Saturday Workshops

Workshop Session 2: 11.00 – 13.00

(choose 1 workshop from 8 available)

1. Lazy, Stupid and Disruptive

Examining the development of neurodivergent script beliefs in a neurotypical world

Beren Aldridge: TSTA / TTA / STA; Ronen Stilman: PTSTA

This workshop will offer a critique of TA theory as unwittingly pathologising and marginalising neurodiversity along with other inherent aspects of self, endowed since birth, such as sexual orientation, colour and race.

We‚ will share a TA model of self that moves away from pathologizing these inherent aspects of self, and share our ideas around how the self emerges through two relational processes: the I-I and the I-Other relationship.

We‚ will also explore the accommodations made by a neurodivergent person living in a neurotypical society; particularly three script decisions we categorise as lazy, stupid and disruptive, and consider their respective complimentary functions

Workshop outcomes:

Increased awareness of cultural biases in TA theory. Better understanding of how we can use TA to consider the experiences of neurodivergent people.

Biographies:

Beren Aldridge (CTA PTSTA) works in private practice in Kendal. He is a member of the teaching faculty at the TA Training Organisation in Leeds. He is very interested in the impact of culture and capitalism on our theories and on mental health. He co-chairs UKATA Training Accreditation and Standards Committee, chairs the TA Cumbria Conference and is a member of the Editorial Board of the Transactional Analysis Journal.

Ronen is a psychotherapist, supervisor and trainer, working with individuals, couples and practitioners in his Edinburgh centre practice and in Cyberspace. He has a keen interest in Humans and how they relate and identify in the context of culture, politics and society, integrating his background in technology and organisational change.

Level of prior experience required: Developing Level - Middle Years of Training

Focus: Education and Training;Counselling and Coaching;Psychotherapy and Clinical

Style: Didactic Teaching;Discussion and Small Group and Pairs work;Experiential Work

2. Three Drives Theory: Survival, Expression and Quiescence.

Balancing Needs & Existential Patterns - the work of Fanita English.

The especial relevance of Fanita English 3 Drives (Existential Pattern) theory today.

Helen Blackburn: CTA

This workshop will explore "Three Drives Theory" (English, 1992) and the integration of these in supporting clients, students, supervisees, colleagues and ourselves. This timeless theory challenges the rise in damaging, human-centric behaviours including addiction to social media, offering a potent reminder of the fundamentals of health and happiness.

Using self-reflection, small-group and paired work, we will focus on how balancing these Drives helps to heal trauma, supports a sense of belonging and reattachment to the world - and how we might align with a more embodied, neurologically-aware and ecological approach to life and physis.

Workshop outcomes:

I would like attendees to gain an insight into their personal ability to integrate and balance their three Drives, and how they can use this material in their work with other people. I would like them to arrive at a point of reflection on how this personal balance also connects them more harmoniously with the natural world around them, and to find a place of peace in that.

Biography:

Helen Blackburn is a CTA(P) in private practise in rural Wales since 2016. She also works for a local farming charity which provides free therapy to farmers in crisis. She has trained in Eco TA over the last three years and continues to develop her practise both indoors and outdoors in line with these principles. Whilst working towards PTSTA she is creating a woodland retreat space for group therapy and supervision. Helen has raised four children to adulthood, is a keen gardener, semi professional folk musician, and directs the annual village pantomime, which all help to balance her three Drives.

Level of prior experience required: None

Focus: Education and Training;Counselling and Coaching; Psychotherapy and Clinical; Organisational

Style: Discussion and Small Group and Pairs work; Experiential Work

3. Reflecting Change: Exploring Body-Image and Body Dysmorphic Disorder & evolving treatment in Transactional Analysis for a transforming tomorrow

Tracing the evolution of awareness, understanding, diagnosis, and integrated treatment strategies for Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) within Transactional Analysis Practice

Jem Gunn: TA Diploma (UKATA or RTE)

Step into an exploration of body-image/ appearance-related mental health disorders such as Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), and Eating Disorders (ED), and chart the course from historical roots to contemporary insights. Uncover how perceptions of self, have evolved across eras, fuelling the rise in appearance-related issues.

Delve into the intricate tapestry of awareness, understanding, and treatment approaches that have transformed over time, and how we navigate the ever-evolving landscape of change (i.e. post pandemic, and resultant technological advances) and its impact on individuals seeking therapeutic support.

Discover how TA can harmoniously embrace innovative therapeutic techniques to empower Clients in combating BDD & ED, fostering a collaborative journey toward healing and growth amidst changing times.

