What to Expect
Self-compassion is an important inner resource that increases resilience during challenging and difficult times. It involves the capacity to comfort and soothe difficult and painful emotions with kindness and warmth, valuable for both therapists and clients alike. Burgeoning research shows that self-compassion is strongly associated with emotional wellbeing, better coping, healthy habits, more satisfying relationships, and lower levels of anxiety and depression. Research has also suggested that clients who have a therapist who practices self-compassion do better in therapy.
Therapeutic presence is a way of being that optimizes the doing and techniques of therapy. Therapeutic presence involves bringing one’s whole self in the encounter with another by being completely in the moment on multiple levels—physically, emotionally, cognitively, relationally, and spiritually. This involves simultaneously being grounded and present in the moment while attuning to clients’ moment-to-moment experience. Therapists’ presence provides clients with a neurophysiological sense of safety, allowing them to be seen, heard, understood, and “feel felt,” while also strengthening the therapeutic alliance. It invites clients to open and engage in deep therapeutic work, as well as for therapists to feel grounded and attuned to what is needed in the present moment for clients.
Self-compassion and therapeutic presence are closely related. Presence is fundamental to integrating self-compassion into psychotherapy, and self-compassion is core to cultivating therapeutic presence. Compassion is a part of the embodied experience of presence and self-compassion is a key resource for working with the barriers to presence and attunement with clients and maintaining emotional balance and preventing caregiver fatigue in the midst of challenging clinical work.
Many therapists have been introduced to the concept of self-compassion, but they may not have been taught how to explicitly integrate this knowledge into clinical practice. In this workshop, we will explore how self-compassion can be integrated into clinical work on three levels (1) Therapists presence – which includes how clinicians relate to themselves and their own challenges with compassion (2) Therapeutic alliance – which includes therapists presence and compassion with their clients, in a safe and supportive therapeutic relationship and (3) self-compassion based interventions, offering these to clients to help them to be with difficult experiences and emotions in sessions, and at home.
Being a compassion-based therapist requires that we, as therapists, first have this experience with ourselves. Experiential practices and didactic work will be integrated into this workshop. This workshop will offer clinicians core skills and practices to cultivate presence and self-compassion as a foundation for strong and effective therapeutic relationships, self-care. Key self-compassion practices will also be offered that can be introduced to clients for supporting themselves to be more compassionate with difficult experiences and emotions, to allow for deeper therapeutic work.
Learning Objectives:
- Describe key principles for integrating self-compassion into clinical practice
- Explore an empirically based model of therapeutic presence
- Discover the neurophysiological underpinnings of therapeutic presence, client safety, and effective clinical relationships
- Learn about self-compassion as a resource to both enhance therapists’ presence and to work with the barriers to presence
- Enhance the therapeutic relationship through compassion and self-compassion practices during the clinical hour
- Explore self-compassion practices that can be introduced to clients for supporting themselves to be more compassionate with difficult experiences and emotions, to allow for deeper therapeutic work.
Presenter
Dr. Shari Geller is an author, clinical psychologist, and certified Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) teacher, offering training modules in therapeutic presence internationally as part of a longer-term vision of having presence be a foundational training across psychotherapy approaches. Shari co-authored the book, Therapeutic Presence: A Mindful Approach to Effective Therapeutic Relationships – 2nd Edition (2022) with Dr. Leslie Greenberg. Shari’s book: A Practical Guide For Cultivating Therapeutic Presence (2017), offers hands on tools and guidance for cultivating and strengthening presence in therapy. Shari is a co-editor on a new book: Grounding Psychotherapy in Self-Compassion (2025).
Shari is the co-director of the Centre for MindBody Health, in Toronto, where she offers training, supervision and therapy in Emotion-Focused therapy (EFT) and Mindfulness and Self-Compassion modalities for individuals and couples. She is a therapist, supervisor, and trainer in Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT). Shari serves on the teaching faculty in Health Psychology at York University and is Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto, in association with Music and Health Research Collaboratory (MaHRC). She is a co-developer and part of the core faculty of the Self-Compassion in Psychotherapy (SCIP) certificate program and is Membership and Networking Committee Chair for the International Society for Emotion Focused Therapy (isEFT). Shari enjoys playing the HandPan and djembe and founded the Therapeutic Rhythm and Mindfulness Program (TRM™). Her love of nature and her dogs, along with her 35-year personal meditation practice help to keep her present in the moment.