Dorijan Burčul - ISTDP practitioner

"What can we do when the therapist's countertransference interferes with the development of a therapeutic alliance? This presentation will show how to identify countertransference issues interfering with the alliance. Then a video of supervision will show the kinds of questions we can ask to help the therapist see the countertransference and understand the transference roles being enacted. Then, the video will show how to help the therapist see the feelings that the countertransference is warding off. In particular, the video will illustrate how metacognitive questions can help the student see and reflect on her countertransference, thus improving the therapeutic alliance. And then we will see in the video how metacognitive questions can help us assess what the student is learning and not learning, so we can refine our supervisory interventions. Then, we will see how attention to the supervisory alliance models for the therapist how to attend to the therapeutic alliance."

Looking forward to learning with Karen Dinsmore and Annette Kalbfleisch on Activating the UTA.

They write: "Resistance and the Unconscious Therapeutic Alliance (UTA) are two intrapsychic factors that are constantly monitored and worked with in Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP). Whereas resistance prevents emotional closeness and healing, the UTA is the manifestation of a patient’s desire for health and healing. These two factors can manifest differently during different stages of treatment and as such requires the therapist to use different interventions to facilitate the UTA to overcome the resistance. This panel will review how to overcome resistance by activating, recognizing, and working with the UTA during different phases of treatment with patients with character resistance."

We can't wait to see you all in November 🌅🏄🏼‍♂️

Just arrived 😁🥳

"Building an alliance is a primary consideration in determining the potential for therapeutic success. This presentation will show 53 minutes of a trial therapy session with a man who fails to identify a personal problem and compliantly arrives at the session at the insistence of his wife and their couple’s therapist. He presents as a highly syntonic man who lacks awareness of internal feelings and conflict, including underlying distress about the pain he has experienced in relationship to various significant figures in his life. This audio-video presentation will highlight work with syntonic defense, creating an intrapsychic crisis where he turns against long-standing, deeply ingrained defenses, facilitating a breakthrough into grief-laden emotions that now bring about a conscious willingness to engage with the therapist in a deeply meaningful way.

Learning goals will include a brief review of the nature of syntonic defense, the essential role of deactivation of the transference and defiance, and the critical phase of intrapsychic conflict, during which we see a turning against entrenched characterological defenses that have served to protect him from the pain of viewing himself as someone unimportant in the eyes of others."

Don't miss this and other great presentations at the 2024 IEDTA International Conference!

www.iedta2024.com

Are you new to EDT's? Consider attending this talk with Steven Shapiro and Ryan Shackelford, who will be presenting on EDT's for beginners 😌 👏

"This workshop will review EDT fundamental principles for beginners, presented by Dr. Steve Shapiro. As such, we will accommodate a variety of therapy orientations by using transtheoretical training aids that operationalize, simplify and demystify some of the complex EDT/ISTDP concepts (i.e., Fork in the Road, Traffic Cop, Highlight & Invite, Reflect, Connect & Detect). Emphasis will be placed on defense clarification & capacity building, as well as the relative importance of experiential learning to avoid misconceptions that uninitiated therapists often develop when viewing overwhelming and intimidating, dramatic emotional breakthroughs only. In such a limited time frame, we will aim to offer an introduction that encourages further study.

One special aspect will be a brief presentation from Dr Ryan Shackleford, a psychiatrist, who is eager to represent his transformation from authoritarian physician to collaborative therapist. He will highlight his journey of learning to attend to the process, stay neutral, make the therapeutic task explicit, detail sequencing, attune to the front, note the underlying healthy aspect emerging (UTA) using a collaborative, contingent and attuned stance."

