Difficult Clients: Rules of Engagement

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Delivery: Synchronous Virtual Classroom via Zoom

*See Registration Information for available discounts.

This workshop is intended to help mental health professionals gain a deeper understanding of their reactions to the difficult client in clinical practice. It begins with a validation of the professional’s experience, such as feeling frustrated, deskilled, hopeless, in the face of some of their most challenging clients. In order to understand the reactive individual, we must have at the least a basic understanding and definition of trauma and how that may present in treatment. 

The therapeutic alliance, which at times can be confused with a good relationship between the helper and individual seeking treatment, will be defined and explored. Progress, both desired and feared by many individuals with a traumatic past, will be looked at from both perspectives. This will lead into a brief overview of healthy attachment and emotional regulation as well as insecure attachment and emotional dysregulation. The phenomenon of reenactment will be explored followed by dependency of the person seeking services on the mental health professional. Anger, an intimidating feature of the difficult client, will be explored along with the helper’s role in triggering and responding. Triggers for anger in the helper will also be explored. As the audience gains a basic understanding of the material, how they can respond to their clients will then be discussed, such as validation, self-awareness and self-disclosure. Metacommunications and individual/cultural differences will wrap up the presentation. 

Participants of this course will gain an understanding of: 1) the definition of therapeutic alliance and how it fluctuates in the treatment;  2) what motivates the difficult client’s defenses;  3) the role of dependency as a connecting factor in treatment;  4) countertransference in treatment with the difficult client; and  5) the scripts of shame.  Diversity will be addressed as it relates to clients from various backgrounds and cultures.

This workshop is appropriate for all levels of post-master’s degree practitioners who have at least one year clinical experience, as well as a basic understanding of unresolved traumatic symptomology as it appears in the therapeutic relationship.

Presenter: Talya Lewis, is a peer consultant in private practice, and is a past Academic Fellow of the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. She provides treatment for individuals who have cycled through the mental health system, almost exclusively coming with histories of early childhood trauma.  As an educator, she conducts workshops for college students and professionals on borderline disorder, self-injury and trauma. (www.bpdsupportconsulting.com)

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