Transforming Resistance: Working with the Challenges of Defense & Anxiety
An AEDP Institute Sponsored, AEDP New England Seminar
with AEDP Faculty Member Steve Shapiro, PhD
This seminar is intended for professionals in mental health and the healing arts and sciences.
Ironically, many clients interfere with the very progress they seek either through their own resistance to the psychotherapy process or because their anxiety is too high and there is too much dysregulation to use the process effectively. Not infrequently, they terminate prematurely before reaching their goals. This results in tragic consequences for the client, as well as frustration and a sense of failure for the therapist. While clients enter treatment with conscious motivation, resistance is unconscious and, therefore, difficult to address without a coherent system. Therapists typically interpret resistance in a personal way becoming confused, frustrated, and hopeless, with a tendency to hold the client responsible and label him/her as “unmotivated or resistant”. Participants will learn to move beyond resistance and simple symptom management into deep, transformational processes that releases resources of health and resilience. Learn to accelerate treatment using innovative techniques that implore clients to abandon chronic coping patterns that were once necessary, but have long outlived their usefulness and are now causing untoward suffering.
Therapists offer the promise of help often based on the presumption that the client will arrive with sufficient initial motivation, openness and willingness to face painful realities. Frequently this is not the case. Clinicians are rarely adequately prepared to address resistance directly and therapeutically, making it difficult to help more challenging clients. Defenses can be seen as “a problem,” rather than an inevitable part of the process; defense restructuring can mistakenly be understood as an adversarial task, that we then avoid, rather than a compassionate and collaborative venture.
Therapists of all orientations and levels of experience will gain a clear understanding of the nature and function of defences, and ways to transform them therapeutically so clients can align with the healthy, buried and previously inaccessible internal resources, as well as effective ways to regulate anxiety when it is too high. The principles taught can be readily integrated with your existing orientation and skill set. By adopting an active, focused, precise, experiential, attachment-based and emotionally engaged stance, therapists can create the safety and attunement necessary for patients to risk abandoning their resistance and shift to healthier functioning. The ultimate goal is to accelerate the healing process for clients, but also to help clinicians practice in a way that substantially reduces counter transference, is deeply rewarding, effective, and authentic, fully compatible with your personal and professional history.
Learning Objectives:
- Construct reliable, internal clinical maps that will flexibly and accurately guide assessment of the patient and, consequently, therapist interventions/ clinical stance, particularly understanding the difference between high anxiety and high defense.
- Demonstrate the ability to respond in the moment effectively to the patient’s need based on a moment to moment psychodiagnostic assessment of various aspects of the patient’s experience, especially considering whether the patient is responding with high anxiety or high defense
- Relate practical clinical skills as rapidly as possible to function in an effective, deep and efficient manner (technique).
- Create a therapy style that is not only effective, accelerated and reduces suffering as rapidly as possible (patient benefit), but that is authentic and unique for each individual clinician, based on his both his/her professional experience/orientation, as well as his/her personality. (professional development).
- Integrate therapist awareness of his/her emotional reactions in various scenarios, to develop greater affect/anxiety tolerance, to welcome and use countertransference in a positive/effective manner (personal/emotional)
- Develop a clear understanding of the nature and function of defenses
- Develop an active, focused, precise, experiential, attachment-based and emotionally engaged stance
- Transform resistance and simple symptom management into a deep, transformational processes
- Integrate defenses as an inevitable part of the process; a compassionate and collaborative venture.
Meet the Presenter
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Dates, Time and Location
Dates: Friday & Saturday, January 31 – February 1, 2020
Time: 9:00am – 4:30pm
Location:
The Scottish Rite Masonic Museum and Library
33 Marrett Rd
Lexington, MA 02421
Agenda
Day One:
9:00 – 9:30
Introduction/ overview
9:30 – 10:45
Moment to moment tracking
10:45 – 11:00
Break
11:00 – 12:30
Understanding high anxiety/dysregulation and high defense/resistance. Two different skill sets
12:30 – 1:30
Lunch
1:30 – 2:30
Treatment of high defense
2:30 – 3:45
Treatment of high defense: video demonstration and discussion
3:30 – 3:45
Break
3:45 – 4:00
Group exercises
4:00 – 4:30
Q&A/Wrap-up
Day Two:
9:00 – 9:30
Follow up from Day 1.Q & A
9:30 – 10:45
Understanding resistance to connection with therapist: Didactic and video demonstration
10:45 – 11:00
Break
11:00 – 12:30
Treatment of high anxiety
12:30 – 1:30
Lunch
1:30 – 3:30
Treatment of high anxiety: video demonstration and discussion
3:30 – 3:45
Break
3:45 – 4:00
Understanding portrayals
4:00 – 4:30
Q&A/Wrap-up
Fees, Registration and Continuing Education (CE):
CE credits: 12
Registration Fees (including CEs):
- $325 Member Price (must be logged in to register)
- $350 Non-Member Early Bird (ends December 31, 2019)
- $375 Non-Member Regular Price (starts January 1, 2020)
- $425 Non-Member Walk-In
Special pricing – limited seats available:
- Graduate Students in their last year of training as well as soon-to-be-licensed Interns & Trainees: Student seats have been filled for this seminar.
