Gestalt workshop: Working with complex trauma – Graham Colbourne:
“In this workshop I am offering support in developing effective practice for experienced psychotherapists working with clients who have grown up in family situations where there is violence/abuse/intrusion, neglect or chaos/insecurity.
As practitioners we are holding clients whose day to day lives and relationships often include fear, terror, confusion, depression, shame, addiction, hopelessness, rage and emptiness. As we encounter these clients, we are reminded of our own lives and histories. In addition, we resonate with what the client brings – in our bodies, impulses and feelings.
Often, I find that when we can work with this level of complexity and challenge, we can become more effective working with other clients too!”
The specialist workshop is dedicated to:
- Certified Gestalt psychotherapists and trainers
- Certified psychotherapists and trainers of Schools of Psychotherapy of other modalities
Gestalt workshop: Working with complex trauma – support to:
- Navigate this shared human landscape of distress;
- Together with the client, increasingly make sense of what is happening moment to moment and over time;
- Reflect on what is happening in order to become more effective in helping
- Sustain yourself and clients into a novel and more healthy lived relationship and existence with you and in their world
- Plan and monitor this process of healing in the context of the unique developmental themes and complex trauma of each client
- Build your own robustness, ground and presence to meet the clients skilfully in whatever they bring
Theoretical support
In order to make sense of what happens as we engage with our clients, and what we can do to help, we need conceptual frameworks as support and guidance. The workshop will offer:
- Increasing understanding of complex relational / developmental trauma
- Introduction to a particular model of working with trauma
- Developing your understanding of field theory as it applies in this area of work
- Particular emphasis on relational body process and how to work somatically to add support and to design relational experiments
- How to work ethically and take risks and opportunities into account in facing ethical dilemmas
- Use of case study, supervision and live work to practice applying theory
Support with practice
The workshop will offer a lively and stimulating learning partnership and environment where we can explore the topics and relevant experiences directly:
- Opportunities to bring case examples and reflect together
- Demonstration of work and live supervised practice
- Support in identifying and understanding how you might be potentially or actually be overwhelmed in working with some clients
- Support in developing your own ground and presence as practitioner
- Support in helping clients to self-regulate and sooth, to express and integrate their experience and to try out new experiences of relating with you
