Session Fee AUD$90.00

TOPIC 1 - Engaging with Cyberspace

When you notice two people on a date in a cafe, both looking down and scrolling through their phones, where are they?

Cyberspace is wildly popular because it offers what appears to be an open, free, and safe environment, in which you can observe (and engage with) a bewildering array of interpersonal behaviours. However the absorption of the digital zeitgeist can lead to a creeping sense of personal insufficiency and loss of self.

Underneath today's presenting issues we often uncover attachment adaptations to be named, understood and updated - in particular a rising fear of intimacy. These relational issues can reveal the substantial impact that time spent in Cyberspace has on a client's sense of self and real world relationships with others. This impact is now so large that we must attune to our client's life in Cyberspace to be fully able to deliver effective therapy in this digital age.

The objective of this masterclass is to expand your practice skills and create new ways to help your client to connect their digital and real life experience.

Let's explore how to connect safety in the real world to safety in Cyberspace and how essential this is to facilitate personal growth, build resilience, confidence and trust in self, on and off line.

TOPIC 2 - Integrating the Client’s Online Life into Therapy

We have all had a client whose phone constantly dings and pings with countless notifications throughout the session. The usual request is to turn off the distractions. Yet, have we dismissed a therapeutic opportunity that is hiding in plain sight?

By setting aside our client’s online lives, we discount a large part of what is relevant to them, what contributes to their relationships and the opportunity to make use of their digital connections as a resource. Let's open a new range of possibilities and opportunities to facilitate a safer, more secure therapeutic relationship.

In this digital age, personalities extend into cyberspace in the form of personas, avatars, or aspects ('cyber-selves') that are compartmentalised and perhaps activated only in the perceived safety of a virtual environment.

If we recognise that these aspects are all attachment adaptations of various sorts, we open up a rich landscape which holds many more personality traits, stories, characteristics, and experiences than would otherwise be accessed. These additional personality resources are found on devices. Devices are the conduit to those otherwise hidden aspects of self.

Devices are also useful as tools to integrate and extend the work done in a therapy session into the client’s existence and experience outside the therapy space. How might we make use of social media postings as tools for relfection, rather than just projection?

As professionals, let's invite the devices into the therapy space and explore how we can plug our clients' digital connections into our therapeutic process. (For this masterclass, have your OWN device handy).

oNLINE DELIVERY PLATFORM

Zoom Meeting

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