When
March 28, 2025
9:00 AM – 4:00 PM (ET)
Where
Online via Zoom video conferencing
Facilitated by
Centre for Interpersonal Relationships (CFIR)
Cost
Regular: $200 + HST ($226 with taxes included)
Students: $100 + HST ($113 with taxes included)
Receive a 10% discount if you register before March 1st, 2025!
What to Expect
Therapeutic Presence (TP) and Self-Compassion (SC) are essential factors in effective and transformative therapeutic relationships.
Therapeutic presence is a way of being that optimises the doing and techniques of therapy and for clinical relationships. TP provides clients with a sense of safety, allowing them to be seen, heard, understood, and “feel felt,” while also strengthening the therapeutic alliance. TP also invites clinicians to work on their own balance of presence and compassion with self and clients, ensuring they remain centred and effective. Practicing TP also sustains clinicians’ vitality and connection, supporting clinicians to enjoy their work and their clients more fully, and to prevent caregiver fatigue and burn-out.
Self-compassion is a key resource in maintaining clinicians’ presence and working with the barriers to presence. SC involves meeting our emotions and difficult experience with mindfulness, common humanity, kindness, and warmth. Research shows that self-compassion is also strongly associated with emotional well-being, healthy habits, and more fulfilling relationships. Together, therapeutic presence and self-compassion are powerful resources for therapists and clinicians to maintain emotional balance in the midst of challenging clinical work.
In this training, we will explore an empirically validated model of therapeutic presence as a map to build and strengthen the skills of presence with ourselves and with clients (Geller, 2017; Geller & Greenberg, 2002, 2012, 2022). The neurophysiological principles to creating safety with therapeutic presence, based on concepts such as co-regulation and neuroception of safety stemming from Polyvagal Theory (Geller & Porges, 2014) will be discussed. We will incorporate evidence-based practices from Dr. Geller’s books, ‘A Practical Guide for Cultivating Therapeutic Presence’ (2017) and ‘Therapeutic Presence: A Mindful Approach to Effective Therapeutic Relationships 2nd Edition (2022) co-authored with Dr. Leslie Greenberg, including core presence and self-compassion practices.