Workshop outcomes:

Greater awareness of Body Dysmorphic Disorder, ability to identify BDD behavioural cues in Clients, treatment approaches for Clients with BDD, BDD &ED, or BDD & OCD.

Biography:

Jem Gunn is the Clinical Director of the JEMGUNN Body-Image Therapy Centre (www.jemgunn.com). She is BACP registered, specialist body-image therapist and leading expert and awareness campaigner for Body Dysmorphic Disorder ('BDD').

She has trained extensively in transactional analysis (TA) & counselling, integrative psychotherapy and advanced psychopathology, cognitive behavioural therapy and exposure response prevention (CBT ERP), and Coaching.

Jem is a UKATA Board Trustee; BACP Communities of Practice Champion for Body-Image Therapy; and BAAT Trauma Special Interest Group ambassador. She continues to raise awareness on BDD, and speaks regularly in the press on body-image/ appearance-related issues & therapeutic treatment options.

Level of prior experience required: None

Focus: Education and Training; Counselling and Coaching; Psychotherapy and Clinical

Style: Discussion and Small Group and Pairs work; Experiential Work

4. Self Psychology a TA perspective

Self psychology 'Who we have been, who we are now, and who we will be tomorrow

Alan Jones: PTSTA

Using basic and well understood concepts of Transactional Analysis such as Ego States, Bernes concept of the moving self and Cathexis, this workshop looks at understanding from a theoretical perspective how peoples' thoughts feelings and behaviours can change dramatically over relatively short periods of time or in response to stimulus. The workshop looks at the mechanism behind;-

'Who we have been (5 Minutes ago), who we are now, and who we will be tomorrow (or in half an hour).

The workshop is based on many years of clinical practice using this model with clients.

Workshop outcomes:

An understanding of the dynamics of the interaction of ego states, cathexis and sense of self

Biography:

Alan Jones I have an MSc in Transactional Ananlysis with a Psychotherapy speciality from Middlesex University and I am a PTSTA(P) since 2015. I have an active psychotherapy practice, a large supervision practice including providing clinical supervision for a number of leading universities and I teach TA at a respected RTE in Paris that has strong links to the psychoanalytic field.

Participants will have a greater understanding of the usefulness of the theory and practice of Co Creative Transactional Analysis (CCTA) in working with trauma through experiential learning and discussion anchored in islands of theoretical ideas.

Level of prior experience required: Developing Level - Middle Years of Training

Focus: Counselling and Coaching;Psychotherapy and Clinical

Style: Didactic Teaching;Discussion and Small Group and Pairs work;Experiential Work

5. Joining ... the .... Dots ...

Changing our frame of reference to meet the therapeutic needs of neurodivergent clients

Cathie Long: TA Trainee registered with an RTE; Deborah Wortman: Other Professional Status

Over the past 20 years, there has been a rise in the prevalence of autism/attention-deficit-hyperactivity 'disorder' diagnoses, with others self-identifying. Hence, times are changing as we seek to embrace difference and work towards greater inclusiveness within Transactional Analysis.

This workshop offers TA practitioners the opportunity to understand and appreciate different ways of thinking and being, which could challenge their existing frame of reference. We will offer practical tools to help practitioners to connect with, support, and enable neurodivergent clients to be themselves by encouraging them to "think outside the box", and to potentially do things differently. .

Workshop outcomes:

To have a better understanding of neurodiversity and to appreciate the need to work more flexibly and creatively, because the only difference is difference.

Biographies:

Deborah Wortman has been a psychotherapist for 20 years, prior to that she was a Social Work Manager. Deborah is based in Halifax West Yorkshire and has worked as a specialist therapist with neurodivergent clients for 10 years. She runs Aspire Training Consultancy with her colleague Ruth Williams and provides Autism, ADHD and Couples training for therapists working with neurodivergent clients. Deborah is a clinical supervisor providing specialist supervision.

Cathie Long is a multi-award winning independent social worker and a Court expert witness for neurodivergent people of all ages. With an MA in Autism, Cathie is a qualified supervisor and trainer. Now in her final year of training in Transactional Analysis (P), Cathie offers psychotherapy for neurodivergent adults. As an autistic older adult with attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder,

Cathie has recently used her personal and professional experiences to bring together a team of experts to produce a series of training videos for primary care staff on working with and supporting the growing population of autistic older adults, with late-life diagnoses. Her latest research paper, co-authored with the UK's leading autism researchers, about supporting autistic adults in primary care has just been accepted for publication in the British Journal of General Practice.

