2024
Monday February 19th from 7 to 9pm (London)
Stella O'Malley - Working with Gender Dysphoria
Therapists today are increasingly requested to work with people who are experiencing challenges related to their gender identity. This webinar provides an overview of the different ways that gender dysphoria can manifest as well as practical approaches that can be valuable within the therapeutic process.
STELLA O'MALLEY is a psychotherapist, author, and public speaker. Maintaining a private practice primarily dedicated to parenting, family dynamics and teens, Stella’s work focuses on mental health and the importance of well-being. A regular contributor to the media, Stella's first bestselling book was called ‘Cotton Wool Kids’, she then released 'Bully-Proof Kids' in 2017, ‘Fragile’, in 2019 and, in 2023, “What your teen is trying to tell you”.
Co-host of the popular podcast, 'Gender: A Wider Lens', Stella is also the co-author, along with therapists Lisa Marchiano and Sasha Ayad, of ‘When Kids Say They’re Trans’. Stella is currently studying for a PhD in gender and is the founder and director of Genspect, an international organisation that offers a healthy approach to sex and gender.
Monday May 13th from 7 to 9pm (London)
Dr. Sally Winston - Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts: What they are, what they are not, and how to treat them
Everyone has passing, odd, pop-up thoughts, images and sensations that intrude into awareness and then move on. Sometimes, however, they arrive with a jolt of fear or shame or disgust – and then do not move on. They become the focus of concern, worry, even terror, part of a building imaginative narrative with a bad ending or a terrible implication. They get entangled in a web of struggle – to make the thoughts go away, to reassure oneself about them, to argue or analyze or contend with them – which only makes them more repetitive, louder and elaborated. Avoidance behaviors and compulsions and ruminations multiply. This webinar will explore these unwanted experiences, how they occur, and the context around them. It will explore why common attempts to replace, distract, or rationalize away these thoughts do not work. And why managing stress or avoiding triggers can be counterproductive, Changing one’s relationship with unwanted intrusive thoughts by shifting attitude and metacognitive perspective provides a more resilient recovery than the application of techniques or tools.
SALLY M. WINSTON, PsyD, is the founder and executive director of the Anxiety and Stress Disorders Institute in Baltimore, MD. She is a master clinician who has given sought-after national workshops for therapists for decades. She is a frequent guest on podcasts and webinars. She received the prestigious Jerilyn Ross Award of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) in 2011. She is coauthor of four books with Dr Martin Seif: What Every Therapist Needs to Know About Anxiety Disorders, Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts, Needing to Know For Sure and Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages. Her blog Living with a Sticky Mind can be found at PsychologyToday.com. Born in Montreal, Canada, she has three adult daughters, two granddaughters and a Senegalese parrot.
Monday September 16th from 7 to 9pm (London)
Aleksandar Dimitrijević - Attachment theory as a psychological approach to the evolutionary significance of loneliness
In our evolutionary past, attachment was a necessary primary source of motivation because helpless human youngsters were not able to survive the danger of aloneness. We evolved as a species that thrives only in collaboration and our inborn mechanisms make loneliness a painful experience.
I will use current developmental and neuroscientific research to show that the insecure forms of attachment are, in fact, reactions to being left alone for too long and/or often too early, while disorganized attachment is a reaction to the complete lack of predictability in the together-alone dynamic. Clinical work and research will be summarised to point out that the other significant concepts in the domain of early attachment are also possible to define through loneliness: trauma is an overwhelming togetherness; neglect is an overwhelming aloneness; implicit relational knowing is the most important asset one can take from the earliest childhood.
Finally, I will review data indicating that both attachment and parenthood are curiously similar to addictions, which, once again, shows that the most dangerous enemy was not cold, hunger or even predators but being exposed to these perils when alone.
ALEKSANDAR DIMITRIJEVIC PhD, is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice in Berlin. He worked as a university lecturer for more than twenty years and has given lectures, seminars, university courses, and conference presentations throughout Europe and the US. He is the author of many conceptual and empirical papers about attachment theory and research, psychoanalytic education, psychoanalysis and the arts, some of which have been translated into German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Slovenian, Spanish, and Turkish. He has also edited or co-edited twelve books or special journal issues, the most recent of which are From the Abyss of Loneliness to the Bliss of Solitude and Encountering Silencing (both with Michael B. Buchholz).
Monday Nov 18th from 7 to 9pm (London)
Mary Lynne Ellis - Time, Language, and Embodiment
In my talk I shall explore the significance of time in the therapeutic relationship and how an attentiveness to this is a vital catalyst for change. I shall reflect on the limitations of spatial metaphors, binaries of ‘inner’/ ‘outer’ in addressing the socio-political and historical specificity of individuals’ conscious and unconscious experiences. The impact of the Corona virus, the escalation of climate change, current political crises in the U.K. and globally, including the outbreak of wars, have highlighted for many psychotherapists that interpretations focusing primarily on the past do not suffice.
From a relational perspective, the question of how we live our lives within intersubjective networks lived in the present in anticipation of the future and affected also by the past is crucial. Through case material (composite) and references to literature, autobiography, and contemporary philosophy, I shall explore how an attention to time and creativity in the therapeutic relationship can open out previously unimagined possibilities of being and speaking as embodied individuals.
MARY LYNNE ELLIS is a relational analytical /phenomenological psychotherapist in private practice in London. With nearly forty years’ experience, she has also worked as an art therapist in the NHS and the voluntary sector. In the 1990s she established and worked as a co-therapist in a therapeutic community in London. She has taught on psychotherapy and art therapy trainings and lectured widely in the UK, Ireland and Chile on questions of time, language, embodiment, and identities in psychotherapy, particularly in relation to experiences of marginalization and discrimination. Her publications include a wide range of articles and two books: Questioning Identities; Philosophy in Psychoanalytic Practice (co-authored with Noreen O’Connor) and Time in Practice (2008). An updated edition subtitled ‘Temporality, Intersubjectivity, and Listening Differently’ has recently been published. She is also a practising visual artist.
