How people change

In this webinar Margot Sunderland describes a case with a young person who suffered from utterly debilitating anxieties, phobias, relationship problems and a range of other mental health issues. Margot walks you through the case from beginning to end, in order to illustrate some key evidence-based therapeutic models and theories on how people change. She makes specific reference to the following:  emotion focussed counselling (Leslie Greenberg) psychological formulation, mentalisation, mental state talk and The Power Threat Meaning Framework (British Psychological Society). Through the use of actual verbatim transcripts, art images and big empathy drawings, she demonstrates how these specific theoretical underpinnings are vital to inform effective therapeutic intervention leading to transformational change.

Viewers will learn how the young person was enabled to become aware of what he was feeling and to understand for the first time how his unprocessed painful past was entirely colouring his perception of the present. Viewers also will learn how he was enabled to access core emotions with the help of the arts. With the provision of corrective emotional experience, empathy, attunement, narrative competence and collaborative sense- making, views will understand how the young man not only became symptom free but also developed self- esteem, self- awareness, self- compassion and could finally love in peace instead of in torment.