CREATIVE WRITING IN THE THERAPEUTIC ENCOUNTER

ONLINE WORKSHOP OVER 2 DAYS

Suitable for Counsellors, psychotherapists, coaches and health workers are welcome to attend this workshop. 

Any links we have written in bold green are to help you gain access to the main page of the workshop required.

Please note all discount prices shall show at the final checkout

Dates: Mon 17 & Tue 18 July 2023

Alternative dates: Wednesday 15 & Friday 17 November 2023

Times: 9.30am – 4.00pm both days (BST)

Location: Online

Trainer: Claire Williamson (MA, SFHEA) Scroll down to see more about the trainer

Cost : £155 if booked by 17 June 2023

         £175 full price

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Who is this workshop designed for: Counsellors, psychotherapists, coaches and health workers are welcome to attend this workshop. 

This experiential 2-day course focuses on creative writing and its use within therapy, therapeutic settings and self-supervision. 

Therapists often work with client’s writing, or encourage clients to create within, or between, sessions. Some therapists have trained to be ‘poetry therapists’ and divide sessions between writing and discussion of the text, accelerating the process, or evincing new strands to the therapeutic work. 

There is a risk to introducing writing, as it is revealing and sometimes walks the line between vulnerability and healing; there can be concerns about ‘quality’, which therapists can allay with a good understanding of creative writing as both a magnifying and softening tool, to say the ‘unsayable’, or to understand experience in a more tangible form. 

Some counsellors and psychotherapists use creative writing as part of their own reflective practice to understand transferential relationships, create boundaries between sessions, and for personal and professional development.

Through experiential practice, this workshop will explore some helpful techniques and raise confidence in using the written (and spoken) word.

The workshop will focus on a range of applications, including:

• Supporting client metaphors
• Concrete and abstract images into words – poetry as resource
• Narratives and counter-narratives
• Reflective practice – employing form for clients and self-supervision
• Autobiographical fiction
• Applications and limitations

An empathic, relational approach will be experienced firsthand as the process of the training is trauma-informed.

Claire Williamson

Claire brings an integrative approach to using creative writing in the therapeutic encounter. She’s the former Director of Studies for Metanoia Institute’s MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes (CWTP), with over 20 years experience in the field of CWTP, including work in bereavement, mental health, addiction recovery, self-injury, cancer care, plus many educational and artistic settings.

Claire has facilitated training for counsellors at City of Bristol College’s FD in Counselling and UWE’s Diploma in Counselling. She also works with medical students at University of Bristol and Queen Mary University in London, exploring how creativity can support people within healthcare settings.

She’s a Senior Fellow of the higher education academy, with a Masters degree in Literary Studies (exploring the life sustaining effects of writing) and studying at Cardiff University for a PhD in Creative Writing (Writing the 21st century grief novel), with a Counselling Skills qualification (UWE).

Claire is the author of four poetry/narrative books, Visiting the Minotaur (Seren, 2018) Split Ends (Eyewear, 2016), The Soulwater Pool (2008) and Ride On (PoTA, 2005).

FOR MORE INFORMATION:  If you have further questions please email: [email protected] or call Juliet Grayson on 01291 638805

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Organised through Sleeping Mountain Ltd