- Diversity Scholarships: a limited number of $150 Diversity Scholarships are available
- please email: Matt Fried and Yuko Hanakawa, Co-Chairs, The Diversity Committee at aedp.dscholarship@gmail.com with the name of this seminar, applicant name and license type, license number, and name of agency/hospital if applicable.
- Please note that the focus of the AEDP Diversity Initiative is to enable training for therapists coming from marginalized communities, who work with patients from those communities and intend to continue to do so, and who also evidence clear financial hardship.
SEMINAR QUESTIONS & REGISTRATION CONTACT
Contact Karen Newell at R. Cassidy Seminars: AEDP’s CE and Registration Partner:
karen@rcassidy.com
866-992-9399 X105
Office Hours: Monday – Friday 8:00 am – 2:00 pm PST
ADA ACCOMODATIONS:
Please contact our office 866-992-9399 if you have questions about disability access or accommodations.
Continuing Education
This seminar is for Psychologists, Psychoanalysts, Social Workers, Counselors/Marriage and Family Therapists, Creative Arts Therapists
Co-sponsored by R. Cassidy Seminars, P.O. Box 14473, Santa Rosa, CA 95402
Satisfactory Completion
Participants must have paid tuition fee, signed in and out each day, attended the entire seminar, and completed an evaluation in order to receive a certificate. Failure to sign in or out each day will result in forfeiture of credit for the entire course. No exceptions will be made. Partial credit is not available. Certificates available following course completion at www.ceuregistration.com
Psychologists
R. Cassidy Seminars is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. R. Cassidy Seminars maintains responsibility for this program and its content. 12 CE hours Live in-person.
Psychoanalysts
NY: R. Cassidy Seminars is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychoanalysts. #P-0005. (12) clock hours. Live in-person.
Social Workers
CA: The Board of Behavioral Sciences has deferred CE course approvals to APA and other states’ licensing board approvals for its licensees. See those approvals under Psychologists and Social Workers
Other States: If your state is not specifically listed, nearly all state Social Work boards accept either APA or are reciprocal with other state licensing board approvals, such as those listed below. Check with your board to be sure. The Ohio Board includes social Workers.
NY: R. Cassidy Seminars is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Social Work as an approved provider (#0006) of continuing education for licensed social workers. This program is approved for 12 contact hours live in-person.
OH: Provider approved by the Ohio Counselor, Social Worker and Marriage and Family Therapist Board for (12) clock hours, #RCST110701
Counselors/Marriage and Family Therapists
CA: The Board of Behavioral Sciences has deferred CE course approvals to APA and other states’ licensing board approvals for its licensees. See those approvals under Psychologists and Social Workers.
Other States: If your state is not specifically listed, nearly all state Counselor and MFT boards accept either APA or are reciprocal with other state licensing board approvals, such as those listed below. Check with your board to be sure. The Ohio Board includes MFTS and Counselors.
IL: Illinois Dept of Professional Regulation, Approved Continuing Education Sponsor, #168-000141. (12) hours.
MA-LMHCs: This program has been approved for 12 Category I MaMHCA hours for re-licensure, in accordance with 262 CMR. MaMHCA Approval # 19-1102.
MA-LMFTs: This activity has been certified by NEAFAST on behalf of the Massachusetts Board of Registrations of Allied Mental Health& Human Services Professions, for LMFT professional continuing education. Certification #PC- 040479. 12 Contact Hours.
NY-LMHCs: R. Cassidy Seminars is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board of Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed mental health counselors. #MHC-0015. (12) contact hours. Live in-person.
NY-LMFTs: R. Cassidy Seminars is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board of Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed marriage and family therapists. #MFT-0011. (12) contact hours. Live in-person
OH: Provider approved by the Ohio Counselor, Social Worker and Marriage and Family Therapist Board for (12) clock hours, #RCST110701
TX: Approved CE Sponsor through the Texas State Board of Examiners of Marriage & Family Therapists. Provider #151 12 CE hours.
Creative Arts Therapists
NY: R. Cassidy Seminars is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board of Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed creative arts therapists, #CAT-0005. (12) contact hours. Live in-person.
Chemical Dependency Counselors
CA: Provider approved by CCAPP, Provider #4N-00-434-0220 for (12) CEHs. CCAPP is an ICRC member which has reciprocity with most ICRC member states
TX: Provider approved by the TCBAP Standards Committee, Provider No. 1749-06, (12) hours general. Expires 3/31/2020. Complaints about provider or workshop content may be directed to the TCBAP Standards Committee, 1005 Congress Avenue, Ste. 460, Austin, Texas 78701, Fax Number (512) 476-7297.
Educators
TX: R. Cassidy Seminars is an approved provider with the Texas Education Agency CPE# 501456. This course is (12) CE Hours.
Nurses
CA: Provider approved by the CA Board of Registered Nursing, Provider #CeP12224, for (12) contact hours
Disability Access – If you require ADA accommodations please contact our office 30 days or more before the event. We cannot ensure accommodations without adequate prior notification.
Please Note: Licensing Boards change regulations often and while we attempt to stay abreast of their most recent changes, if you have questions or concerns about this course meeting your specific board’s approval, we recommend you contact your board directly to obtain a ruling.
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