A914 How to Take On Your Most Challenging Clients

Some of the most challenging times in therapy are when you need to respond to (possibly narcissistic) clients who are in their angry/critical mode, to clients who say that their childhood issues are resolved and they see no point in looking back, or to ones who say you can’t possibly understand them. Such interactions can easily push “hot buttons” in even the most seasoned therapist by reactivating feelings associated with early life experiences. In this course, you’ll learn what to say and how to use your body to deliver profoundly effective, on-the-spot responses during difficult encounters; ways that can quickly mobilize you and restore the receptive, flexible, and empathically attuned you.

Meet the Instructor

Wendy Behary, L.C.S.W., is the founder and director of The Cognitive Therapy Center of New Jersey and The New Jersey Institute for Schema Therapy. Her private practice is largely dedicated to treating narcissists and the people who surround them. She’s the author of “Disarming the Narcissist: Surviving and Thriving with the Self-Absorbed.”

Course Contents

Session 1: Identifying clients and situations that trigger “hot buttons” • Discussing the feelings that follow • Exploring the parallel process in the client-therapist relationship.

Session 2: Strategies for interventions during difficult moments • Dealing with client rigidity, avoidance, emotional detachment, and overcompensation • Using adaptive re-parenting, empathic confrontation, preemptive measures, self-disclosure, and limit-setting.

Session 3: Differentiating between the “Who and the “How” • Understanding the subtle messages we convey through body language • Exploring the impact of our messages on client response patterns.

Session 4: Harnessing your professional mode • Managing balance between your competent self and your sensitive self • How to cope after challenging moments in the therapy room.

Learning Objectives

1. Identify three ways to use your body to deal with an angry, critical client.
2. Define empathic confrontation and describe how to use it.
3. Explain the difference between intention and presentation, and how an awareness of the difference can help you and your clients.