Advanced EFT Empathy Training Description:
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Therapist empathy is an essential but complex aspect of the practice of counselling
and psychotherapy and one of the best-evidenced and most consistent therapeutic
change processes. This two-day training on Advanced Empathic Attunement goes
beyond content empathy and basic empathic understanding responses by offering a
general framework for understanding the empathic process and mastering a wide
range of empathic responses. These responses underpin practice in Emotion(ally)-
Focused and Person-Centered-Experiential psychotherapy and counseling and offer
new possibilities for practice across a wide range of theoretical approaches,
including CBT, Psychodynamic and Family/Systemic therapies.
This workshop includes both theory and hands-on skill training combining attitudinal
and micro-skill training formats. It will begin with an integrative theoretical framework
for therapist empathy that brings together emotion-focused therapy theory, social
neuroscience, the empathy cycle, and the empathy channels model. Most of the
workshop will involve skill practice using your personal material, starting with the
classic Opening Channels of Receptivity exercise, and progressing through separate
modules on Evocative Empathy, Exploratory Empathy, Empathic Affirmation,
Process Empathy, and Empathic Conjecture. Each of these will be clearly described
and concretely illustrated by a video or live demonstration, followed by skill practice
and self-reflection.
Objectives:
1. Learn how to access and enhance your natural ability to empathically resonate
with clients.
2. Learn how to identify a range of EFT Empathy Responses within the Empathy
Channel framework.
3. Be able to tell the difference between Empathic Affirmation and Evocative
Empathy responses and successfully use both kinds of response.
4. Learn how to use Empathic Exploration responses to help clients explore their
unclear experiences.
5. Develop ability to use Process Empathy responses to help clients become more
aware of their in-session process and to deepen relational contact with clients.
6. Learn how use Empathic Conjectures to help clients deepen their experiencing
during chair work and at other times in session.​
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About the Presenter
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Robert Elliott, Ph.D., received his doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and taught clinical psychology at the University of Toledo (Ohio) for nearly 30 years; during that time, in collaboration with Leslie Greenberg and Laura Rice, he developed Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT). He currently spends half of his time in Scotland, where he is Professor of Counselling in the School of Psychological Sciences and Health at the University of Strathclyde and where he directs its research clinic and teaches counselling research and EFT. The rest of the time, he is based in Northern California, where he is busy with various EFT-related writing projects. His central interest is the change process in humanistic-experiential psychotherapies. He is co-author of Facilitating emotional change (1993), Learning process-experiential psychotherapy (2004), Research methods in clinical psychology (3rd ed., 2015), and Developing and Enhancing Research Capacity in Counselling and Psychotherapy (2010), as well as more than 150 journal articles and book chapters. He is past president of the Society for Psychotherapy Research, and previously co-edited the journals Psychotherapy Research, and Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies. He is a fellow in the divisions of Clinical Psychology, Psychotherapy, and Humanistic Psychology of the American Psychological Association. In 2009 he received the Distinguished Research Career Award of the Society for Psychotherapy Research, and the Carl Rogers Award from the Division of Humanistic Psychology of the American Psychological Association. He enjoys running, science fiction and all kinds of music.