) as well as those who inspire us
• Working on practical techniques for assisting clients when they have been subject to bullying or recurrent teasing
• Thinking about and expressing our future hopes, aspirations and dreams and how we can reach for these
• An array of ideas, tools and activities to do with children or adults to support their expression and identification of strengths, skills and resources, including:
  • Puppets, masks and dolls
  • Magnets, drawing, mirrors and portraits
  • Arts and crafts activities, crosswords and quizzes
  • Jewellery, treasure boxes and more
• The 7 E model that supports enriching conversations about strengths and skills
• Conversation techniques that allow us to focus on:
• • Anchoring on to feel-good moments
  • The avoidance of thinking traps

The workshop follows an integrationist approach – we draw on cognitive, psychoanalytical and sensorimotor domains – with the goal of enhanced self-esteem that works in the face of self-perpetuating negative cycles, externalized factors and cognitive difficulties. We consider how, as therapists, we can practice holding a receptive stance, so as to assist co-regulation and work actively at mitigating dysregulation in the client’s environment.

About the Speaker

Dr Karen Treisman is a Highly Specialist Clinical Psychologist who has worked in the NHS and children’s services for several years. Karen has also worked cross-culturally in both Africa and Asia with groups ranging from former child soldiers to survivors of the Rwandan Genocide. Karen has extensive experience in the areas of trauma, parenting, and attachment, and works clinically using a range of therapeutic approaches with families, systems, and children in or on the edge of care, unaccompanied asylum-seeking young people, and adopted children. She is the director of Safe Hands and Thinking Minds training and consultancy services as well as an external consultant, trainer, and assessor to Barnardos, PAC-UK, Hope for families, Three Steps Ireland, Pause, CoramBAAF, Grandparents Plus, and the Fostering Network.

In addition to holding a doctorate in Clinical psychology, Karen has undergone a range of specialist trainings including in EMDR, Narrative Therapy, Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, Sensory Attachment Intervention, and Theraplay. She regularly presents at local, national, and international trauma, parenting, and attachment conferences. She has also been a speaker at TedX talks. She was awarded the Winston Churchill Fellowship Award and also received the Psychologist of the Year award in 2018. Karen is the best-selling author of Working with Relational and Developmental Trauma in Children and Adolescents (Routledge, 2016); and A Therapeutic Treasure Box for Working with Children and Adolescents with Developmental Trauma (2017).

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