Sunday Workshops
Sunday Workshops
Workshop Session 4: 10.00 – 12.00
(choose 1 workshop from 9 available)
1. The Internal Saboteur
How to engage and interview the Internal Saboteur
Stefan Charidge
We all carry a multitude of internal saboteurs, each with its own script and intentions. This workshop offers a suitable language and set of interventions to explore the purpose and origin, with the aim of facilitating a recontacting process. This leans into Chair Work.
Clients may name a saboteur directly, or it may manifest as a physical sensation in or on the body. Through this workshop, we will learn to track, dialogue with, and ultimately transform the relationship with these inner messages and purpose, creating space for more integrated and conscious ways of being.
I accept all as they are.
Workshop outcomes:
Our saboteurs origins are creative adjustments and coping strategies.
Formative saboteurs are outdated strategies.
Our sbatours behaviour and messages start within our formative years.
A spacific languge to support the engagement and process.
How to re-contract with the saboteur.
Supporting the client in taking control and developing a health internal adult.
Presenter:
Stefan is a seasoned therapist, counselling supervisor, and international trainer with over 25 years of transformative experience. More than just a facilitator, Stefan is a mentor whose dynamic and experiential teaching style has impacted countless practitioners across diverse settings.
He began his journey as a Gestalt Counsellor in the late 1990s, going on to earn BACP accreditation and a formal qualification in supervision. His deep commitment to growth and creativity in therapeutic work has led him to explore a range of experiential methods. This journey reached a powerful milestone with his participation in an MKP (ManKind Project) weekend in Sopley, UK, in November 2022‚ an experience that continues to inform and enrich his work.
Level of prior experience required: Developing Level - Middle Years of Training
Focus: Education and Training;Counselling and Coaching;Psychotherapy and Clinical
Style: Experiential Work
2. Psychotherapy Across Languages
An Encounter in the Multilingual World
Hanna Konoplianyk (She/Her): PTSTA
Psychotherapy / Clinical
How does being multilingual shape the experience of a therapist or client? This workshop explores the fascinating intersection of language and psychotherapy, delving into how different linguistic systems influence emotional expression, therapeutic relationships, and the very concepts that shape mental health treatment.
How do power dynamics emerge between dominant and minority languages in therapeutic settings? What unique challenges and opportunities arise when therapists and clients speak different native tongues? And how does bilingualism affect cognition, emotions, and the therapeutic experience itself?
I am a white, cis-gender, heterosexual woman and in many ways I hold privilege, which I aim to acknowledge and reflect on in my work. At the same time, I am an immigrant, and English is my third language. This shapes how I move through the world‚ and through the therapy room‚ as the power dynamics often shift the moment I speak. These intersections of privilege and difference inform how I approach my work, and are central to this workshop, where we will explore how language diversity impacts therapeutic relationships and how we, as practitioners, can more consciously account for it in our practice.
Workshop outcomes:
I would like attendees to gain a deeper understanding of how different languages influence emotional expression, thinking processes, and therapeutic interactions. I hope they will become more aware of the challenges involved in translating psychotherapy theories across languages, and reflect on the power dynamics that can arise when language is unevenly shared in the therapy room. I would also like them to consider the role of bilingualism in therapy and to feel more confident in navigating language-related complexities in their practice. Ultimately, I hope the workshop enhances their cultural sensitivity, supports more inclusive work with multilingual clients, and encourages reflection on their own linguistic positioning.
Presenters:
Hanna is a multilingual therapist, trainer, and supervisor with extensive experience working with clients from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Growing up in a Russian-speaking family in Ukraine, Hanna learned Ukrainian from an early age and now considers herself a Ukrainian speaker. Having lived in the UK for over 10 years, she navigates both English-speaking and Ukrainian-speaking environments, offering her a unique perspective on bilingualism and cross-cultural dynamics.
Her professional background includes extensive work in multiple languages, often with individuals using their first, second, or third language in therapy.
