Description:

Through the complementary lenses of AEDP™ and Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT), this workshop will address the role of therapeutic presence in the service of psychological healing and transformation. Much more than a background component of psychotherapy, it is a primary and powerful tool for processing trauma and facilitating positive psychological change.

Presence is essential to developing a highly attuned and mutually coordinated healing relationship—a fundamental requirement for effective therapy across many different orientations.  Therapeutic presence is a way of being that reflects a therapist’s full, embodied engagement, in the moment, in relationship with their clients.

Parallel to the implicit processes of caregiver-infant security engendering attachment relationships, the explicit cultivation of therapeutic presence allows clients to acknowledge, explore and process the difficult and often painful terrain of relational trauma from the base of a safe and supportive relational connection with their therapist. Likewise, it provides a turbocharged container for processing powerful emergent experiences of health and flourishing.

In this workshop presenters will share video sessions with patients to demonstrate hallmark techniques.

Main Points of Seminar:

Therapeutic presence:

• Is essential for coordinated healing relationships.
• Requires and also allows for attunement to verbal and nonverbal client communications.
• Is both an internal experience and a relational experience.
• Draws upon attachment research
• Is a key component of healing trauma in psychotherapy.
• Embodies neurophysiological principles to creating safety based on concepts such as co-regulation and neuroception from Polyvagal Theory (Geller & Porges, 2014).

There are three over-arching categories of therapeutic presence: preparation, process and experience. AEDP and EFT both offer optimal models for cultivating and utilizing therapeutic presence to heal trauma.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the foundational model for therapeutic presence in effective therapy.
• Identify the link between neuroscience research and therapeutic presence for cultivating safety
• Practice in-session skills of therapeutic presence to enhance your clinical practice.
• Apply specific techniques from AEDP and EFT to embody therapeutic presence in life and in session.
• Differentiate “being” from “doing” in the clinical application of therapeutic presence in AEDP, EFT and transtheoretically.
• Practice self-compassion to work with challenges to therapeutic presence in life and in session.