​Lotus on the Ripple 

G01 探索並任運於不同情緒的互動中：社會工作臨床實務介入手法

Understanding and Working with Different Emotions

in Social Work Clinical Practice

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Enrollment for workshop in December 2024 at Caritas HEAT

 

Introduction

Working with different emotions has been a core difficulty in social work clinical practice.  This workshop aims at exploring and understanding the nature and functions of each of the major categorical emotions, namely anger, sadness, fear, shame and compassion.  Anger can be destructive when it is under-regulated while it can be very empowering when it is expressed assertively.  Sadness can be overwhelming when we experience losses while it can be soothing if it can be expressed in a goal-directed path.  Fear can be survival-threatening to us which makes us run away from, yet it can strengthen our sense of existence if we dare to stay and live with it.  Shame is a soul-eating emotion which makes us feel shrinking, but it is the most honest emotion telling us who we are.  Apart from exploring different emotions individually, it is even more important to understand how they are intimately intertwined with each other and how they interplay with each other to appear as a complexity of mixed emotions.  With the unconditional acceptance and embracing compassion, we can truly be ourselves with all our apparently unpleasant emotions which are in fact friendly guidance of our core needs.

 

With an in-depth understanding of different emotions, we shall be able to choose appropriate intervention strategies and skills to help those suffering from overwhelming or detached emotions.  This workshop introduces how to use a process-experiential emotion-focused therapeutic approach to facilitate corrective emotional changes.

 

Objectives

This workshop aims at:

1. furnishing an in-depth understanding of different categorical emotions, namely anger, sadness, fear, shame and compassion

2. equipping the perceptual skills of using a process-experiential approach

3. learning how to make emotion assessment

4. learning how to choose appropriate emotion-focused interventions to facilitate emotional awareness, expression and reflection

 

Course Outline

1. Exploring the nature and functions of anger, sadness, fear, shame and compassion

2. Exploring how different emotions interplay with each other

3. Differentiated interventions of different empathic responses

4. Empathic attunement – diving into emotional experience

5. Empathic affirmation – containing vulnerable emotions

6. Empathic exploration – allowing emotional expression

7. Accessing and staying with emotional experience

 

E01 同在與共情: 情緒導向介入手法之精髓

The Essentials of Emotion-Focused Interventions:

Therapeutic Presence and Empathic Attunement

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Enrollment for workshop in February 2025 at Caritas HEAT

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Introduction

As a helping profession, maintaining therapeutic presence is the most fundamental and essential foundation from which we can scaffold our therapeutic work in an effective way.  Presence is the pre-requisite for active listening, empathic attunement and making appropriate empathic responses.  Presence can enhance our ability to listen accurately and to make deep connection with our clients.  It is also the base for building up a collaborative working relationship with our clients.  With a strong bonding with our clients, the drop-out rate is drastically decreased.  Paradoxically, the more we can be present with our clients, the lesser risk of burnt-out we would have.  This workshop is aiming at giving a practical guide to cultivating therapeutic presence so that we can build up a therapeutic relationship efficiently and effectively. 

 

Empathic attunement is a continuous flow of moment-to-moment interpersonal experiences.  It is a mindful and bodily felt process supporting our capacity to communicate our empathic understanding accurately and to engage our clients in the process of deeper exploration.  This workshop would lay a solid foundation for further learning on other process-experiential approaches and emotion-focused interventions.

 

Objectives

This workshop aims at:

1. mastering the skills of daily practice in cultivating therapeutic presence

2. equipping the skills in developing therapeutic relationship and alliance

3. enhancing the ability of active listening and empathic attunement

4. learning how to select differentiated interventions of empathic response

5. promoting the interest, confidence, and skills in working with clients in an experiential way

6. laying a solid foundation for further learning on process-experiential approach of interventions

 

Course Outline

1. Cultivating therapeutic presence

2. Barriers to therapeutic presence

3. Therapeutic relationship and alliance

4. Empathic attunement

5. Communicating empathy

6. Selecting therapeutic targets

7. Choosing differentiated interventions of empathic response

8. Developing collaborative therapeutic alliance

9. Ruptures and repair

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Participants' Feedback

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• 很多體驗性練習讓我們對主題有更深刻的感受

• 導師講解清晰及有啓發性

• 欣賞體驗式的教學方法，把不同的理論都説明得很清楚

• 每一個活動/練習都很對題

• Trainer provides in-depth explanation with real cases

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E02 追隨故事中的情緒經驗: 學習情緒導向介入手法

Learning Emotion-Focused Interventions:

Tracking Emotional Experience through Narrative Process

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Enrollment for workshop in May 2025 at Caritas HEAT

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Introduction

People come to the counseling room with their life stories.  All stories are shaped by emotional themes and the process of telling stories help one make sense of one’s emotions.  The interplay between emotion and narrative is a dynamic process.  An understanding of narrative process can enhance emotion-focused interventions efficiently and effectively.  Working on emotional experience using experiencing-based tasks can help re-construct the meaning of narrative.  Hence, understanding the narrative expression is the basis for facilitating emotional change and co-constructing a coherent sense of self.  This workshop aims at addressing this parallel interacting process between emotional experience and narrative construction, while working towards corrective emotional experience, reflection on narrative meaning, new story outcomes and eventually a new emergence of self.