Level of prior experience required: None

Focus: Counselling and Coaching; Psychotherapy and Clinical

Style: Didactic Teaching; Discussion and Small Group and Pairs work; Clinical Demonstration; Experiential Work

6. 50 Years on- The emergent face of our Global Personality

Expanding our Culture in the 'now'.

Divya Sharma: TA Diploma (UKATA or RTE)

Fifty years on, I invite you to re-visit Drego's (1983) diagram of 'Personality of Culture'. I would like to expand it beyond 'combined anthropological' view to include more recent 'critical' models for reviewing 'other' that have come from post-colonial thought and fields like literature, arts, sciences, computing and our surroundings.

Using 'self' as an instrument I give voice to the generation (s) that have grown between many worlds and account for those gossamer threads to update it to our 21st century global culture 'now'. The workshop promises to be transformative, collaborative following Berne's dream of social Psychiatry and social change.

Workshop outcomes:

To use this space to generate increased awareness, reflection, and gain sensitivity. The need for a change and for TA to be more inclusive and account for all differences to create global interconnectedness.

Biography:

Divya Sharma is a UKCP registered Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapist and a BACP registered counsellor. She is a British Asian based in Hampshire where she first arrived in 2005 from India. Her former career was in academics. She juggles many hats failing miserably to pause and reset like working towards her CTA, small private practice, volunteering, tutoring counselling skills at local college, being Hindi Translator for Online Events on their Radical Inclusion project, managing life whilst enjoying different flavours. She is passionate about the role of community and the way it shapes an individual and lets community drive her process.

Level of prior experience required: Advanced Level - Towards CTA and beyond

Focus: Education and Training; Counselling and Coaching; Psychotherapy and Clinical;Organisational

Style: Didactic Teaching; Discussion and Small Group and Pairs work; Clinical Demonstration; Experiential Work

7. Leadership and power in a co-created biodiverse environment

An invitation to discuss three seeds of thought: equality, non-defensiveness and ecological relating within our professional and personal lives.

Rosalind Sharples: TSTA / TTA / STA

What happens to a leader's potency when they remain non-defensive? How does questioning power structures affect member's sense of safety? And what occurs in the co-created psychological field (Summers and Summers 2017) when we welcome ecological relating?

As the leader, I am responsible for maintaining the group's major internal and external boundaries and co-creating group culture through transactions (Berne 1963/1966). Members feel secure with my presence and protection.

I'm curious about the nature of this boundary in relation to psychological distance. What happens when we challenge hierarchy and share power by opening doors to deeper relating with each other and ecological systems?

Collaborating with you, I'd like to expand on current TA thinking regarding group dynamics, co-creativity and ecology.

Workshop outcomes:

Participants will reflect on power dynamics, co-creative principles, and their integration with Eco TA. The learning experience will embody these values.

Biography:

Rosalind is the director of Transactional Analysis Cymru, a training centre at the heart of Tycanol Woods in West Wales. The land holds the buildings and people, as the weather beats against the physical boundary of this learning environment. We are blessed to work with humans, non-humans and other beings to discover ways of co-creating. Rosalind, together with trainees and graduates is exploring how to lead with potency while maintaining a light touch.
Recently, the words that guide her approach are "opportunity," "curiosity" and "compassion".

Level of prior experience required: Advanced Level - Towards CTA and beyond

Focus: Education and Training; Counselling and Coaching; Psychotherapy and Clinical; Organisational

Style: Discussion and Small Group and Pairs work; Experiential Work

8. It's not all Black and white

Script, culture, identity and the foster care experience

Amanda Wilson: TA Trainee registered with an RTE

TA speaks a lot about the way in which our childhood experiences influence the decisions we make as adults; The influences of main caregivers on our life script, the frames of reference we draw on and the injunctions that hinder our I'm OK You're OK Life Position.

But what happens when you move from living with a foster family to living with your biological family where not only are the values different, but the ethnicities are different too. How do these changes and the ensuing experiences impact the way in which we perceive our identity, our understanding of culture, our sense of belonging and the way in which we make sense of the world around us?

Workshop outcomes:

Put identity and culture under the microscope and identify some of the challenges faced by those who have experienced long-term cross-ethnicity foster care.

Biography:

Amanda Wilson is a headteacher with over 20 years experience in education. She has a Masters degree in Coaching and Mentoring Practice and recently published the book Letters to a Young Generation: Aspiring School Leaders, which was featured multiple publications, including The Guardian.

