When working with adult clients, as therapists, we often come across individuals with no visible manifestations of distress but a recurring sense of helplessness and hopelessness. Such clients may express how they never feel seen– have a deep-rooted belief that their needs will never be met and giving up has become their default method for dealing with life’s challenges. More often than not, our client(s) in such cases have suffered from neglect and misattunement during their formative years, leading to developmental deficits.

This video resource pack contains two complete workshops (total CPD hours: 5 / CE credits: N/A) that cover:

Part 1:

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

Part 2:

Dr Schwartz presents a Resilience Informed Approach, which applies research on trauma recovery to form a strength-based, trauma treatment model that includes EMDR therapy, somatic psychology, parts-work and relational psychotherapy. 

Specifically, we discuss:

• What exactly does attunement mean in the context of early relational trauma; and why we need to consider mutual regression as a precursor to self-regulation
• Tronick’s Rule of Thirds and how this can help us understand early relational trauma
• How Polyvagal Theory helps us understand the Social Nervous System
• Do phobias maintain dissociation and what this means for therapy
• Walking the tightrope of memory retrieval in our therapeutic approach
• Using parts-work for early relational trauma and dissociation – keeping in mind the increased awareness of introjects

Part 3: In addition to the two video courses above, with this resource pack you also get a free digital copy of ‘Early Affect Confusion: Relational Psychotherapy for the Borderline Client’ book by Dr Richard Erskine

In his latest book, Dr Richard Erskine draws upon years of his research and valuable clinical experience to provide an in-depth analysis of clients suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder.

What makes this book a profound and practical read for any therapist or counsellor is the shift in perspective – Dr Erskine does not believe in pathologizing his clients’ condition. Instead, he focuses on his clients’ unmet relational needs and with great empathy and compassion, he works through the various traumas and setbacks they faced during different developmental stages of their childhood and teenage years. He prefers to use the term Early Affect Confusion and through detailed case studies of clients that he worked with in his practice, he shows how it is possible to help these individuals overcome their condition to go on to lead more fulfilled lives. His clients were able to form better and lasting relationships, both at work and in their personal lives, understand their traumas, accept them, learn from them and move on in their lives.

Through in-depth case studies, he shows how he, as a therapist, facilitated change through a deeply empathic response, how he grappled with the practical dilemmas, how he navigated delicate points in their therapeutic relationship where a rupture could have been imminent and derailed the whole process. If there is one book you choose to read to understand how to work in a relationally-focussed way with clients suffering from BPD, there is perhaps no better option than this one.

© nscience UK, 2022 / 23