The Metro Chapter of NYAMFT

March 2012 Tips and Reflections

A Marital Philosophy and System that Resonates with You

By Jim Walkup

Recently at the Harvard Medical Series on Working with Couples, I asked one of the speakers about what encourages clinical excellence among marriage counselors.  She responded, “Therapists need to find a system that resonates with their own sense of what leads to healing.  Then they will pursue developing their clinical skills simply because they become excited about continuing to be lifelong learners.

At the NYAMFT Conference at Iona, I certainly found this to be true as I watched Richard Schwartz present his work on Internal Family Systems.  After helping couples for forty years, I loved experiencing his style of caring in a way that I found both simple and profoundly moving.   His theory brought together many of the systems that I have valued over the years,  but never fully brought together, including  gestalt, body work, meditation, client-centered therapy, individuation and  inner-child work.

He introduced the concepts of a wise, compassionate, creative and courageous Self that is highlighted in most religions as the Buddha Self, the Christ Self or simply the Self with a capital S. He invited his clients to identify with this Self and from that position to begin to honor their protector selves and their need to keep the wounded self from being overwhelmed by emotion that was devastating in childhood.  With the permission of the protector selves, he began to encourage the Self to be present to the parts of the self frozen in the past because of trauma. The self offers the support we as adults would offer to any child stuck in such a situation.  This clearly leads to a new level of spaciousness and  integration for clients.

I hope I have intrigued you enough to encourage you to investigate his work, if you are not already familiar with his work.  A succinct summary can be found at: http://www.selfleadership.org/outline-of-the-Internal-family-systems-model.html.

To buy his most recent book:  YOU ARE THE PERSON YOU HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR go not to Amazon.com because it is way overpriced at the moment but to:  http://www.selfleadership.org/ifs-store.html.  He will be doing training in White Plains over the course of a year and a half on three day week-ends.

Men’s Happy Hour

Some of you may have noticed that there’s a slight dearth of males amongst our membership. We thought it might be fun just be together for a drink at the Opia at 130 East 57^th Street between Park and Lex, on Monday night, March 5 at 7:30 pm.  Let Jim Walkup know if you are interested at jimwalkup@optonline.net.

 

Plan to Create a Metro AMFT Directory

Maurizio Tusa has agreed to work on developing a chapter membership directory to be placed on our website.  He will need some people to help in building this and putting it on the website.  So let him know if you could offer some help and support.

Future Round Table for Members Who Have Recently Moved Here

Amanda Craig will be spearheading a sit downfor those of you who have migrated to New York and want to compare notes about what the experience is like and reflect on the differences in clients, their expectations, and your own countertransference to the New York world.  If you are interested in participating in this discussion contact Amanda at drcraiglmft@yahoo.com.

Websites to Check Out

Websites you may not yet have discovered:

http://www.psychotherapy.net/articles-and-interviews/interviews and: http://www.psychotherapy.net/articles-and-interviews/articlesThese sites have wonderful free articles and interviews by some of our favorite marital and individual therapists.

http://psychology.alltop.com/ : This website culls articles from many magazines and journals to give you the latest in brain research and psychological methodology and treatment.

 

Call for Old Marital Lecture CD’s

Do you have some old CDs of lectures from various conferences or workshops that you have attended?  If so, please consider donating them to the Metro Chapter library.  As you know at each of our meetings, we make available significant CD’s of lectures from such conferences as the Networker Convention.  You may take home these CD’s for a donation of $5 to your favorite Metro Chapter.  Anyone donating CD’s can exchange some of them for CD’s in the present library. Here’s your chance to experience some of the stars in our marital therapy field.  We also need a volunteer to be at the table to help people identify what they need.  See Jim Walkup.

Professional Development Committee: Amanda Craig, Maurizio Tusa, Joann Magdoff, Jim Walkup