Interviews with Experiential Practitioners

Sophie's Deliberate Practice modules for Coherence Therapy: https://www.psymomentum.com/deliberate-practice-for-coherence-therapy/ Sophie's Memory Reconsolidation course: https://www.psymomentum.com/coherence-therapy-course/ Sophie's Deliberate Practice modules for Coherence Therapy are finally available! Now you can practice your therapeutic "scales and arpeggios" a little each week and increase your clinical efficacy. You can buy them all for $90CA here: https://tinyurl.com/2mrufxew Two formats are available: practice modules in pdf format, totalling 100 different index cards and a feedback service for your index cards. Modules will be added periodically. Deliberate Practice Modules in pdf format: Module 1: Writing index cards in limbic language, clearly indicating the problem, the solution and the means (if applicable). 25 index cards – 17-page workbook. Module 2 : Master the basic structure of problematic models of reality (schemas) to recognize emerging material and write complete index cards. 25 index cards – 17-page workbook. Module 3 : Learn to identify the different types of constructs that make up an existential problem, so you can more easily spot areas of juxtaposition in a schema. 25 index cards – 22-page workbook. Module 4 : Find contradictory material to complete Step C of the TRP. 25 index cards – 20-page workbook. Feedback service for your index cards I have noticed that getting retroaction on index cards is not only much appreciated in supervision, but also very rich on a clinical level. I invite you to send me your index cards so that I can review their content. Short feedback (on pre-recorded video) will be sent to you (quality of limbic language, structure, missing elements, angles of juxtaposition). -------------------------- Sophie's Memory Reconsolidation course: https://www.psymomentum.com/coherence-therapy-course/ We now know that is is perfectly possible to transform schemas in psychotherapy, with the therapeutic reconsolidation process, or Empirically Confirmed Process of Erasure. Coherence Therapy is a highly effective way to apply these processes in psychotherapy for transformational change. The memory reconsolidation process itself is quite simple to understand, but its application in therapy requires several skills. Developing and teaching those skills has been our passion since 2014, and we are so happy to share our expertise with you. Over the years, we have had the pleasure of teaching this framework on both sides of the Atlantic and we published two books (in French) about the Therapeutic Reconsolidation Process and Coherence Therapy (Côté & Cousineau, 2022) as well as the Therapeutic Reconsolidation Process and Schema Therapy (Cousineau & Côté, (June 2023). Dr Sophie Côté has an advanced certification in Coherence Therapy. Dr Pierre Cousineau and her are both Associate Instructors at the Coherence Psychology Institute. We have developed several unique learning tools that will hopefully help you grasp the subtleties of the framework in order to enjoy the transformational success you are hoping for in your practice.

More interviews at: http://tinyurl.com/mrx42mcc https://www.thescienceofpsychotherapy.net Free webinars from Richard: http://tinyurl.com/2tn92w5p Primer on Memory Reconsolidation: https://www.coherencetherapy.org/files/Ecker-etal-NPT2013April-Primer.pdf Richard Hill has emerged from a diverse and fascinating journey to become an innovative speaker on the mind, brain and the human condition. From a satisfying, if not quite famous, early career in the creative arts, Richard returned to intellectual studies at 42 (1996) beginning with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in linguistics. This triggered a curiosity that led to a diploma in counselling and a new career in psychotherapy. Studying continued and he has added three Masters degrees – an MA in Social Ecology; an MEd in Social Ecology; and a Masters in Brain and Mind Sciences (MBMSc) from Sydney University. Richard is also fortunate to be mentored by the esteemed Ernest Rossi PhD who has invited Richard into the International Psychosocial Genomics Research Team to study the impact of therapeutic practice on the genetic level. His fascination with the disturbing problem of stress and anxiety has resulted in his unique theory - The Winner-Loser World Theory – and the positive positive counterpoint – The Curiosity Approach: which highlights our Curiosity for Possibility. These theories revolutionize the way we deal with stress and anxiety and how we approach standard therapeutic practices. ​ Richard's books include a collection of inspirational short stories in Choose Hope and his explication of his Winner/Loser World Theory in How the 'real world' Is Driving Us Crazy! In addition, he is published in various journals and magazines around the world and in book chapters, including Perspectives on Coping and Resilience and Strengths Based Social Work Practice in Mental Health, published worldwide. Hisis co-author with his mentor, Ernest Rossi, The Practitioner's Guide to Mirroring Hands (2017) and co-author with Matthew Dahlitz of The Practitioner's Guide to the Science of Psychotherapy (2022).

