Therapy for Therapists (a guide to changing lives)

by Steven Paglierani, Maria Kirsch, Sam Snider

Overview

Can People Actually Change?

In almost every therapist lies an inherent flaw. This flaw prevents them from helping clients to make lasting changes. Temporary changes; the usual, will-powered, behavioral and cognitive kind? They can get clients to do those. But permanent changes, the kind which alter the client's very nature? Not so much.

The flaw? To get licensed, they must learn to imitate what the great therapists did. Ironically, those great therapists were great because they didn't do this. Rather, what made them great was that they were being themselves. And being themselves IS what gave them the power to change lives.

In this book, Steven Paglierani draws on his three decades of experience to teach therapists to be themselves, with practical suggestions, poignant stories, and heart-felt advice on everything therapists do. Practice management and better self-care to cutting-edge therapies based on his school of therapy, The Emergence Therapies. Do you want to learn to actually change lives, while falling in love what you do? If you're willing to do the work, then this book will show you how.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780984489596
Publisher:	Emergence Alliance Publishing
Publication date:	09/14/2020
Series:	Finding Personal Truth , #4
Pages:	758
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.51(d)

About the Author

Steven Paglierani is an author, educator, psychotherapist, and film maker whose writings describe the world through the lens of the autism spectrum. As a licensed therapist, he teaches others-especially those who are outside the norm and find it hard to fit in-to stop imitating normal and to be themselves. He has authored the first blamelessly "natural" personality theory, a theory where everything derives from a single fractal pattern. He's also built and raced Shelby Mustangs, been a singer/song writer mentioned in Rolling Stone, and designed his best friend's home as a wedding gift.

Maria Kirsch is a recently licensed psychotherapist (an LMHC) and a formal student of Emergence Therapy for the last five years. She is an Emergence Practitioner (Level 4), an editor, and the previous owner of a yoga and meditation center. Earlier in life, she spent years traveling the world, where she studied language and culture in Spain, and fund-raised to end sex trafficking and slavery of young children in South India. She is continually drawn to learn all she can about the nature of suffering, so she can help teach others to emerge from their own.

Sam Snider is currently in his final semester of an LMHC graduate program, right on the heels of a bachelors in Applied Behavioral Analysis. He has spent his life absorbed in a number of different areas. These include philosophy, psychology, sexuality, shamanism, religion, chess, poker, movies, fiction, poetry, and sports. The most important thing in his life is the people in it, and his favorite thing in the world is to sit with someone and talk.

Table of Contents

On Therapists Being Themselves

There's so much I could say about what makes this book unique. Admittedly, I worry, whatever I say will just sound like common bullshit. In an effort to address this, I've placed some excerpts from the Table of Contents below. Besides this though, I want to mention a few things I've not see before. To begin with, there are four sections, Obviously this is not new. What is new is how comprehensively these sections address what it means to a therapist. Clearly, I had a lot to say. There are more than 300,000 words. A lot of practical knowledge, to be sure.

What's in the Sections and Chapters? Again, quite a lot. If you're interested, here's the list.

• Therapy Practice Basics (Getting & Keeping Clients, Stories, Tips & Pointers, Therapy & the Room, Bookkeeping & Paperwork)
• Therapy Session Basics (Burnout, Boundaries, & Rapport, Getting Lost in Sessions, Paper Therapies, Is It Time To End Therapy?)
• The 4 Fundamental Skills (Therapy & Regression, Therapy & Transference, Therapy & Wounds, Therapy & Healing)
• The 4 Emergence Therapies (Visual Dialogue, Direct Emergence, Layered Memory, Mirror Work)

Besides practical knowledge though, I've devoted one whole section to scientifically defining what it means to find and heal wounds. Therapy should not be based on soft science. We should not need to defend what we do. With this book, we no longer need to. Just this section alone should improve your ability to change lives. No coincidence, it will likely challenge much of what you believe about what does and doesn't make therapy succeed.

Another difference occurs in the End Notes which follow each section. No book on therapy includes a teacher and his students interacting. Here Sam and Maria offer commentary, challenges, and questions about what's in each chapter. I then respond in the way I wish I'd been interacted with in school. What I mean is, in these exchanges, they teach me as much as I teach them. As for the samples from the Table of Contents, here are details from one of the sixteen chapters.

Section 2 - Chapter 18 - Burnout, Boundaries, & Rapport (what can I learn about...?)

The Most Common Error Therapists Make

What Do You Focus On In Therapy Sessions?

What Is Rapport?

Can Boundaries Destroy a Family?

How Do You Build a "Bridge of Similarity?"

Use What People Bring In To Build Bridges

Rapport, Regression, and Healing

How Do You Get Clients to Feel Safe?

Can A Child Molester Change?

What About Clients Burning Out?

How "Offering Advice" Leads to Burnout

Do Ideas Have A Place in Therapy?

Can A Spiritual Maxim Save A Life?

Tailor Your Ideas To The Client's Developmental Age

Why Focus on Children?

Why Ideas Discourage Empathy

Are My Ideas Beginning to Burn You Out?

The Codependency Story

Burnout and Rapport in Supervision

Don't Overlook "Informal Supervision"

Burnout and Rapport With Colleagues

Burnout and Rapport With Referral Sources

Therapy As Cycling Between Burnout And Rapport

Burnout and Rapport as a Pair of Opposites

Creating the Connection