Amanda is the only child of a Ghanian father and Jamaican mother and like many Black children of immigrant parents in who grew up in the UK in the 70s, spent most of her formative years in private foster care with an English family in west Sussex before moving back to London to live with her biological parents in London.

Amanda is currently partway through the Stage 2a component of her TA Psychotherapy training, studying at Connexus Institute in Hove, which is a mere stones throw away from her childhood home. Coincidence or Script?

Level of prior experience required: Early Level - TA101, Foundation, Year 1

Focus: Counselling and Coaching; Psychotherapy and Clinical

Style: Discussion and Small Group and Pairs work; Experiential Work

Workshop Session 3: 14.00 – 17.00

(choose 1 workshop from 7 available)

1. Miscommunication and misunderstanding - a resource for growth and healing?

How do we make ourselves ready to be mutually inconvenienced by each other to benefit our work together?

Chdel Cooke, Kate Shaw, Sarah Lowes, Sue Ashby, Cathie Long: TA Diploma (UKATA or RTE)

This experiential workshop explores how to embrace miscommunication in our work across all four fields of TA. It will use our personal experience - being both neurotypical and neuro-divergent - of working together in the professional space.

We will explore how we can all (both facilitator and client) create a safe space where to be misunderstood leads to understanding, not shame or marginalisation, to inclusion and the permission to be vulnerable.

As the founder members of Double Empathy - where we believe the only difference is difference - communication is the enabler- an ongoing process of conversations, awareness raising, teaching, and learning through communication and miscommunication.

Workshop outcomes:

We hope to begin a conversation between the four fields of TA, which will continue beyond the conference, about vulnerability, inclusion and a willingness to explore what difference means to ourselves and others in both our professional application and our training experience.

Our conversation 'primers' will include:

- Whether we identify as Neuro Divergent or Neuro Typical, how do we communicate to ensure it is inclusive of everyone?
- How do we make ourselves ready to be mutually inconvenienced by each other to benefit our work together?

The TA community embrace having an OK-OK attitude as a bedrock belief and principle.

- How do we account for changing societal needs and enable TA to be accessible, responsive, and relevant across the four fields?
- How is this experienced in our training, assessment, and exam experience?

The Conference title 'Who we have been, who we are now, and who we will be tomorrow - Changing Times in Transactional Analysis - names the need for reflective consideration of best practice and personal and professional growth.

We aim:

- to make the grown-up experience of education/training a healing one by creating an environment that invites participants to bring their expertise, successes and concerns about working with ND and NT clients.
- for each delegate to fully experience progression towards inclusivity under the lens of Neuro-Divergence/Typicality.
- to explore the challenges that go with this work and consider creative ways to overcome them.
- to demonstrate that authentic communication enables us to kickstart conversations that break through discomfort to connection.

We will explore the TA concepts and models we as practitioners use in our everyday professional context, organisational, educational, counselling or psychotherapy - that support this work.
- Using contracting: how do we contract for difference in the room?

- Using the Life Position: I+U+ in all transactions
- Using the Winners Triangle to step off the Drama Triangle
- Using the Functional Fluency Model to focus on effective behaviours to respond rather than react.

Biographies:

Kate Shaw: neurotypical woman, Business and Functional Fluency Coach, mentor at the Prince Trust, and Human Resources advisor. Educational TA Eco TA, a lover of nature and being in community.

Sue Ashby: neurotypical woman, a CTA Psychotherapist, Functional Fluency International Supervisor & TIFF Provider, published poet and playwright based in Dorset with a special interest in Trauma & Neurodiversity.

Cathie Long: Functional Fluency & TIFF provider, Psychotherapist in Advanced Clinical Training, Autism researcher, Author, Expert Witness, Wild Swimmer, and Neurodivergent.

Sarah Lowes: neurotypical woman, trained actress, self-employed executive and Functional Fluency/TIFF coach, development facilitator in businesses, diploma in Organisational TA, CTA in Educational TA, loves working co-creatively, singing and storytelling.

Chdel Cooke: neurodiverse woman working towards CTA in psychotherapy, PG Dip. in TA Counselling, in private practice. Loves working creatively in indoor and outdoor therapy and is a storyteller, fiction writer, and Nordic walker.

Level of prior experience required: Developing Level - Middle Years of Training

Focus: Education and Training; Counselling and Coaching; Psychotherapy and Clinical; Organisational

Style: Experiential Work

2. Being in groups

Personal change via social action.