 

Objectives

This workshop aims at:

1. equipping the skills of listening and tracking the narrative-emotion process

2. learning how to identify markers for different therapeutic tasks

3. learning how to facilitate experiencing-based therapeutic tasks

4. learning how to enhance emotional expression

5. learning how to reprocess emotional experience

6. learning how to evoke and contain the re-telling of difficult emotional experience

7. learning how to co-construct reflection and meaning making work with clients

 

Course Outline

Learning the following emotion-focused interventions step-by-step:

1. Empathic attunement – understanding narrative expression and differentiated use of empathic responses

2. Empathic affirmation – working on vulnerable emotions

3. Accessing emotional experience – experiential focusing

4. Allowing emotional expression

5. Reprocessing emotional experience – systematic evocative unfolding

6. Retelling of difficult emotional experience

7. Making meaning of emotional experience

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Participants' Feedback

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• 導師經驗豐富，講解清晰

• 導師運用了個案錄音講解輔導技巧，能幫助我立體掌握如何運用技巧

• 非常欣賞老師的教導，相當吸引我繼續學習EFT

• 有討論及互動，導師提供了觀察情緒和輔導過程的工具，很有幫助

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E03 透過椅子對話與您走出幽谷: 跨診斷情緒導向介入手法

Transdiagnostic Emotion-Focused Interventions:

Authentic Encounter through Chair Dialogue

for People with Depressive Symptoms

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Enrollment for workshop in June 2025 at Caritas HEAT

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Introduction

Depression is one of the most common and debilitating mental health problems in Hong Kong.  An estimate of 1 in 7 people in Hong Kong will experience a common mental disorder at any given time (Mind HK: 2021).  People suffer from depression are not only overwhelmed with a cluster of feelings such as sadness, anxiety, suppressed anger, discouragement, helplessness, alienation, and hopelessness, but also experience an embodiment of poor self-image, diminishing sense of identity and pessimistic worldview.  People with depressive symptoms disclaim their emotions and try to stay away from their core painful emotions.  This dysfunctional way to cope with the painful emotions is how depression becoming problematic.

 

This workshop aims at introducing how to use a transdiagnostic emotion focused approach to work with people manifesting depressive symptoms.  Most people, who suffer from mental health difficulties like depression, usually present symptomatic disturbances, such as prolonged low mood, lack in motivation, insomnia, suicidal ideation, etc.  Emotion Focused Therapy is not just working on symptoms treatment or reduction of presenting symptomatic emotions, but addressing underlying feelings and needs with the goal of transforming core painful feelings.

 

This workshop aims at equipping participants with practical emotion-focused intervention skills in the process of therapeutic change using transdiagnostic emotion focused case conceptualization.

 

Objectives

This workshop aims at equipping the following emotion-focused intervention skills step-by-step:

1. how to cultivate therapeutic presence with people with depressive symptoms

2. how to enhance empathic attunement with people with depressive symptoms

3. how to do emotion assessment and to select differentiated empathic responses

4. how to measure productive and unproductive emotions in session

5. how to enhance clients’ awareness of internal experience

6. how to give a rationale for working with emotions

7. how to establish a collaborative focus in each session

8. how to facilitate chair dialogues

9. how to build up support for contacting emotions

10. how to evoke and arouse maladaptive feelings

11. how to remove interruptions to emotional experience

12. how to facilitate accessing primary emotions

13. how to transform core maladaptive emotions

14. how to encourage reflection on emotional experience

15. how to consolidate the newly emerged sense of self

 

Course Outline

1. Understanding the phenomena of depression from an emotion focused point of view

2. Transdiagnostic emotion focused case conceptualization

3. Understanding the role of emotion in depression

4. Importance of therapeutic presence

5. Empathic attunement and validation

6. Principles of treatment

7. Therapeutic process of transformation

8. Different variations of chair dialogue

9. Other clinical issues related to depression: suicide, bereavement, couple relationship

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Participants' Feedback

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• Detailed explanations on critical concepts and practices

