Lectures at The Centre for Child Mental Health 2006

Lectures

Our lectures offer a rich sampling of some of the most up-to-date research and theory alongside innovative techniques and ways of working with troubled children. With each lecture there will be a chance for participants to ask questions. Also questions can be sent in by email ahead of the lecture. Some of the lectures include a practical hands-on component. We feel sure that participants will go away moved, intellectually stimulated, and buzzing with new ideas.

Tuesday 11 March 2008 (9.30-1.15pm). Cost: £60
Working with Transference and Counterstransference with Children and Young People

It is very common for the troubled child to ‘transfer’ onto the therapist unbearable feelings they are experiencing in their life. Carla age five, screws up her face at you and says "You smell horrible and you’ve got bad breath!" Dennis age ten, whose father is dying of throat cancer, shouts at you "You have killed my Daddy", kicks over the furniture, and storms out of the room. After Tracey leaves, you realise she has done a little poo behind your sofa in the hide and seek game. Serena, age 13, says to you, "You’re quite mad you know, people will never tell you, but I’ve seen them talking behind your back, you’re really not liked you know". Without appropriate training in knowing how to handle such negative transference, a child professional can be left bewildered, in pain and stressed out. If she is not careful she will simply become defensive or critical, rather than realising that transference is a powerful form of communication.

For some children, transference may be the only way they can communicate their stories of distress (Valent, 1999). There is often an entire story contained in transference statement made by the child. If we dodge it, we throw away a vital road to the child’s inner world and the opportunity to work through a trauma or loss. As a consequence, the child’s unmanageable feelings remain unmanageable. If such negative relational experiences remain unworked through, they are usually re-staged, causing misery to self or others.

This lecture will show how child professionals can work with transference and countertransference, so that a child’s painful feelings can be modified. Delegates will learn how to regulate their own feelings in the face of negative transference so that they are able to make empathic interventions. Powerful case material will be presented where working with the transference was crucial to the healing process.

Benefits from attending this lecture

Learn about the phenomenon that when a child can’t cope with a feeling they try to get rid of it and so you can end up feeling it
Learn how to manage and think about the raw painful feelings that are evoked in you when you work with certain children
Learn how a child’s trauma can come up in the transference
Learn how to stay with a child’s pain, rather than trying to protect yourself from it

Lecturers: Ellie Baker and Dr Margot Sunderland
Ellie Baker: Registered Integrative Child Psychotherapist, Trainer in Integrative Child Psychotherapy and Parent-Child Therapy (IATE, London). Consultant and Trainer in Parenting and Communication Skills. Founder of HeartSpace, Holistic, Education and Art Related Therapies
Dr Margot Sunderland: Director of Education and Training at The Centre for Child Mental Health, London. Registered UKCP Integrative Child Psychotherapist. Author: The Science of Parenting.

Tuesday 6 May 2008 (9.30-1.15pm). Cost: £60
Working with Children Locked in Rage and Hate: Key Theory and Intervention

Our walls are our wounds - the places where we feel we can't love any more. (Williamson, 1992: 95)

Through film, slide show and moving case material, this lecture will offer delegates the vital up-to-date psychological theory and brain science for understanding why children harden their hearts in this way, what kills off their kindness or deters them from developing it in the first place. In terms of hate, the lecturer will explore the psychology of bullying, emotional numbing or coldness, and how the capacity for empathy develops or fails to develop in a child. In terms of rage, the lecturer will explore the mechanisms by which a child's repeated rage state can become an actual personality trait, resulting in all manner of impulsive acts of lashing out or destroying, causing abject misery to those around them. The lecturer will then offer ways forward in terms of what to say and how to be, so that with effective intervention, children let go of life limiting ways of being in the world.

Benefits from attending this lecture

Feel empowered to work more effectively with children who are locked in rage or hate
Learn about creative ways to connect with and engage these children
Understand the psychology and brain science which underpin these intense feeling states
Take away key tools and techniques
Hear case examples of how children have successfully moved on to find a warmer, kinder world

Lecturer: Dr Margot Sunderland. Director of Education and Training at The Centre for Child Mental Health, London. Registered UKCP Integrative Child Psychotherapist. Author: The Science of Parenting.

Tuesday 3 June 2008 (9.30-1.15pm). Cost: £60
The Frightened, Anxious, Worried Child: Key Theory and Intervention

Through film, slide show and moving case material, this lecture will offer delegates the vital up to date psychological theory and brain science for understanding why some children suffer from debilitating states of fear and anxiety. Phobias, obsessions, shyness, separation anxiety, and constant worrying will all be explained within the framework of the gene-environment interplay. The lecturers will then offer actual interventions and ways forward to enable these children to develop a new found calm, confidence, resilience and capacity for effective stress regulation.

Benefits from attending this lecture

Inform your work with anxious and frightened children, by understanding the psychology of phobias, obsessions, panic attack, separation anxiety
Learn about the psychological needs of these children, so that they can move on in their lives
Take away key tools and techniques to connect with and engage these children