Head --------------------------------------------> Heart
Discussion --------------------------------------> Experience
Talking about -----------------------------------> Working on
Conscious, rational known --------------------> Intuitive, sensed, spontaneous
MORNING SESSION
IN THREES
Review of what was learnt yesterday, theoretically and personally.
DEMONSTRATION SESSION
Client talked about her desire to be in the workshop despite many other demands upon her time and that she wanted to learn especially because of one particular client she works with that she feels distressed about. The counselling revealed resonances with an earlier occasion in life that had been forgotten about but which had had major impact at the time.
Points arising:
- there werre two prominent transition points in the session, when the client focussed upon the problem of a current client of hers and when the client remembered an occasion from earlier life. The first transition was mostly a progression within material that was largely already conscious and the second transition took the client by surprise and related to forgotten (and therefore unconscious) material.
- emotional signs can indicate openings into the cave of unconscious material.
- the client’s state is object related and the therapist stays aware of the object dimension and does not get in the way
- sometimes humour brings out the common humanity of client, therapist and third parties alike.
- the work is delicate and requires intensity.
- however, the client’s process is robust. Sometimes the therapist suggests things that the client rejects. When this happens the therapist lets the matter go and mov es with the client. In fact, therapy tends to proceed by a series of small errors, the correction of which enables the client to work deeper into the true meaning of what she is working with.
- one does not necessarily need a lot of information, one simply needs the vital points and these mostly get revealed spontaneously.
AFTERNOON SESSION
DISCUSSION
We had questions and discussion about how to work with the client’s hidden process, how to recognise signs that show when unconscious material is breaking the surface, how to find one’s way into the cave, how to intensify the trace, how to hold the trance by evoking the object, and how to avoid trying to take control of the process, either in oneself or in the other, but rather facilitate and open possibilities. In therapy a client may resolve particular issues, work through losses and heal traumatic memories, but more importantly the client learns to trust the process by which the unconscious does this healing work. As such trust grows the person can relax at a deep level and arrive at the state of ease spoken of in the Buddhist sutras. When one works in this way, therapy is not only a personal healing, it also enhances one's ability to be healing presence for others too.
PRACTICE WORK
In groups of four - two observers, client and counsellor
Groups did two sessions, in some cases with different client each time, in some with the same client but a different counsellor for the second session.
Afterwards we discussed
- the kinds of things that may block the therapist in responding
- how to use material before having to understand what it means
- how to deepen the work rather than gathering more and more information - how to get more and more out of less and less.
- how the therapist's style is in some ways a function of her own temperament but that a therapist must then extend their range, the quiet person learning to be more dramatic and assertive and the more expansive person learning how to be quiet, calm and attentive.
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