Jim Davis: TSTA / TTA / STA

This workshop is inspired by Pearl Drego's call for Transactional Analysts to come out of our 'psychic closets' and involve ourselves in social movements for change. Our dominant culture is increasingly marked by a retreat into individualism and social isolation, and as we move out of Covid social distancing there is a need for the regeneration of coming together, the prizing of belonging and a recovery of collective life. In this experiential workshop we will reflect on and explore our experiences of being in groups (including this one) and how we can cultivate our ability to engage more fully in group life.

Workshop outcomes:

As a group, to explore and share experiences of being in groups with a view to cultivating our capacity to engage more fully in group life.

Biography:

I've been a member and facilitator of a wide range of groups all my life - including my family, in political action and, in the last 30 years in therapy, supervision, training, conference workshops, peer groups, committees, and mens groups etc. I have increasingly come to believe that it is particularly within group environments that personal learning and change takes place, and where connections between personal change and social action are made.

Level of prior experience required: None

Focus: Education and Training; Counselling and Coaching; Psychotherapy and Clinical; Organisational

Style: Discussion and Small Group and Pairs work; Experiential Work

3. Working Co Creatively with Trauma

Making use of the co-creative principles to facilitate co-regulation, empowerment and a co-loosening of the bonds of trauma.

Bev Gibbons: TSTA-P; Berit Fahlén: PTSTA-P

Our understanding of the nature, psychology and physiology of trauma is ever expanding, giving us much deeper insight to its structure and development. At the same time ways of working to heal trauma and manage its legacy are developing too, giving us a range of ideas to support our approach in this complex and crucial area of work.

In our workshop we will present and explore the usefulness of Co-Creative Transactional Analysis (CCTA) in working with trauma, offering ideas as a contribution to this developing field.

The foundational pillars of CCTA : We-ness, Present Centred Relating and Shared Responsibility, along with the Integrating Adult and Dynamic Ego States ideas provide a wonderful theoretical frame and powerful way of working that draws on co-regulation, co-construction of meaning and cocreation of a way through the blocks that trauma can lead to.

Join us for an experiential workshop anchored in islands of theoretical ideas.

Workshop outcomes:

Biographies:

Berit Fahlen
The more I learn the more I understand how little I know. I like to explore the intersubjective space in a ‚ÄùI ‚Äì You‚Äù way inspired by Martin Buber. To connect in a deep way and together create new narratives to challenge and expand the script.

My passion is to meet and see clients, trainees, colleagues and people I meet in supervision in the place they are for the moment. And together find ways through difficulties.

I'm a PTSTA in psychotherapy and I am a partner in The Scandinavian institute for Transactional analysis, SITA. SITA provides TA supervision and training. In my private practise I meet clients. I am as well a former owner of a therapeutic community that worked with children and teenagers with severe psychiatric problems.

Bev Gibbons
I am a TSTA (Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst) in the field of psychotherapy. I live and work in North Yorkshire, in the UK, as a trainer, supervisor and psychotherapist

My particular interests are in co-creativity and intersubjectivity and the challenges in finding and holding this place. I hold the question 'what am I/ are we up to?' in relation to power dynamics and oppressive practice. I am driven to look for the deep roots in any given process, and also to simplify and make clear complicated theory.

Level of prior experience required: Developing Level - Middle Years of Training

Focus: Education and Training;Counselling and Coaching;Psychotherapy and Clinical

Style: Didactic Teaching;Discussion and Small Group and Pairs work;Experiential Work

4. Grief Tending in changing times

Tending to the well-being of our TA community

Joanna Groves: CTA

Grief tending creates space for the losses, stuckness and sadness that touches our daily lives. In community, tending to grief helps to access inspiration, healing and hope that is needed for the healthiness and longevity of our practices, training organisations, and wider TA community.

Join us for an experiential brief introduction into grief tending, with a focus on changes at individual, relational, and community level. Drawing on the work of Francis Weller, we'll use the Gateways of Grief and EcoTA as a way of connecting to our essential being.

Workshop outcomes:

To learn and experience how tending to grief in your life and work spaces can help move through losses with a better sense of well-being. To learn how grief rituals can expand our capacity to feel love, vitality and joy.

Biography:

Joanna's work with couples and individuals, exploring the edges of loss and love in their life and relationships, led her to delving into the world of grief tending and grief rituals. After training in grief work and soul therapy in the US and UK since 2020, Joanna now integrates Grief Tending into her life and work. As well as a CTA (P), Joanna is a Certified Imago Therapist and Imago workshop co-presenter. She runs the Affinity Centre in Manchester.

