Person centered and focusing oriented approaches to the therapeutic alliance emphasize therapist empathy and unconditional positive regard as crucial to the client’s healing process. However, therapists’ nervous systems may become burdened by empathy fatigue and “burnout” from listening to clients in this way (Stebnicki, 2007). Wholebody Focusing Oriented Therapy (WBFOT) offers an effective antidote to “- empathy fatigue -”.
Shirley Turcotte, RCC, lived with and then worked on trauma for more than half a century, both as a survivor and as a trauma therapist. The daughter of a Métis Aboriginal father and a Russian Mennonite refuge mother, she used her own experiences and cultural strengths to develop ingenious, practical […]
This book, co-authored with Nina Papadapoulos, documents the training of teacher trainers in the IRC’s Female Education Program (FEP) in psychosocial wellness models. and the development of teacher training materials for IRC refugee teachers in 2002. A reflective process was used to raise awareness, to build […]
Community wellness is based on a public health approach with two assumptions. First, most illnesses are preventable, including various types of mental illness. Second, the community itself contains many solutions to its own health needs and already has many techniques to encourage resilience and wellness. […]
From September 12 – 25, 2015, Pat Omidian, PhD, travelled to Japan to lead experiential workshops and lecture on Community Wellness Focusing in Tokyo, Kyoto and Hiroshima. … After the workshop, [a participant] told the story to 5th grade children (10-11 years old) at school. [She] taught a domestic science class by telling them about the positive deviant woman and avoidance of Ebola as a case. How important it is to devise ideas at home!
Focusing Initiatives International mentors people through a Focusing-based practice of listening, offering supportive guidance and coaching. Our intensely practical method deepens your work by helping individuals and groups access inner wisdom. When you listen to each other differently — from a place of compassion and […]
An Online Community Wellness Initiative Nurturing and Sustaining “Interactive Focusing” The work of Dr. Janet Klein and Dr. Mary McGuire Message from Dr. Mary McGuire, Co-Creator of Interactive Focusing Dr. Janet Klein and I, for many years, were co-creating and developing the Interactive Focusing […]
Are you a psychosocial or development professional looking for more effective ways of working with groups? Would you enjoy feeling more comfortable and at ease, in helping groups turn conflicting perspectives into new creative possibilities? Are you a Focusing or Nonviolent Communication (NVC) practitioner interested […]
Katrijn: “It only becomes fun when there is a real problem” When I practice clowning this sentence feels so right for me. My clown can be so alive when my clowning partner offers me a situation I cannot respond in an obvious way. The search for my own right action brings up creativity, emotion, honesty and so much joy.
In my daily life fun is often hard to find when struggling with the problems life is offering me. I get caught up, lose myself and my connection to others. I am running on a treadmill like a little mouse.
Our staff members at the Confidence Clinic were selected and trained to be nonjudgmental and accepting. The Focusing attitude of compassionate curiosity was helpful. One participant who had a lot of anger problems and came to us just after completing drug rehabilitation described how that “compassionate curiosity” […]
My colleague Nina Lawrence and I started teaching the Focusing process one year ago in a workshop for 11 management and health staff from an Afghan non-governmental association called Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (CHA) in Peshawar, Pakistan. The efforts are to help Afghan refugees and […]