Move video interviews at: http://tinyurl.com/mrx42mcc More info on CRM: https://comprehensiveresourcemodel.com Sam Robinson interviews Lisa Schwarz about the Comprehensive Resource Model (CRM). CRM Book on Amazon - http://tinyurl.com/mdvej5kh Newsweek article on CRM - http://tinyurl.com/bdze7eer CRM Podcast - http://tinyurl.com/3m7rxpwh CRM Demo Session - http://tinyurl.com/kkxzhkv3 The Comprehensive Resource Model® (CRM) is a neuro-biologically based, affect-focused trauma treatment model which facilitates targeting of traumatic experiences by bridging the most primitive aspects of the person and their brain (midbrain/brainstem), to their purest, healthiest parts of the self. This bridge catalyzes the mind and body to access all forms of emotional trauma and stress by utilizing layers of internal resources such as attachment neurobiology, beneficial affiliation neurochemistry, breathwork skills, brain neuroplasticity, our deep connection to the natural world for survival, toning and sacred geometry, and one’s relationship with self, our intuition, and higher consciousness. The sequencing and combination of these resources, and the eye positions that anchor them, provide the opportunity for unbearable emotions and pain to be stepped into and felt fully while the client is fully present and aware moment to moment which changes how the memories affect the person. The new perspective obtained when the pain is stepped into allows a new orienting towards the emotions that have stayed, perhaps under the surface, since the time of the traumas. This provides a mismatch experience where the neurobiological confusion that arises when the body activation of “The pain is so unbearable I can’t possibly step into it” occurs closely in time before resource-based processing that leads to “I’ve just stepped into the pain and it looks different now. I’ve survived and it is bearable”. The mismatch occurring when the trauma memory has been activated concurrently with an opposing tolerable experience of that memory promotes reconsolidation of the memory so that it is laid down again in the brain’s memory systems without the distress it previously carried. We argue that CRM® is a memory reconsolidation therapy in which the crucial mismatches happen at the brainstem, rather than the cortical, level. CRM® uniquely accesses and clears the origin of the split second moments of intolerable affect that result in defense responses which lead to life-interfering symptoms, addictions, and disconnection from self and others. The potential for clearing neurobiological debris from the nervous system clears the way for positive neuro-plasticity and personal expansion whether that is seen as spiritual or otherwise, and which is separate from one’s history of pain and woundedness. Work is done from the time of conception through the present and includes methods for working with generational trauma out of the realm of the client’s conscious knowledge. This is a heart-centered approach in which clients are guided to re-member who they really are and to learn to embody their true authentic self in their day to day lives. CRM® was originally developed for use with those individuals who experience the challenges of Complex PTSD, severe Dissociative Disorders, and Attachment Disorders, however most psychiatric diagnoses are effectively addressed through the use of this model. Military veterans and their families find this modality to be particularly effective in healing the deep wounds caused by war. Performance Enhancement goals for sports, expressive arts, public speaking or any type of performance needs in any age group are most often effectively reached. CRM® works well with children as young as 4 years old as well as adolescents, adults and couples. Group therapy benefits from creative use of various aspects of the model in inpatient, partial hospital and outpatient group settings.

More experiential therapy interviews at: https://tinyurl.com/ypwfbh46 Jules’ course on interweaving experiential psychotherapies course is called Neurobiology with Heart: https://therapywisdom.com/neurobiology-with-heart/ Jules’ course on Memory Reconsolidation, also on Therapy Wisdom: https://therapywisdom.com/memory-reconsolidation/ Other resources Jules recommended in this interview: * Memory Reconsolidation: Bruce Ecker et al’s “Unlocking the Emotional Brain”: https://tinyurl.com/y4x2b8vt * Parts Work/Self Study: Bonnie Badenoch’s “Brain Savvy Therapist Workbook” https://tinyurl.com/4zz35rsb * How memory works within the body: Peter Levine’s “Trauma and Memory” https://tinyurl.com/28xjkh57 Juliane's website: https://www.ipnbaustin.com/juliane-taylor-shore Specialties: Interpersonal Neurobiology, Relational Life Therapy, Somatic Experiencing, Internal Family Systems Therapy, Emotional Transformation Therapy, Coherence Therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, Sand Tray Sam Robinson's website: https://www.strongrootspsychotherapy.com/sam-robinson

More interviews at: https://tinyurl.com/mrymdnn2 

Schema therapy (ST) is an integrative approach that brings together elements from cognitive behavioral therapy, attachment and object relations theories, and Gestalt and experiential therapies. It was introduced by Jeff Young in 1990 and has been developed and refined since then. Schema therapy is considered an effective way of conceptualizing and treating personality disorders. Rafaeli, Bernstein, and Young (2011) and Jacob and Arntz (2013) describe some of the distinguishing features of schema therapy. ST places more emphasis than traditional CBT upon the development of current symptoms. ST emphasizes the therapist–patient relationship and its potential for corrective influence. ST aims to help patients understand their core emotional needs and to learn ways of meeting those needs adaptively. ST focuses extensively on the processing of memories of aversive childhood experiences, making use of experiential techniques to change negative emotions related to such memories. 