Level of prior experience required: None
Focus: Counselling and Coaching;Psychotherapy and Clinical
Style: Didactic Teaching;Discussion and Small Group and Pairs work;Experiential Work
3. Using AI in TA counselling and psychotherapy
Augmenting, not replacing, the human practitioner
Matt Haworth (He/They): TA Diploma (UKATA or RTE)
Psychotherapy / Clinical
This practical and engaging workshop explores how to introduce the unique capabilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the relational frame of TA counselling/psychotherapy through empowering, not replacing, the human practitioner. We'll uncover the relational and ethical implications of involving an "artificial third" in the client relationship, and discuss how TA is well placed to give us tools to understand new transactional, dialogue driven tools like ChatGPT. Tools that are entering many of our, and our clients, lives. No pre-existing AI knowledge is needed.
I am a white, queer, British person from a working class background. I am privileged by my whiteness, my birth in Britain, inhabiting a thin and non-disabled non-stigmatised body, and my ability to pass as heterosexual and as a cisgendered male (in some contexts).
Workshop outcomes:
A greater understanding of what AI is.
An understanding of how AI can be used to augment, rather than replace, TA psychotherapy coaching, and counselling and what capabilities it can offer.
Understanding the implications of this through the lens of transactions, and TA transference types.
Hands on experience of using AI in a safe, workshop setting.
Learnings from a discussion on the practical and ethical implications of using AI in the therapy/counselling room.
Presenter:
Matt's paper on AI and transference was accepted for publication in the TAJ Feb 2026 edition. Matt has presented on AI and transactional analysis at the North East TA Conference (NETAC) and TA Cumbria, and at number of conferences on ethical use of AI in the social sector through his work in "tech for good" as co-founder of Reason Digital, the social enterprise he founded to support charities and healthcare organisations to use technology to improve people's lives. Matt holds a Diploma in Transactional Analysis for Psychotherapeutic Counselling from Red Kite in Liverpool.
Level of prior experience required: Developing Level - Middle Years of Training
Focus: Counselling and Coaching;Psychotherapy and Clinical
Style: Discussion and Small Group and Pairs work;Experiential Work
4. The Art of Working with Dissociation
Recognise, Understand, and Support
Ben Groves (He/Him): PTSTA
Psychotherapy / Clinical
Dissociation can present in many forms from what Bromberg (1996) describes as "a healthy adaptive function of the human mind," to more complex and medicalised presentations such as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).
In this workshop, we will deepen our understanding of what dissociation actually is, and how it may present in a clinical setting. Dissociation can often be misunderstood: some clinicians may overuse or misuse the term, while others may feel unsure or even fearful when encountering it in their work.
This workshop aims to demystify dissociation, enhance participants' confidence in recognising and practically supporting their clients with maladaptive or disordered dissociation, and respond with skill and care in their therapeutic practice.
In my practice, I specialise in working with trauma. Prior to training as a therapist, I spent a decade as a Social Worker, which deeply shaped my understanding of people, systems, and resilience. This background gives me a strong commitment to practical, grounded approaches that genuinely support people.
I bring to this work a lens shaped by both professional experience and a personal commitment to equity, compassion, and relational safety. As someone with dyslexia, I'm particularly keen to support a wide range of learning styles‚ creating an engaging, non-shaming environment where everyone feels encouraged to learn and participate.
Workshop outcomes:
By the end of this workshop, attendees will feel more confident in recognising dissociation in its various forms. They will be better equipped to understand what might be happening beneath the surface when dissociation presents, including its adaptive and maladaptive aspects. Most importantly, participants will gain practical skills and strategies to effectively support clients experiencing dissociation, enhancing their ability to respond with sensitivity, safety, and clinical confidence.
Presenters:
Ben Groves is a psychotherapist, supervisor, and trainer based in York. With over a decade of experience in mental health and social care, he specializes in trauma within his privet practice.
Level of prior experience required: I would say developing and advanced level.
