4-Part Series: Dissolve Shame and Defense – Susan Warshow

Therapists often wonder how theory translates into practice. In this 4-part webinar series, shame expert Susan Warren Warshow explores familiar and formidable challenges as they present themselves in recorded sessions with real clients. She discusses and demonstrates her “shame-sensitive” approach to transcending the significant barriers to therapeutic healing, namely Shame, Anxiety, Guilt, and Self-protective Strategies (SAGSS). The therapist’s recognition of these obstacles does little good unless the client shares this awareness. This transformative approach allows clients to see how their trauma-based conflicts undermine their goals and create their symptoms, bringing unconscious material to consciousness.

Risks of misalliances exist without a therapeutic transfer of compassion for the suffering caused by unconscious processes. This focused compassion generated by the therapist often transfers to the client through mutual exploration. Many clients resist self caring but compassion for self frequently mobilizes substantive change in the client’s relationship with oneself and others. The “Healing Triad” will be explored in depth, involving Awareness of the barriers to healing, the Therapeutic Transfer of Compassion for Self, and the Will to feel and connect in new ways. Read More

Module 1

Module One: Igniting a Partnership for Change

Clients often hold magical ideas about the powers of the therapist to cure and have little awareness of their role in the healing process. Consequently, therapy proceeds without an informed agreement about where we are heading or how we plan to arrive. Yet such a vision increases confidence in the therapeutic endeavor and promotes more realistic expectations that change comes about through a working therapeutic partnership.

This presentation will highlight the vital elements of a durable and transformational therapeutic alliance. The presenter will use recorded session material to demonstrate and teach how to co-create a sturdy foundation for profound therapeutic work.

Learning Objectives:

Demonstrate how to bring clarity and dynamism to the therapeutic alliance
Describe how to orient the client toward unconscious feelings
Explain the significance of seeking agreement on the path to healing

Module 2

Module Two: Transcending Shame

Shame hides in the shadows and blocks an intimate connection, which is especially problematic when we try to get to the root of a problem in psychotherapy. Shame can be a trickster with many masks, and the therapist who can recognize its presence and help the client dissolve shame with compassion can provide significant relief and freedom. Unfortunately, shame can invade either the client or therapist at any moment and inhibit the risk-taking that is necessary to spark change. Sometimes therapists hold back from making vital observations or suggestions due to the anticipation of resistance or failure. Similarly, clients may assume the therapist will react with disgust or rejection if they reveal themselves. Yet if both partners can’t talk about what’s difficult and get beyond inhibitions, we lose precious opportunities. In this presentation, therapists will learn how to employ the powerful elements of the Healing Triad to undo shame and other common barriers to emotional intimacy.

Learning Objectives:

Learn how to practice with shame-sensitivity in all interventions
Describe the Healing Triad to work with shame and other treatment barriers
Explain the Therapeutic Transfer of Compassion for Self

Module 3

Module Three: Disarming Defenses DEFTly

A client’s resistance to self-exposure and change can trigger the therapist’s defenses and make it harder to feel compassion and respond with “shame sensitivity.” Yet these qualities are central to meaningful defense work. For example, a colleague had referred a depressed man who had been unable to “feel his feelings” after several years of therapy. He believed himself incapable of experiencing emotions, and his detachment had led to a divorce and distant family relationships. Since early childhood, unconscious self-protective strategies dominated his personality and drove him to hopelessness. This presentation will demonstrate how to create sufficient safety, self-compassion, and clarity about crippling shame and defensive strategies, which awakened the will to take emotional risks never attempted before. He had been suffering under the illusion that his therapist and others had expectations of him that he couldn’t fulfill, projecting his judgments and desires onto others. Reclaiming his will to live authentically and emotionally free gave birth to a new hopefulness.

Learning Objectives:

Learn to unlock hidden motivation that would propel change
Discuss and show how to encourage underlying feelings
Recognize the power of will to usher in a new freedom

Module 4

Module Four: When Feelings Frozen by Trauma Emerge

Both therapists and their clients can feel intimidated by primitive emotional states that rise to the surface. Yet, these moments provide rich opportunities for growth and integration. Learning to work with intense unconscious feelings once they break free from the inhibitors of anxiety and shame takes time, preparation, and patience with oneself. Such a journey requires bravery, self-compassion, and a lot of support. This presentation provides guiding principles that facilitate this challenging and life-changing process. This presentation will show how to work with complex feelings of rage, guilt, grief, and love, opening the doorway to a more “coherent life narrative,” de-repression of memories, and a new experience of attachment in a relationship.

Learning Objectives:

Demonstrate how to invite avoided feelings
Recognize the transformational power of experiencing complex feelings
Explain a mutual process of finding meaning in emotions

About Susan

Susan Warren Warshow is the founder of the Dynamic Emotion Focused Therapy (DEFT) Institute, which produces a monthly training program, webinar series and special events. She is the author of Master the Moment: A Therapist’s Handbook to Dissolve Shame and Defense and is under contract with Routledge for her second book, The Practice of Dynamic Emotion Focused Therapy: A Shame Sensitive Workbook. She is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Board Certified Diplomate, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She is a faculty member of the ISTDP Institute and a Certified IEDTA Teacher/Supervisor. She has published several articles in professional journals. She has a private practice treating individuals and couples and offers clinical supervision.

She presents at conferences and workshops nationally and internationally (IEDTA, California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, the Brief Therapy Conference, the LA County Psychological Association and the National Association of Social Workers). She has been a guest lecturer at several California universities and professional schools. Formerly, she was a supervisor and Coordinator of Continuing Education at the Department of Psychiatry at Northridge Hospital. She produced over 100 public presentations on child abuse and neglect in L.A. County and was media director for L.A.’s first child abuse hotline.

CPD/CE

CPD / CE / NBCC Credits: 5 for the entire series

Module 1 / 2 / 3: 1 credit

Module 4: 2 credits

How do I receive these credits?

The participant must pass the multiple-choice test with a minimum score of 80%. There is a maximum of three attempts to achieve this.

The post-test is included in the price of the training.

Does my regulatory body accept the credits?

The CPD & CE credits awarded can be used towards your declaration to any governing regulatory body in your state or country, provided the content is relevant to your discipline.

This module course is accredited by:

– The CPD Group, London
– Australian Counselling Association
– National Board of Certified Counselors (NBCC)