Gestalt Therapy Treatment for Addictions, Multi-phasic Transformation Process™ Training

About the program:

Gestalt therapy bridges the gap between cognitive and behavioral therapies by also including the body and senses, feelings, perception and creative adjustments in the service of self-regulation in the context of the environment. Gestalt therapy illumines and magnifies the individual’s awareness of “what is” and stresses “present experience” over “shouldism” and “aboutism”. This program places importance on understanding a person’s behaviors in the context of his/her environment/history and views coping mechanisms (defenses) as creative adjustments to the stresses in life at the self/other boundary. The MPTP™ emphasizes health/maturity and builds on an individual’s strengths. Because Gestalt therapy and MPTP™ stress a holistic, individualized therapeutic approach, it is ideally suited to the treatment of various kinds of abuse/addictions from the early pre-addictive stages through a process of transformation to recovery of wholeness and aware, choiceful living. This model neither includes nor negates self-help models.

About the Multi-phasic Transformation Process © Model

The MPTP™ model allows for the greatest possible treatment needs in approaching individual differences by stressing the uniqueness of each client, considering his/her resiliency of the human spirit and personal integrity. The MPTP™ is eleven-phasic, overlapping, gender neutral and honed to rebuild neglected developmental needs required for recovery. It is relationship based and stresses empowerment to transform one's addictive life style. With this treatment approach awareness of “what is” in the personal, familial and social realm fosters personal response-ability for one’s self and others. Abstinence and/or reduction of addictive type behaviors are not dictated (as though we could) but emerge heuristically from this process. While this model acknowledges contributions of personal and familial histories in the context of time and place to the shaping of addictive experience and habits, examination of “how” each client continues to live “as if”, physical, relational, and emotional impasses are uncovered and worked with. This approach leads eventually to a deliberate, choiceful sobriety and lifestyle. Ten Awareness Statements and the Experience Cycle provide support and direction.

Learning Objectives:

In this 72-hour workshop participants will learn through:

  1. Lectures, live demonstrations
  2. Practice and supervision in triads and groups
  3. Experiential group exercises and experience
  • Principles of Gestalt therapy, phenomenology, field theory
  • Multi-phasic transformation Process™ and application for the treatment of addictive behaviors and related problems
  • Responsibility, choices, consequences
  • Awareness/contact/experience cycle indicating healthy or impaired functioning
  • Awareness raising and contact functions
  • Creative adjustments (defenses) - positive force in therapy
  • Skill building, empowering treatment approaches to facilitate choiceful behaviors, change and integration
  • Awareness of self/other through personal growth and professional development
  • Freedom from addiction and fear of relapse

Schedule:

Part I - Gestalt Therapy (addiction specific) three 12-hr in-person trainings - 36 hrs

Part II - Addiction Treatment (MPTP™) three 12-hr in-person trainings – 36 hrs

Dates and Fees

This class will be scheduled in 2010. To sign up for my newsletter (use the top right sign-up box) and I will inform you via email when the class is scheduled