Current Programme

This programme changes twice a year.

Booking

We encourage you to pre-book as this will ensure you are informed if an event is cancelled.
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Click here for further booking information.

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PCA South West has been instrumental in my enquiry into love in person-centred therapy. Each time I have visited you I have grown and learned through our encounter and discussion. I look forward to sharing my ideas again and being stimulated emotionally and intellectually. My exploration is seeking ways to talk about the range and complexity of love within the therapeutic relationship: encompassing the spiritual, sexual and political aspects of our work and going beyond ‘tender and positive’ feelings to include more challenging, edgy, risky aspects of loving in therapy. Last time I came, 5 years ago, we ended the day on lust and sexual feelings in the therapy room, so I’m looking forward to picking up on that, as well as whether, and how, we experience hate and indifference within person-centred therapy relationships. I am really interested in the ‘counter’ of encounter and being real and honest about our practice. I am interested in linking practice with the developing theory and collective and individual ethics.

In the current global climate of crisis more and more young people I work with show signs of distress and despair. I find myself wondering where my, and our, hope is and how I, and we, can live sustainably on every level.  Increasingly, I feel the urgency of exploring what we mean by love without dismissing it as an over-used and simplistic term. To understand the love in therapy relationships is to understand how they can be transformative and healing.

 

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The Royal College of Psychiatrists estimates that approximately 1 in 10 young people will self-harm although it can occur at any age. They suggest that research probably underestimates how common self-harm is as some types of self-harm, such as cutting, may be secret and so less likely to be noticed by other people. They state that in a recent study of over 4000 self-harming adults in hospital, 80% had overdosed and around 15% had cut themselves. In the community, these statistics would probably be reversed. Thus, for any of us working as counsellors/psychotherapists there is a high likelihood that we will certainly work with someone who has or who is, self-harming.

This workshop will offer the opportunity to briefly consider ideas concerning the genesis of self-harming behaviour, with a specific exploration from within a person-centred perspective. Having laid this ground, the emphasis will then be on exploring the challenges faced by the counsellor/psychotherapist with particular reference to unconditional positive regard and client autonomy. This area will include an examination of the tensions experienced when working both independently and within organisations.

The workshop will be experiential in focus with a mixture of direct input from Sheila, small and large group discussion.

 

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We offer our challenging workshop to share our experiences as we passionately want things to change in the way that self harm is understood.

We will give extensive insight into self  harm and explore some of the reasons behind why people self-harm.

We will look at issues of self-harm  in detail to offer much deeper understanding of  why we have needed self harm in our lives.

We will address risk management skills.

We will let you know what we find helpful for us.

We will share our experience of how Support Groups work and share some of the problems with groups. 

We will look at creative working (see a couple of our poems below/ above) and explore why that works with self harm issues. 

We are involved in doing some work with Plymouth university social work students as we would like them to understand self harm issues nearly in their learning.

We all do this for free because we feel these issues matter - the fees for the workshop will go to the ongoing work of SIESTA.

The day will run 10 - 4 30 to allow for travel. Bring lunch to share as SIESTA believe that eating together is healing.

 

Scars

There is no mystery to the lines marking my pale skin

Just a scarring on the surface, displaying cries within

A simple antidote to all that’s sick and ill.

All the remarks that torture, all the insults that kill

 

The need to own your suffering as natural as breath

Let no outsider have a hand in your sweet inner death,

They fuck you up they leave you cold, they care not for your tears

At least with these your smiling scars, you have hurt without fear

 

Ask not of me my reason for this sad survival skill

All other blankets turn to ice, but these marks warm me still

Its easier to cope with something as feeble as pain

Than with broken hearts that can’t be stitched up again.

 

I Am Already Dead!

I am already dead!

Rotting flesh encasing a soul of ashes,

Maggots squirming, pulsing

Like blood that used to, dried and desiccated

I am already dead!

Just trapped.  A wildness in my eyes-

My fear. I try to die, I try alive

For everyday this death derived

Of encumbered life with melting lies

I am – already – dead.

 

 

By SIESTA - Self Injury Emotional Support Through Awareness

 

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