Excited to see you all in San Diego! 🌊🏄‍♂️

We're eager to learn from Joel Town, who will be presenting the alliance-rupture repair process with a resistant patient. Joel writes: "Ruptures in the therapeutic alliance may lead to negative treatment outcomes and patient drop out if not repaired. However, some research suggests that alliance rupture and repair processes may predict positive treatment outcomes. Ruptures have been described as observable patient behaviour whereby they “confront” or “withdraw” from their therapist. According to ISTDP meta-psychology, patients classified as “resistant”, will by definition exhibit such rupture markers when encouraged and challenged to openly discuss and experience feelings in therapy. Rather than a clinical scenario that should be avoided, ISTDP theory describes how resistance should be searched for and welcomed. This presentation will consider how these phenomena in “resistant” patients can be conceptualized and worked with in the ISTDP treatment frame. Extended case material will be shown to illustrate how an evolving sequence of in-session rupture markers manifest alongside signs of a strengthening unconscious therapeutic alliance. The breakdown in characteristic patterns of patient avoidance result in the unlocking of the unconscious, characterised by a deepening of therapeutic rapport and patient insight. As part of this presentation, I plan to have a discussant with expertise in alliance rupture-repair theory provide commentary from a transtheoretical perspective on the clinical process."

IEDTA 2024 is only 10 weeks away! We're getting excited - register now for an incredible learning experience. www.iedta2024.com

Did you know we are using an app called Whova for our conference? If you are attending, download the app now and start engaging with other attendees and our speakers! You can connect with other attendees, ask questions of speakers, plan meetups, and more!
https://whova.com/portal/webapp/iedta_202411/

Anticipating a powerful session with Dion Nowoweiski at the IEDTA 2024 conference! Dion will be presenting on 'Eating Disorders and EDT's' - we highly recommend attending for those working with fragile and traumatized patients. 👏

Dion writes:

"This presentation will aim to illustrate the clinical application and adaptations of EDTs useful in treating people with "Eating Disorders" including "Severe and Enduring" cases (i.e., treatment resistant eating disorders). Strategies needed to help build a conscious and unconscious therapeutic alliance will be presented and examples from the presenters own clinical practice will be used to demonstrate how to develop shared treatment goals that are not forced upon the patient by the clinician, but are also realistic and worthwhile outcomes will be highlighted. This presentation will also highlight some of the additional difficulties related to past treatment experiences that can contaminate the therapeutic space prior to beginning EDT treatment due to past treatment efforts that have aimed to achieve behavioural change without consideration of the individuals psychological capacity tol tolerate the anxiety associated with thsoe changes. The learning goals are designed to help the audience feel more confident to use EDTs with this population, to identify the manner in which motivation to change may be impacted by factors such as anxiety tolerance or fragility and to learn more specific EDT techniques that can be important for undoing projections and iatrogenically created defiance. This presentation will expand on the theories described in a paper published in 2020."

Looking forward to seeing many of you there! 🌅

For more information and to register, visit www.iedta2024.com

We're excited to learn from Tami Chelew, current President of the IEDTA, at the IEDTA 2024 conference. Tami will be offering two presentations showcasing her work with couples. On 'A Spiritual Awakening Through Unlocking of the Unconscious', Tami writes:

"Within the depths of every person resides an inherent healing force, the Unconscious Therapeutic Alliance, eager to liberate one from lifelong sabotaging patterns and painful, buried feelings and experiences.

This clinical presentation showcases a bright 42-year-old man facing an internal crisis, marked by treatment-resistant depression, manic symptoms, smooth muscle anxiety, cognitive perceptual disruption, and a pronounced self-punitive system. Building upon Davanloo's discoveries, this presentation underscores the internal crisis as a pivotal trigger for awakening and mobilizing the unconscious, compelling this patientl to confront what he vowed that he would take to his grave.

Fueled by both his internal crisis and his adaptive will to face his deepest shame, the Unconscious Therapeutic Alliance (UTA) begins exhibiting early signs during the therapeutic process. These manifestations include past and current relational links, vivid memories, metaphors, whispers of the Alliance, and negations at heightened complex transference feelings, facilitating an extended breakthrough of the unlocking of his unconscious.

As we follow his UTA, enabling a profound resolution of buried and repressed painful guilt-laden emotions leads to a potent spiritual awakening. The spiritual awakening was the conduit to lift the neurosis of life-long suffering and shame, freeing him to feel loved and loveable at his core. This allowed greater working through to solidify deep and lasting character change and restoration in his life. He began charting a new course of intergenerational trauma being stopped and his marriage and family restored back to love and stability. A truly remarkable personal Heroes Journey with his own UTA at the helm to heal to his life."