What do I do now? When we feel resentful, bored, envious, or powerless in sessions

There are two important things we don’t learn enough about in our training:

• How patients really behave in session
• How we actually feel in session

And so more than we like or expect, we find ourselves not knowing what to do in session—while feeling resentful, bored, envious, confused, or powerless.

Most of us are simply unprepared for real life in the clinical trenches.

Rather than being surprised when this happens, we should expect it. And so this webinar explores why these feelings and experiences are not only not anomalous, they’re actually baked into psychotherapy and couples counseling—regardless of anyone’s therapeutic orientation. We’ll look at the architecture of the therapeutic relationship, which provides clues about what to do when we don’t know what to do.

In this webinar, we’ll talk about the things most therapists don’t discuss with each other: resenting patients who don’t follow the rules, feeling envious about patients’ financial or sexual success, wanting more credit from patients for our amazing insights, getting frustrated with patients who respond “yes, but…” just when we think we’re making progress. And yes, occasionally falling asleep in session for a second (surely I’m not the only one!).

We’ll discuss approaches that include wrestling with our own boundaries; having really clear therapeutic goals (which many patients will challenge); using self-disclosure as a powerful tool; predicting that couples will gang up on us; and sharpening our skills at identifying, challenging, and reframing patients’ narratives.

You will leave this webinar better able to understand and respond to patients’ unexpected behavior in session, and better able to understand and respond to your own unexpected or unwanted feelings in session.

Target audience: This course is appropriate for all mental health professionals