Focus: Psychotherapy and Clinical
Style: Didactic Teaching;Discussion and Small Group and Pairs work;Experiential Work
5. Reimagining ourselves, our communities and our future
Exploring Ecological Life Positions by playing a sustainability learning game
Mary Dees (She/Her): PTSTA (P)
Psychotherapy / Clinical
How do we locate ourselves‚ as therapists, counsellors, educators, coaches, and ecological beings- in a time of climate disruption? This experiential workshop uses a learning simulation of a local community responding to crises like flooding and wildfires. It will be both fun and deeply thought-provoking. Grounded in the theory of ecological life positions, we'll explore how collaborative decision-making impacts individuals, communities and the planet.
Through systems and regenerative thinking, we'll reflect on the psychological and relational dynamics of ecological disruption. The session invites Play and dialogue at the intersection of Transactional Analysis and ecological systems, fostering connection, insight, and reimaging the future.
I am a white, middle-class, 56-year-old bisexual woman with a chronic illness, and I acknowledge my privileges of education, relative economic stability and race. These privileges have often given me greater access to spaces and platforms. Being bisexual but in a heterosexual relationship also brings a degree of privilege. Being a woman, I've experienced gender inequality through societal expectations and unequal opportunities. Also, living with chronic illness has brought vulnerability, limitation, and a slower pace that has profoundly influenced how I see the world‚ and how I listen.
This workshop is grounded in my belief that real change begins with acknowledging where we stand. In exploring ecological life positions, I'm also exploring my own: the ways I've been positioned by society, by health, by identity, and how those positions affect my responses to a world in crisis. I hope to hold space for diverse experiences and invite others to explore how their identities shape their responses to ecological and collective challenges.
Workshop outcomes:
By the end of this workshop, participants will:
1. Advance knowledge through an open exploration of ecological life positions with fresh perspectives on themselves, their communities and a desire to reimagine what the future could be like.
2. Enhance practice by engaging in a learning simulation that deepens skills in collaboration, systems thinking and decision-making.
3. Connect minds through participating in meaningful, reflective and imaginative dialogue, participants will be encouraged to share insights and critically examine ecological life positions.
Presenter:
Mary is an ecological psychotherapist, supervisor and trainer working on the border of Greater Manchester/Peak District. She runs outdoor psychotherapy and supervision groups in the Peak District. She also offers online supervision. She works systemically, including deep adaptation to the climate emergency and biodiversity crises.
Mary is also a Master's Degree Environmental Scientist and runs experiential learning programmes, including Climate Change Programmes for NHS leaders. She is part of the Transition movement and runs Climate Cafes and Grief rituals for her local community.
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
6. Exploring the landscape of body-mind, how living metaphor can enhance our practise as Transactional Analysts
Helen Blackburn (She/her): PTSTA
Psychotherapy / Clinical
We will work creatively with the 'living metaphor' in nature, the shapes, sounds, smells and sights of the abundance of growth and seasonality. We will move outside to engage our imagination with the land around us, using this sense and imagery to help us describe our internal feeling landscape. Through solo, pair and group work we will explore the affect of our relationship with place, and how that impacts our sense of self. We will discuss how this reciprocity contributes to personal well-being and growth, and practical ways that we can develop this understanding to enhance our practise.
I am bringing this material from an experience rooted in living rurally for many years, although originally I grew up and have worked in large cities in the UK and other countries. I currently have the privilege of direct access to the abundance of wild nature, whilst living somewhere economically disadvantaged. I will acknowledge this and include these differences in our discussions, as relevant to the theme of the workshop.
Workshop outcomes:
Develop skill in using nature based metaphor to assist clients and trainees to connect with and express thoughts and feelings.
Find new ways to reflect on our internal landscape as practitioners, which can enhance understanding of transference and counter transference.
Increase awareness of how different senses feed our minds, and the natural, ancient ways we can process thought and feeling.