• Clear and systematic explanations on theoretical foundation of EFT

• 老師利用大師的影片深入淺出講解EFT的理論和技巧

• 導師兼顧理論和實務應用，脈絡相當仔細明確

• 導師講解詳盡

• 讓我更有興趣進修EFT

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E04 透過椅子對話與您轉化驚恐: 深化情緒導向介入手法

Mastering Emotion-Focused Interventions:

Authentic Encounter through Chair Dialogue

for People with Anxiety Symptoms

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Enrollment for workshop at Caritas HEAT (date to be confirmed)

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E05 與您走出陰霾: 整合情緒導向介入手法

Integrative Emotion-Focused Interventions for

Childhood Interpersonal Complex Trauma

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Enrollment for workshop in August 2025 at Caritas HEAT

 

Introduction

This workshop aims at introducing an integrative model of emotion focused interventions on working with people who have experienced childhood interpersonal complex trauma. Every experienced and seasoned practitioner should develop a unique working model based on his/her attained knowledge base and intervention strategies. The goal is to help the above-said specific clientele becoming a holistic integrative person by resuming a reorganized sense of self.

 

The model introduced in this workshop is a theoretical integration including attachment theory, person-centered therapy, Gestalt therapy, contemporary emotion theory, neuroscience, mindfulness, existential therapy, and narrative analysis. It is fundamentally a dialectical process-experiential approach. Different intervention strategies based on the above framework would be discussed and demonstrated with case examples.

 

Objectives

This workshop aims at equipping the practitioners with the following emotion focused intervention skills step-by-step:

1. how to re-discover safety and stability to support client engagement in re-experiencing traumatic experience

2. how to assess client’s readiness for emotion-focused interventions on traumatic experience

3. how to re-visit and re-experience trauma memories without re-traumatization

4. how to facilitate experiential focusing to enhance experiencing

5. how to do two-chair enactment to unlock intrapersonal barriers

6. how to conduct imaginal confrontation (IC) procedure for emotional re-processing and transformation

7. when to use empathic exploration (EE) as an alternative to IC for accessing traumatic experience

8. when and how to conduct self-soothing work for strengthening the distressed self

9. how to re-construct personal meaning for integration and consolidation

 

Course Outline

1. understanding the characteristics of childhood interpersonal complex trauma

2. indicators and contraindicators for using emotion focused interventions

3. how to prepare and engage clients for re-processing traumatic experience

4. understanding the role of emotion in traumatic experience

5. understanding the emotional process of transformation

6. how to use the integrative model for contingencies in the treatment of childhood interpersonal complex trauma

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Target

Social Workers, Counselors, Clinical Psychologists, and other helping professionals. Those with some backgrounds in Emotion-Focused Therapy, Focusing, Mindfulness, Somatic Experiencing, or Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy would be an asset.

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Participants' Feedback

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• 真實個案分享，講解清晰，幫助臨床應用

• 影片講解清晰

• 有很多實用工具可以應用於工作

• 導師能先給予框架再仔細講解

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S01 Supervision Group for Clincial Proficiency

using an Integrative, Process-Experiential Emotion-Focused Approach 

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Enrollment for supervision group in Apr - Jun 2025 at Caritas HEAT

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Introduction

As a clinical practitioner, whether being a social worker, counsellor, therapist, clinical psychologist, we need to build up a repertoire of therapeutic interventions in a systematic and effective way. 

 

This supervision group aims at using an integrative model of interventions to help our clients become a holistic integrative person by resuming a reorganized sense of self.  Based on our evolutionary triune brain, this model is an integration of body-based, emotion-focused and narrative-informed interventions.  This is a theoretical integration of different knowledge bases, including person-centered therapy, Gestalt therapy, experiential therapy, existential therapy, contemporary emotion theory, neuroscience, attachment theory, mindfulness, and narrative analysis.

 

Objectives

This supervision group aims at providing a perform for those, who have already attended at least one two-day workshop on emotion-focused interventions conducted by Mrs. Catherine Poon, to have more practice skills drilling, to present case for consultation, and to inquire about any clinical issues encountered in daily practice.