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Coherence Therapy is a unified set of methods and concepts for individual, couple and family work that enable a therapist to foster profound change with a high level of consistency.   From the first session, the work is focused on guiding clients to bring awareness to ignored core areas of meaning, feeling, and emotional learning that are generating the presenting symptom or problem.  Coherence Therapy makes use of native capacities for swiftly retrieving and then transforming the client's unconscious, symptom-requiring emotional schemas, which were learned adaptively earlier in life.  

SYMPTOMS DISPELLED BY COHERENCE THERAPY:

A wide range of symptoms can be dispelled along with their associated, less visible emotional wounds, attachment patterns, and troubled ego states or "parts".  The process is experiential and the therapist's empathic attunement is a crucial ingredient.  The focused methodology requires far fewer sessions than conventional in-depth psychotherapies.

DEFT is a shame-sensitive, compassion centered, attachment oriented, inter-subjective, relational psychodynamic, experiential, spiritually integrated, somatic and emotion-focused therapy.  The challenge facing every therapist is how to catalyze deeply felt connection within THREE relationships at once in order to optimally alleviate suffering: that between the therapist and client; that between the client and self; and that between the therapist and self.  Carl Jung has said, “The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely,” Yet such a love carries us through life in a way that nothing else can. Many clients describe accelerated therapeutic relief from a range of symptoms when such radical self-acceptance becomes possible.   DEFT'S Emphasis on Shame: In DEFT, shame is seen as a primary, inhibitory affect that is body-based and often accompanied by devaluing thoughts. Unfortunately, shame often skates under the radar in psychotherapy and is given insufficient attention. It frequently arises around attempts at emotional closeness and also shame-insensitive interactions, often triggering the transference of a critical parental figure as well as defensive projection of self-judgment and loathing onto the therapist.   Shame is a state that can also affect the therapist, especially when inevitable errors and misalliances occur. It can also trigger countertransference, (e.g. being overly attached to a treatment cure leading to pressure on the client to “cooperate.” It can be very curative for the therapist to own these occurrences. Shame will be an obstacle to treatment success until it is given the caring attention it requires on both sides of the consulting room.  Signature Principles of DEFT: Advances the theoretical concept of the “Therapeutic transfer of compassion for self.” This occurs through:  1.  The therapist's capacity to not only feel compassion and caring but to embody it. (Note to therapists: Do not be intimidated by this. This takes ongoing personal work and practice, which the DEFT Institute aims to support. It is normal for this state to fluctuate from one client to the next and to be impacted by numerous factors. Awareness and will are key factors in developing a more consistent experience of self/other compassion).  2.  The therapist's use of prosody, non-shaming language, and engaged, physiological attunement.  3.  Attentiveness to inhibitory and distancing defensive process and the cost it carries.  4.  A sustained focus on underlying feelings, such as sadness for a lack of compassion for self.  5.  Identifying when the client rejects the therapist's compassion. It is through such awareness that a choice to receive and direct compassion towards the self becomes possible. DEFT theory posits that such a transfer significantly impacts outcome. Becoming aware of this reality can be motivating to the client.

Intimacy from the Inside Out©, Developed by Toni Herbine Blank, is a model of couples therapy that draws primarily from the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model of psychotherapy, but also includes aspects of psychodynamic theory, systems thinking and neuroscience. It is an experiential model born out of a desire to carry the concepts of IFS into a relational setting and to use the intimate relationship itself as a vehicle for growth and healing of the individual, as well as the couple.   

This work assumes that each us has access to an inward spiritual presence that supports the notion that human beings are resilient and have inner resources of self -love and self-regulation. It is a non-pathologizing approach that helps people make sense of their life experience in a safe and collaborative way.   

In IFIO therapy, each member of the couple is invited into a process, which leads to a self compassionate, and secure relationship with him or herself. This then makes it possible to stay connected with oneself and one’s partner even in times of stress and relational rupture. The application of the model moves between fostering internal attachment work and doing relational work between partners.   

Inviting the exploration of each partner’s individual’s inner life supports couples in envisioning a lively dance that includes: Communicating well; Repairing inevitable rupture; Making room for the needs of both individuals, as well as the relationship; and Exploring authentic heartfelt connection. 

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Toni Herbine-Blank, MS, RN, C-SP, is a Clinical Specialist Psychotherapist and Senior Trainer for the Center for Self Leadership.  Toni was trained in Family Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania where she earned both her RN and advanced practice degree in Psychiatric Nursing. She began training students in Internal Family Systems Therapy in 2004 and since has been instrumental in designing programs and writing curricula for Levels 1 and 2 IFS training programs.   

