January 2016: The NWRPA does not meet in January.
Integrating Psychodrama Techniques into your Practice
Phil Burgess
12 February 2016
Psychodrama is usually seen as a group method. However many of the techniques can be incorporated into individual therapy work. The action methods are used to enable past, present and future life events to be explored in the here-and-now. During this session we will look at the use of metaphor, concretisation, time and space and “being in the others shoes” as well as the underlying principles of creativity and spontaneity.
Phil Burgess (reg. BPA and UKCP) is a psychodramatist and consultant for Arts in Health. Phil has worked with groups and individuals for over twenty years, first as a community artist and then as a psychotherapist. He brings to psychodrama his experience of dance, circus skills, theatre, corporate training, team building and therapeutic massage.
OCD, Heuristic Research and Poetic Re-Presentation
Kieran Nolan
11 March 2016
Kieran will discuss his doctoral research in which he used Poetic Re-Presentation to understand how people who suffer from OCD make sense of their experience. This discussion will be underpinned by this question: What are we really treating when we use psychological therapies to help people with this condition?
Kieran is a psychoanalytical and integrative psychotherapist who works in the NHS and in private practice. He has been interested in OCD for many years and his research also included his own experience of being obsessive.
Counselling: Love and Loss
Frank Kelley
8 April 2016
Our working life is spent absorbed in our clients experiences of loss. Throughout our working life we can also experience the actual, feared or desired loss of our counselling work. Frank has recently retired after working in the NHS as a psychodynamic counsellor. He will reflect on these themes and the loss of the work he loved.
Game Analysis
Amanda Onwuemene
13 May 2016
‘Game analysis’ is central to Transactional Analysis. After introducing the Karpman Drama Triangle (1968) Amanda will draw on examples from her own clinical practice to show how games can be identified, explained and stopped thereby providing the client with relief from having their needs met vicariously by others. Amanda manages Psychotherapy and Counselling North West, a private psychotherapy service based in Liverpool and Manchester, and supervises clinical practice.
Forgiveness
Teresa Hampson
10 June 2016
Teresa draws on her research she did for her Master’s in counselling to consider forgiveness and the feelings associated with it, together with the impact forgiving has on individuals and its place in counselling. She will also briefly describe some of the models of Forgiveness Therapy that originated in the US.
Teresa is an integrative counsellor working with adults by phone as well as face-to-face, and with young people face-to-face.
Three More Words in Therapy
8 July 2016
Creativity
Stephen Thompson
Stephen, a gestalt therapist working with adults and children, reflects on the role of creativity in the therapeutic process.
Bullying
Peter Lindsay
Bullying – a trauma in so many forms where scars can require years to heal. After a career in finance Peter became a counsellor in 2008 after receiving an MA in Relationship Counselling. He practised for seven years with Relate and now works in private practice in Knutsford with couples, families and individuals.
Empathy
Frank Kelley
Thinking of empathy as a Kleinian projective process casts a different light on empathy in both counselling theory and practice. Frank Kelley was a psychodynamic counsellor in the NHS and is now retired.
12 August 2016 The NWRPA does not meet in August.
Meeting the Enemy – Political Polarisation in the Therapy Room
Robin Hobbes
9 September 2016
Robin Hobbes leads a discussion on politics and psychotherapy. Discussion will consider the place in the therapeutic conversation of the political values of both the practioner and client.
Robin Hobbes runs Elan Training and Development which he helped found in 1982. He spends his professional life teaching, supervising and practicing psychotherapy and counselling.
‘Recovery’ and Mental Health Care
Dr Andrew Shepherd
14 October 2016
‘Recovery’ is now commonly stated as a goal for mental health services. While presented as distinct from notions of clinical ‘cure’ the precise definition is unclear but is often described as shifting emphasis more to the service user’s personal definition. Through considering the historical use of the word ‘recovery’ and the experiences of those who experience mental distress at the boundary of what is considered to be ‘illness’ or ‘disorder’ Andrew Shepherd explores what the implications of adopting this term may be for the provision of mental health care.
Dr Andrew Shepherd is higher trainee in forensic psychiatry.
Writing, Desire and Psychotherapy
Led by Ann Heathcote and Steff Oates
11 November 2016
Why do you want – or did you want – to be a therapist? What was your inspiration? What hinders you from being the best practioner you can be? What are the joys and challenges of the profession? What are your hopes and plans for the future? This workshop uses writing to explore your desire in therapy,
Ann Heathcote is a Transactional Analyst who stopped her psychotherapy practice after 25 years though she continues to run the Worsley Centre for Psychotherapy and Counselling.
Steff Oates is a Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst practicing primarily as a psychotherapist and as a visiting trainer to several European countries.
Three Words in Therapy
9 December 2016
Three therapists each speak for 15-20 minutes on a word of their choosing from the world of psychotherapy and counselling.
Silence
Marjina Mahmood
Silence can be seen as peaceful and can also be uncomfortable. How much can we communicate with silence and how powerful can it be? Marjina has a BSc and PGdip in counselling and psychotherapy, is a registered member of BACP, has worked in the mental health sector for five years – for the last three years as a counsellor with voluntary organisations and BUPA – and manages a private practice.
Mothers
Kit Leaver
Mothers: can’t live with them, can’t live without them; Madonna, maddening and mate.
Kit is a counsellor and Stepped Care Therapist, a mother and probably both maddening and a mate.
Curiosity
Jim Davis
Curiosity is a fundamental ingredient of aliveness and intimacy, and therefore so is the client’s curiosity in their therapist – how they impact their therapist and in their therapist’s attitude to them. Jim is a gestalt, bodywork, transactional analysis, and relational psychoanalysis influenced psychotherapist, supervisor and trainer, interested in the use of the therapeutic relationship.