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Welcome to Gestalt Tools and News.
Mistakes--making them & working with them with clients--is the subject of the piece below. We'll work with this and much more in the new series of the Consultation and Study Group which starts on February 8th. Here is a place to comfortably learn and get support while you learn. If you're an LCSW you can get CEU's; supervision hours if you're an LGSW.
I've included a link to previous newsletters as well as a link to Marie Choppin, an excellent couples therapist in Silver Spring and Bethesda. Also a link to AAGT, the Gestalt therapy conference in June. The deadline for the early registration price has been extended to the end of February. This conference has great workshops and speakers, including Lynne Jacobs (referenced in 'Making Mistakes') and my teacher, Erv Polster. Both are open-hearted and extremely talented clinicians.
If you want to unsubscribe, it's easy to do - just go to the bottom and click on "unsubscribe."
Marilyn Lammert, ScD, LCSW
Psychotherapist/Clinical Social Worker
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| Making Mistakes
Recently, I was at a conference: Together Again, For the First Time: Gestalt Therapy and Inter-Subjective Systems Psychoanalysis and had a chance to talk with Lynne Jacobs, a Gestalt therapist and an analyst, one of the co-presenters and someone I have long admired.
Emotional process and relational process are central in Gestalt therapy. We track the emotional process of the client. We constantly offer situation specific support. This also includes when I've tried, and missed, meeting the client where he is.
I know it's my responsibility to make the correction. I don't always know I need to. The two of us, my client and me, are fumbling our way along together. He knows what he most needs at any moment, so correcting and guiding me is certainly possible. But often it doesn't happen. What can I do?
First I need a stance to ground me. And here it is.
Lynne Jacobs: "I don't expect the therapist to actually know what's best before he or she does something or doesn't do something. It's not finding our way along by putting the responsibility on the patient to guide us, but rather that we'll make our best guess. If it doesn't work, I don't assume resistance, I assume I made the wrong guess, so I'm still responsible for doing the thinking about what might be needed." (undated interview)
Then I need words. Lynne helps me out with these at the lunch break.
"I didn't get that right, did I?" "I missed you there." "I didn't get what you really meant, did I?" "I was insensitive."
Words to train my clients to notice and tell me.
When I've been the client and hear words like these, I feel a little bigger inside, more valuable.
And each time as a therapist I say words like these, I get a little more resilient about my shame. My shame that I make mistakes.
What do you think? |
Upcoming Workshop and New Consultation Group Series
Next Series Begins on Monday, February 8th
The next 3 month series of the Gestalt Consultation & Study Group begins on Monday, Feb. 8th, 10:30AM - 12:30PM, and I'm hoping you'll be a part of it.
If you're an LCSW, you can earn Category 1 CEU's. If you're an LGSW, I am now an approved supervisor, so you can earn supervision hours.
It's my belief and experience that often we have the wisdom we need, but don't always have direct access to it. My goal for these sessions is to help you access your wisdom by way of some new tools and ways to conceptualize from Gestalt therapy.
The focus of each session is on you and practice situations you'd like to learn more about. A few key Gestalt concepts are highlighted each time experientially and in discussion. (You'll have a brief article before each session related to these concepts.)
We'll consistently pay close attention to direct experience, awareness, contact between therapist and client, and the use of experiments.
You'll have opportunities to practice new ways as you choose to do so.
I love this work - and being engaged with like-minded therapists in learning together. I hope you'll consider joining us.
Regular monthly, 2nd Monday
10:30AM - 12:30PM
Next series starts February 8th
Cat. 1 CEU's (Social Work)
$45/session
5117 Manning Drive in Bethesda
pakm78@gmail.com or 301-951-9645
Click here to register, and receive 3 Gestalt articles.
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Counseling for Contentment
Marie Caterini Choppin, MSW, LCSW-C, specializes in working with couples using an approach which is focused on helping couples create a secure, loving, and trusting bond with each other so they are able to get the responsiveness and connection they long for and need. The approach, called Emotionally Focused Couple's Therapy (http://www.iceeft.com/), was developed by Dr. Sue Johnson. It is based on the science and research of adult attachment, was recently endorsed by the APA, and is considered to be one of the most effective approaches with the highest success rates.
EFT is a model of psychotherapy that is based on a "theory of love" derived from volumes of research by John Bowlby who pioneered parent-child attachment. Over the last fifteen years, that research has been applied to adults to create a theory on adult attachment. Using this framework, the highly reactive emotional states that people sometimes experience in relationships begin to make perfect sense.
The approach focuses on the pattern and negative cycle that distressed couples develop over time and helps them to de-escalate, creating a safe environment in which to explore and express their underlying feelings and needs. The approach is based on our current understanding that no matter what age we are, it is secure, loving relationships which give us our greatest sense of safety, connection, comfort, and strength in dealing with the challenges, stresses, and opportunities of life.
Marie is planning on providing some Relationship Enhancement Workshops in the coming year for couples to learn about their own patterns and how to get the responsiveness and connection they long for and need.
Marie Caterini Choppin, LCSW-C
COUNSELING FOR CONTENTMENT LLC
For healing, growth and change.
4405 East-West Hwy, Suite 508
Bethesda, MD 20814
301-625-9102 (office)
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International Gestalt Conference in Philly
CONTINUITY AND CHANGE: GESTALT THERAPY NOW
To all those interested in attending the AAGT 2010 Tenth Biennial Conference the first week of June in Philadelphia...
The opportunity to register for the conference at the lowest rate possible, for AAGT members and non-members alike, has been extended through the end of February.
So go to our website http://www.philadelphia2010.aagt2.org/program.html and peruse our schedule and the exciting offerings of our pre-conference (June 1-2) and conference (June 2-6) presentations.
Register online
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 Description of Gestalt Therapy
Gestalt therapy is an enlivening and intimate way of being with clients. It was developed as an antidote to behaviorism and psychoanalysis 50 years ago. Present-day relational psychoanalysis is closer to Gestalt therapy than to classical psychoanalysis. Gestalt therapy focuses on therapist-client relationship and interventions into the client's inner experience.
Gestalt therapy is process oriented and experiential, based on a field theory (akin to the intersubjective field) where all experience is co-created and the experience of the therapist is not more valid or objective than that of the client. The present-centered dialogue is enlivening and allows client and therapist to have an immediate and vivid grasp of current experience, which includes developmental history (since we bring the past to our present experience.) When emotional process is experienced vividly in the present, the meanings that shape the immediate experience can be explored more directly.
The dialogue is the healing element; creative experiments (or techniques) emerge organically out of absorption in the dialogue. Experimentation (trying something new) is an alternative to purely verbal techniques.
The relational experience of client and therapist may trigger awareness of something deeper and beyond words, an experience that some call spiritual.
BIO
Marilyn Lammert has practiced psychotherapy in the Washington, DC area for 30 years. She received her Master's in Social Work from Washington University in St. Louis, her Doctor of Science from Johns Hopkins University, and has a postgraduate diploma in Gestalt Therapy from the Gestalt Training Center of San Diego where she studied with Erv and Miriam Polster. In addition to her work as a clinician, Dr. Lammert has taught in graduate Social Work programs at Washington University, the University of Maryland and Catholic University. | |
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