Toni has been in private practice since 1996 specializing in the treatment of couples and individuals. In 2009, after designing a training for IFS therapists to apply the model to couples therapy, Toni offered the first Intimacy from the Inside Out© Training Program in Boston, Massachusetts. Since then the program has been received with great enthusiasm across the United States.

Other interviews at: https://tinyurl.com/mrymdnn2 

From https://www.istdp.com:

Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) is a unique form of psychodynamic treatment that facilitates the rapid resolution of a broad spectrum of emotional disorders. It is an evidence-based psychotherapy that is strongly supported by current clinical research studies. ISTDP interventions are specifically designed to resolve anxiety, depression, somatization and personality disorders, as well as alleviate a variety of self-defeating behaviors, many of which derive from unstable or troubled early life attachments.  

ISTDP has common roots with classical psychoanalysis aimed at treating patients with psychoneurosis (environmentally acquired mental illness). Both treatments focus on unconscious mental processes (perceptions, past events, feelings about events, and distorted beliefs) as the cause of neurotic disorders. What distinguishes practitioners of ISTDP is that we believe that psychological treatment should be both:

 Comprehensive and efficient-- (usually under 40 hours) to remove symptoms and/or change character traits when necessary  

- and - 

Findings of clinical improvement must be confirmed by scientifically designed studies that demonstrate that the above changes occur and that they are long lasting, and finally, that treated patients continue to improve even after termination.  

To accomplish the above goals, the ISTDP therapist is an active advocate of change rather than a neutral observer as in traditional analysis. The attitude of the ISTDP therapist is that the patient's time is irreplaceable and comprehensive change is possible in a reasonable, cost-effective time frame.  

In ISTDP, experience of core emotion from the past is seen as the transformative vehicle and the therapist relies on non-interpretive techniques: encouragement to feel; challenge to take responsibility to change; and confrontation of resistance to change.  

ISTDP therapists ask patients to address the historical roots of their difficulty through highly focused attention on transference phenomenon or life events that activate defenses.  

ISTDP therapists strive to uncover repressed emotions or “complex feelings” about the past attachment failures. Many patients develop punitive self-structures to cope with these unresolved emotions during their development. ISTDP, as taught by this faculty, actively addresses the existence of these punitive structures beginning with the first interview. 

ISTDP treatment is usually video recorded to facilitate supervision (senior, peer and self), consultation, and research into the process of dynamic psychotherapy.

Vincent Ryan, Integrative Psychotherapist (IACP, Cork, Ireland) interviews David Grand, Ph.D., founder of the Brainspotting Method.  

They cover aspects of Brainspotting including The Uncertainty principle, Complete Openness, the Dual Attunement Frame, Brainspotting’s grounding in EMDR and Somatic Experiencing, Gazespotting (spontaneous spotting), and more!

In this 4th interview of the IEP series, Vincent Ryan, Integrative Psychotherapist (IACP), Cork, Ireland, interviews James Alexander, Ph.D., Lismore, Australia, about how he uses EMDR to activate Memory Reconsolidation in the treatment of trauma and the publication of his recently published book: “Tendrils of Trauma”.  

James Alexander decided to become a psychologist within two years being nearly killed by a drunk driver in a car accident as an 18 year old- his motivation was to help similarly traumatised people. He initially trained in counselling psychology, and later obtained a PhD in clinical health psychology, and has been practicing as a psychologist for more than 30 years. He is the author of three books:- The Hidden Psychology of Pain: the use of understanding to heal chronic pain; Getting the Zs You Want; sleep sense in the 21st century; and just released, Tendrils of Trauma; leaving home in 1981. The third of these is a phenomenological case study of trauma and its on-gong reverberations across the course of James Alexander's adult life- a personal memoir, demonstrating  how traumatic experience can wrap itself around every aspect of one's life, interspersed with what science is currently telling us about recovery from trauma. One reviewer described it as "where Jack Karourak's On The Road meets Bessel van Der Kolk". He describes himself as primarily an EMDR practitioner, and continues working with psychological trauma and chronic pain in NSW, Australia.

Vincent Ryan, Integrative Pyschotherapist (IACP) interviews Tori Olds, Ph.D. on how she integrates AEDP, IFS, Coherence Therapy, Somatic Experiencing, PACT and other mindfulness-based experiential forms of therapy in her practice and in her trainings for therapy practitioners.    

Read about Tori's "Minding The Heart" training group for therapists here:  Minding the Heart is a weekly 14-session training group which focuses on topics such as mindfulness and interpersonal neurobiology, trauma work, attunement training, working with defenses and emotion, tracking the body, attachment in couples work, and relinquishing shame. Sydnor and I draw on our training in AEDP, Somatic Experiencing, SCT, Tatkin’s couples work (PACT), and object relations theory. The meetings are didactic a well as experiential, with discussion, demonstrations, and case consultation. Tori and Sydnor will be beginning another group in the Spring. If you are interested in training with us, please feel free to contact me.