Integrating the Self: Helping Clients Depolarize and Cultivate Self-compassion

Developed and Facilitated by Galia Schechter, PsyD, EHI Affiliate Instructor

This webinar is the seventh in EHI’s series of webinars on depolarization:
Depolarizing Our Minds, Our Hearts & Our Nation

When: Saturday, February 20th, 2021; 10am-1pm, Pacific Time

Where: Online via Zoom Meeting w/ Zoom Breakout Rooms

Cost: $35 General/Professional; $20 Student/Elder; Economic Hardship $10*
*We understand that COVID-19 has created economic stress for many, so if you are experiencing economic hardship due to COVID-19, the requested fee for webinars in this series is $10 (though no one will be turned away due to lack of funds-please contact Michelle for assistance at events@ehinstitute.org ).

Series Discount Available: Attend a workshop in this series and we will send you a code for $7.50 off your next series workshop registration.

3 CEs for live presentation*: $18.50

 

Integrating the Self: Helping Clients Depolarize and Cultivate Self-compassion

One of the greatest human paradoxes manifests in the way our deep longings for love, acceptance and belonging can actually lead us to suppress and contract against parts of our self that we feel might be “bad”, “unwelcome” and “not O.K”. And yet it is the process of self-judgment and contraction that unintentionally contribute to unnecessary human suffering in the forms of loneliness, existential emptiness and common alienation from self, others and even our planetary home.

Perhaps the greatest antidote and medicine to loneliness and alienation from self and others is the cultivation of deep experiences of self-compassion and awareness of common humanity. To authentically embody self-compassion is to awaken a direct knowing that our inner experiences, no matter how uncomfortable, scary, embarrassing or “dark”, relate to and reveal fundamental universal longings for love, belonging and freedom.

In this workshop, inspired by and based mainly on Process Experiential, Phenomenology, Humanistic-Existential and Mindfulness-based traditions, participants will learn how to help clients move from polarized, self-shaming and self-alienating states to states of self- and other-compassion. The benefits of these shifts include the emergence or deepening of authenticity, vitality, empathy, generosity and intra-psychic integration. Tapping also into Gestalt, Family Systems, Emotion- Focused and mind-body inquiry practices we will explore the following themes:

• Principles of conscious healing, including families of mindfulness practices
• Neo-Humanistic existential frameworks for understanding the ways we internalize a sense of the deficient self and contract against parts of the self, including brief discussion of Internal Family Systems (IFS), Process-Experiential Emotion Focused and Buddhist psychological frameworks
• How to identify and work with our own living processes of contraction and rejection of parts of self as a means to gain a deeper understanding of client processes
• How to identify and work with living processes for making contact with our own deep basic goodness and capacity to accept and integrate self toward congruence and wholeness
• Awareness of collective resonance around basic vulnerability and basic existential longings that are at the heart of contracted and transforming self

 

Our Presenter:

Dr. Galia Schechter is a licensed clinical psychologist and Buddhist practitioner. She has extensive training and experience in multiple mind-body modalities. Along with having been in private practice for 11 years, she has worked as a clinical director, a clinical supervisor, a clinical trainer and an organizational consultant.

Prior to getting her doctorate in clinical psychology from the Wright Institute and becoming a licensed psychologist, she received an MBA from Georgetown University and worked for organizations in the U.S. and abroad in governance, human rights and international development.

*CE Information for the Workshop

APA Division 32, Society for Humanistic Psychology is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. APA Division 32, Society for Humanistic Psychology maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

Accessibility: It is the policy of EHI to make every reasonable effort to provide attendees with disabilities with the opportunity to take full advantage of its programs. Please contact us ahead of time so we can work with you arrange programming to needs. Please contact our Admin, Michelle by via contact form or by phone at 415.689.1475 to make arrangements.

Workshop Cosponsors

Existential-Humanistic Institute (EHI) offers trainings, workshops and education in Existential-Humanistic approaches to psychotherapy. Formed in 1997, EHI continues to offer experiential training retreats, certificate programs, workshops, consultation groups, theory courses and community gatherings in the Bay Area with the goal of supporting existentially and humanistically informed psychologies and psychotherapies: approaches that focus on and nurture subjective experiential reflection of life’s deepest joys and predicaments.

APA Division 32, Society of Humanistic Psychology (SHP), is a proud cosponsor of CE credits for EHI events and trainings whenever CE credits are offered. Find out more about SHP and consider becoming a member here.