Conversations with Clinicians

Session 1: Which Regret Will You Choose? 

Faculty: Lucy Ball, BAHons & Carol Brockmon, MSW

Date: Friday, December 6, 2024

Sometimes our clients approach us with fear, horror, and even panic about a serious dilemma in their lives or relationships. The grief and disappointment they predict in making a choice among costly alternatives strikes them as unbearable. There is no fix for the truth that challenges in our lives may have consequences that are hard to bear-- so how do we help them come to terms with choosing a path and grieving the cost of the path chosen? We can bring such dilemmas to the session, share what we know and what we fear, and look at how to help our clients integrate the reality of costly choices; our own and our clients/client systems. We can all share our strategies and stuck points.

Session 2: Managing Biases and Distortions When Working with Couples

Faculty: Joseph Melnick, PhD

Date: Friday, January 3, 2025

To lose one's therapeutic balance when working with couples is a common occurrence. To find yourself distorting or favoring one or the other, (what we commonly call countertransference) is normal. In this session we will attend to how we lose focus in a couple’s session and how to return to a balanced, grounded stance in which we see the couple as a two-person system in which they are both responsible for what is happening between them.

Session 3: Let's Talk About Cultural Sensitivity: A Gestalt Approach to Working With Difference

Faculty: Stuart Simon, LICSW, MCC & Sharona Halpern, MA, LMHC

Date: Friday, February 7, 2025

Join us as we explore the experience of working with clients who come from cultural backgrounds which are similar to our own, and, the experience of working with clients who come from different backgrounds from our own. Is one easier for you than the other? If so, which one? How do you manage any projections you carry about the sameness or about the differences?

Session 4: Engaging Resistance When the Work Feels Difficult

Faculty: Stuart Simon, LICSW, MCC

Date: Friday, March 7, 2025

Often when therapists encounter resistance they see it as a problem to be solved or an issue to be resolved. From a Gestalt perspective, we look at resistance as opportunities for engagement, building awareness, and encouraging potential growth and development. In this session, we hope that participants will bring some examples of resistance from their practices for reflection and learning.