Presenter:
I am a PTSTA (P) psychotherapist, supervisor and trainer based in rural Wales in private practise since 2015, indoors and outdoors, as well as online. I work from a relational perspective and believe that including our relationship with the natural world can make a vital contribution to our personal and professional lives. With this in mind, I have trained in Ecological TA and developed my practise in partnership with the woodland garden where I live. I love music, dancing and stories; gardening; the changing dimensions of my family; train travelling; the joy of new connections and ideas.
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
7. Hospicing TA
Playing and sitting with endings and openings
Beatrijs Dijkman (She/her):TSTA (E); Cat Cornthwaite (She/her): PTSTA (E)
Education and Training
Warning! This is not your grandma's TA workshop. Transactional Analysis gifted us ways to map human interactions, but like many modern frameworks, there are aspects of it that risk shrinking life into exchanges and diagrams of control. In this three-hour gathering, we invite you to hospice TA‚ not to reject or repair it, but to accompany its reform with curiosity, grief, and play. Through stories, embodied exercises, and meta-relational inquiry, we will compost TA's limits into fertile soil for new ways of relating‚ toward entanglement, paradox, and whole-shebang relationally. Bring your laughter, grief, and awkwardness; come ready to sit with endings as openings.
Cat and Beatrijs have partly a similar background, although coming from another country.
We see our original communities increasingly emphazising polararisation and differences in colour of skin, cultural background and entitlement. We have a longing for working within and from community, which we find less and less within the area's that we are coming from.
Cat; I have a sense of shame which I am struggling with as a white woman based in the UK. As educator I feel a sense of responsibility and the need to take action.
Beatrijs; I sometimes feel estranged from my background while I also have a deep desire and loyalty to belong.
Workshop outcomes:
* Self awareness of global issues * Owning our relationship with personal activism * Being confronted with our arrogance regarding systemic factors, colonization and meritocracy in TA education
Presenter:
Beatrijs Dijkman (TSTA-E and MSc-Developmental TA) is an independent practitioner in education and supervision from the Netherlands. My passion has always been to look for the Natural Child in educational settings, because that is where learning and development can take us into connection with our deeper ways of being. I love working outside and with experiential, sometimes provoking exercises. I am known for my enthusiasm, sharp mind and moments of honesty in the classroom.
Cat Cornthwaite is a (P)TSTA-E based in High Peak, Derbyshire, with a passion for exploring alternative narratives in education. With extensive experience in mainstream secondary education, I have worked both in the classroom and beyond - supporting the professional development of teachers across the UK and internationally. A key area of my interest is how Transactional Analysis (TA) can enhance the relational aspects of education, improving the student-teacher dynamics. Within the TA community, I provide tutoring as well as delivering training programs and workshops. Additionally, I contribute to research and writing projects, exploring developments in Educational TA theory and its applications.
Level of prior experience required: None
Focus: Education and Training;Counselling and Coaching;Psychotherapy and Clinical;Organisational
Style: Experiential Work
8. My Brother is a Single Child
The Nonego and the Third-Order Structure: Re-Visioning the Unconscious in TA
Giovanni Felice Pace (He/Him): PTSTA
Psychotherapy / Clinical
This workshop invites participants to explore an expanded vision of unconscious processes in Transactional Analysis through the lens of third-order structural dynamics. We will examine Self-states (P0, C0, A0) as archetypal matrices shaped by Physis rather than purely developmental constructs, and consider how unconscious logics (Matte Blanco) shape transference, projection, and script formation. Through experiential exercises, clinical dialogue, and mythopoetic imagery, participants will be encouraged to re-vision their work with clients, particularly those with severe or psychotic presentations, by integrating TA's structural clarity with a depth-psychological appreciation of the collective unconscious and the directional drive of Physis.
I am a Napolitan immigrant, first of my family to embark in such journey, and a man whose interpretation of masculinity was undigestible for his community. As a Mediterranean person, I can pass as white easily, even though as italian, and even more southern-Italian, I hold very little privilege in Italy itself. Somehow, I am lost in the notes of history where I am not white but not white enough, technically adn historically mixed race but not mixed enough.