 

Practice skills drilling includes

1. daily practice in cultivating therapeutic presence

2. developing therapeutic relationship and alliance

3. active listening and empathic attunement

4. tracking narrative process

5. emotion assessment to differentiate different emotions

6. practice of different empathic responses

7. facilitating emotional awareness, expression and reflection

8. facilitating neuro-affective and emotional regulation

9. integrating body-based interventions

10. enhancing internal experiencing

11. case conceptualization

 

Supervision Format

1. One 3-hour session per month (registration every three months)

2. Experiential exercises

3. Simulated practice of counseling sessions

4. Case consultations

5. Q&A on clinical difficulties

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​​C01 促進情侶關係中的情感連繫: 情緒導向介入手法

Enhancing Emotional Connection in Couple Relationship

using Emotion-Focused Interventions  

 

Enrollment for workshop at Caritas HEAT (date to be confirmed)

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Introduction

Working with couples is becoming an important domain in social work practice in different settings other than family service.  Couples therapy (marital counseling) has grown out from traditional family therapy into an independent discipline of mental health intervention over the past three decades.  A new paradigm shift occurs in the treatment of couple distress with the exponential growth in research on emotion, attachment, and neuroscience.  The intertwinement of emotional and relational processes becomes central in intimate relationships.  Emotion-focused couples therapy (EFT-C) has outgrown other approaches in the treatment of couple distress as an evidence-based approach.  It is an integration of experiential-humanistic approach and systemic approach in couples therapy.  It is grounded in the person-centered relational attitudes and integrates contemporary emotion theory, interaction and communication theory with the methods of enactment in structural approach and Gestalt therapy.  EFT-C proposes that it is emotion that fuels couples conflict and accessing to alternate emotion is the ultimate antidote to those conflicts.  Enduring self change and couple change are achieved through emotion transformation and restructuring of new couple interaction.

 

Objectives

This workshop aims at:

• equipping a preliminary grounding of the theoretical foundations of emotion-focused couples therapy

• enhancing the ability to cultivate and to balance effective therapeutic relationship and alliance with couples

• providing an understanding of different emotions arising in couples therapy setting

• introducing different therapeutic tasks in working with emotions in couple relationship

• enhancing the interest, confidence and skills in working with emotions in couple relationship

 

Course Outline

• Attachment theory and EFT-C

• Emotion theory and EFT-C

• Overview of the five stages of EFT-C

• Stage 1 Validation and balancing therapeutic relationship

• Stage 2 Identifying couple’s emotion interaction

• Stage 3 Accessing underlying emotions in couple interaction

• Stage 4 Emotion healing in couple relationship

• Stage 5 Consolidating new interactions and enrichment

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C02 治愈情侶關係中的情感創傷: 情緒導向介入手法

Healing Emotional Injuries in Couple Relationship

using Emotion-Focused Interventions

 

To be announced

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P01 促進親子關係及親職技能: 情緒導向介入手法

Enhancing Parent-Child Relationship and Parenting Skills

using Emotion-Focused  Interventions 

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Enrollment for workshop at Caritas HEAT (date to be confirmed)

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Introduction

Being an emotion coach as a parent to the beloved children plays a significant role in the children’s mental health and well-being.  The therapist’s role is to empower and support the parents in mastering skills of parenting as an emotion coach.  Emotion coach is just as important to those caregivers working with children in schools, hospitals and residential hostels.

 

Some children, in their developmental stage, may develop psychological symptoms and maladaptive behaviors such as anxiety, depression and eating disorder.  Some children may encounter stressful life events such as parental divorce, diagnosis of a special learning need and placement in foster care.  They need someone to coach them to approach, to process and manage their stress and emotional distress, and to cope with their symptoms.  Sometimes relationship rupture between the parents and the children needs to be repaired.  Last but not the least, parents and caregivers as emotion coach may also encounter emotional obstacles, such as fear, resentment and helplessness, dissipating the effectiveness in their efforts.  Emotion-Focused Therapy, based on the transformative power of emotion and the healing power of connection, provides a model to facilitate parents and caregivers in becoming an emotion coach for the children.

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Course Outline

Emotion Basics

• Why focused on emotions

• Understand emotions: anger, sadness, fear, shame and happiness

• Emotional triggers, bodily felt sense, label of feelings, thoughts (meaning making), need and action tendency

• Emotion assessment: primary (adaptive and maladaptive), secondary and instrumental emotions

 

Therapeutic Relationship

• Presence

• Empathic attunement

• Dealing with one’s own emotions as an emotion coach

• Relationship repair

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8 steps of emotion coaching

• Awareness of emerging emotion and attending to the emotion

• Opportunities for bonding and teaching

• Empathizing and validating the emotion

• Naming the emotion

• Exploring the emotion

• Meeting the need

  1. Strengthening positive emotional experiencing (enhancing potentials)

  2. Regulating negative emotional experiencing (developing resilience)

  3. Setting behavioral limits

• Co-constructing a new narrative

• Transforming into adaptive actions​​

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All the above workshops are conducted in the following format

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Training Format

• Didactic presentations

• Case presentation and discussion

• Experiential exercises

• Simulated practice of counseling sessions

 

Medium of Instruction

Cantonese supplemented with English

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Training Materials

Mainly in English

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Duration

2 days

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Target 

Social workers, counselors, clinical psychologists and other helping professionals who are working with parents and children​

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