Level of prior experience required: None

Focus: Education and Training; Counselling and Coaching; Psychotherapy and Clinical; Organisational

Style: Discussion and Small Group and Pairs work; Experiential Work

5. The (not so) long road to cultural change

Organisational perspectives

Nicole Lenner: TSTA

In my role as Business Consultant (Nicole) I've been supporting people in organisations, in fast changing environments to keep up with the necessary cultural changes for many years. I will share my experience and together explore our TA communities' needs for change in the face of an ever evolving fast moving world. I will bring together some of the main frame conditions of our today's world and our TA communities' facetted cultural script (also referring to Pearl Drego's cultural parent). Looking at various areas of possible change, I'll invite everyone to take away a piece of this rich kaleidoscope to embed in their being part of the change they want to see in the world.

Workshop outcomes:

- Knowledge about organisational scripting
- Ideas on how to invite and facilitate cultural change
- Reflections on their possible contributions to potentially necessary change of culture in the TA world

Nicole is a freelance counsellor and coach based in Hamburg/Germany working with individuals and groups, supporting them to develop constructive, positive ways of relating with self and others. As a TSTA-C, Nicole runs TA training programs on all levels and supports CTA candidates internationally.

Her passion is to spread TA and to create the conditions where personal-professional development and deep learning of individuals and groups become reality. Her approach is informed by relational and co-creative TA, body psychology, neuroscience, and her spiritual practice.

Level of prior experience required: All levels welcome

Focus: Education and Training;Counselling and Coaching; Psychotherapy and Clinical; Organisational

Style: Discussion and Small Group and Pairs work; Experiential Work

6. The Role of Father

The Gravity of Saturn

John Paradise: PTSTA; CTA

Often overlooked in the TA canon, this workshop will examine the role of father in the psychic world. Drawing from a decade working with men in long term therapy, this workshop will explore the psychological wounding of men and their healing.

Through a TA, psychoanalytical and Jungian lens, we will explore:
- The role of the father in men's wounding
- How, if at all, we account for the father in TA.
- The unconscious role of the father in clinical work with men.

Workshop outcomes:

At the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:
- Understand the scale of the crisis in male mental health
- Explain what the term 'male wounding' means

- Recognise where male wounding may exist in their own relationships

- Describe the role of father in transition from boyhood to manhood
- Understand the influence of the father in the clinical setting

Biography:

John Paradise is a TA psychotherapist with a clinical and supervision practice in Devon. John has been working with men in long term therapy for more than a decade. Through his own wounding and experiences as a man, he has a keen interest in mens' mental health. John teaches at Iron Mill College and is an occasional tutor at Physis Scotland.

Level of prior experience required: Developing Level - Middle Years of Training

Focus: Education and Training; Counselling and Coaching; Psychotherapy and Clinical; Organisational

Style: Didactic Teaching; Discussion and Small Group and Pairs work; Experiential Work

7. Working with Adults who are attracted to Minors

How to work safely with non-offending pedophiles

Jacqueline van Oosterwijk: Other Professional Status

Of all the sexual orientations that exist, adults who are attracted to minors is possibly the most confronting and the most challenging to work with in the therapy room. Research shows that if this client group have offended (which is by no means always), almost without exception they have never spoken to anyone about their attraction. Meanwhile the suicide rate of people with these feelings is extremely high. If therapists can be open to support clients of this orientation, providing a space to talk about feelings in a safe and non-judgemental environment, we can help prevent abuse and save lives.

Workshop outcomes:

1. Awareness of the distinction between the sexual attraction to minors and child sexual abuse. 2. Understanding the basic therapeutic principles required for working with this client group.

3. knowledge of how to assess risk, work with risk and reporting requirements.

4. Tools to practice self-care when working with people who are attracted to minors.

Biography:

Jacqueline has been working as a psychotherapeutic counsellor in private practice since July 2010. She trained as a Transactional Analyst at the Metanoia Institute. Through her social media profile, she became more aware of the lack of safe psychological services for people with alternative sexualities like BDSM and paedophilia. She was invited to support the Belgium & Dutch self-help forum pedofilie.nl. From there she became attached with the English language forum VirPed.org, Stop It Now Netherlands and registered with the Association for Sexual Abuse Prevention. She has had training with UK-based StopSO and USA-based B4U-ACT.

Level of prior experience required: None

Focus: Psychotherapy and Clinical

Style: Didactic Teaching

UKA4TA

UK Association for

TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS