Workshop Description

Communication is an under-valued focus in counselling and as a coping strategy. The reality is communication is the single most important factor in forming secure attachment, bolstering self-esteem and self-efficacy, maintaining mental health, and determining the effectiveness of one’s functioning in the world. This workshop will provide a typology of communication and examine the deep structure including family of origin influences that give rise to one’s default communication posture. We will explore how to change communication postures for ourselves and with our clients.
 
This experiential exploration of communication will not only be of benefit to participants personally, but to counsellors working with individual clients, couples/parents and families. It will add an interpersonal, relational dimension to a predominantly intra-psychic focus on cognitions and emotions in mobilizing change.
 
Objectives
 
  • Gain an awareness of the deep structure anchoring your own communication style and how to make it more congruent and effective
  • Learn to communicate your true thoughts and feelings without damaging your relationships
  • Develop insight into your own family of origin and its influence on your communication
  • Add communication exploration into your work with individual clients, couples and families
  • Provide a foundation for future professional development training in the use of Congruence Couple Therapy, an integrative evidence-based model for working with addiction and mental health. 

About the Facilitator
​
Bonnie Lee, MSW (RSW), PhD, is a Marriage and Family Therapist and a Clinical Fellow of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, and a Registered Social Worker. She is an Associate Professor and researcher in Addictions Counselling at the University of Lethbridge. 
 
A trainer and speaker in Canada and internationally, her articles on couple treatment outcomes, training evaluation, trauma and addiction, and a conceptual relational framework for addiction and mental health were published in peer reviewed international journals. To access her articles, go to: https://www.uleth.ca/dspace/handle/10133/546

    To register, send an email for more info:

Communication and Its Deep Structure:
An Experiential Approach 
to Growth
 
December 7 & 8, 2019 (Saturday & Sunday)
Time: 9-4:30 p.m. 
 
Martha Retreat Centre
1130 Scenic Drive South
Lethbridge
 
Registration Deadline: $310 BEFORE November 9, 2019; $330 thereafter. 

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