Workshop outcomes:
a) Obtaining a clearer understanding of the structure of the unconscious and its relationship to the Ego and its states.
b) Offer a revision of P0-A0-C0 that goes beyond biology and biography
c) To see examples of severe presentations under the lens of unconscious dynamics
Presenter:
Giovanni is a psychologist and psychotherapist with a deep-rooted passion for reflection, inner work, and the subtle layers of the psyche. As a Psychologist, he is guided by the principles of Radical Psychiatry by seeing in the group nature of human life its fundamental exchanges. Grounded in the principles of depth psychology, he has honed a finely attuned capacity to listen beneath the surface, tracking unconscious processes, symbolic language, and emotional undercurrents. As a Transactional Analyst, he prefers to attune to the unconscious logics of Physis.
Level of prior experience required: Advanced Level - Towards CTA and beyond
Focus: Psychotherapy and Clinical
Style: Didactic Teaching;Discussion and Small Group and Pairs work;Experiential Work
9. Transforming Relationship Dynamics: Working with individuals who are abusive in their relationships
Kim Byng (She/her): TA Diploma (UKATA or RTE)
Psychotherapy / Clinical
Domestic abuse services have traditionally focussed on safeguarding survivors. While essential, we can only increase our understanding of abuse prevention by working directly with those using abusive behaviours.
This workshop aims to advance knowledge by exploring how Transactional Analysis (TA) and group process can be used to support behavioural change in men who have been abusive in relationships. Using TA concepts such as frame of reference, life script, and discounting, we will explore how shifts towards accountability and healthy relationship behaviours can be facilitated. The importance of boundaries, containment and safety around working with this group will be reflected on.
I am a hetero-sexual women from a white British working class background, as an adult I have had opportunities which have allowed me to be seen as middle class. In the group work I am aware I have had different life experiences to my client group as a women, when choosing to share these experiences I carefully consider whether they would be a useful intervention, whether I am comfortable sharing or whether there are any risks.
Generally the men who attend the programme are either working class or middle class, however there are a number of men who are not working and find being part of the workplace a challenge. This can be due to difficulties in working with their colleagues, struggles with mental health and sometimes literacy difficulties. I have always been able to read and write so I have to be mindful of how to make the programme work for men who cannot, it is important to work this into the work so they do not experience any shame as a result of attending the programme. As a child there were messages in my family about choosing between working and getting married/having family which I chose to reject, I strongly believed it was unfair that women should give up working to be in a relationship.
Men on the programme often hold strong beliefs about women and their value in society which often brings challenges to the work, as a woman I can challenge these stereotypes however this as to be a careful intervention so I am heard and not dismissed. My own adult relationships have been non-abusive, in relation to my clients I do have the privilege of experiencing what healthy relationships are like in both my personal and professional life.
This allows me to bring my experiences into the work to help them understand how situations in their relationships might be handled in a more healthy way. A further difference between myself and the client group I work with is that the men have often been in the criminal justice system, sometimes this is in relation to other offences as well as domestic violence.
Workshop outcomes:
To have a better understanding of how domestic abuse shows up in relationships, what happens in the group process that enables men to change their behaviour and improve their relationships with partners and children in the future, how we can all take away things from the work that can improve our relationships even if we are not experiencing or being abusive
Presenter:
My name is Kim Byng, I am a trained TA counsellor living and working in Derby, Derbyshire. I have a small private practice, my specialisms are in domestic abuse and relationship difficulties. Over the last 12 years I have worked in several organisations across Derbyshire supporting survivors of abuse and working with people who are abusive to their partners in a group setting. I really enjoy the group work and helping clients gain insight in how they can change their behaviour in relationships, the work matters as I believe it is the way forward to reducing domestic abuse in society.
Level of prior experience required: Any level, anyone interested in this work
Focus: Psychotherapy and Clinical
Style: Discussion and Small Group and Pairs work;Experiential Work