Clinical challenges in working with emotionally flat, shut-down states

Speaker: Dr Graham Music, consultant child and adolescent psychotherapist, and adult psychotherapist.

In this evening talk, Dr Graham Music will look closely at the complex challenges of working with more shut-down states of mind.

Many clients can present as quiet, cut-off, dampened down, and even hard to remain interested in. We will see how often they are out of touch with their own body-states, with very little drive, physical energy, libido, and dampened down seeking systems. Such cases require a different kind of therapeutic approach.

These patients might be highly neglected, ones whose developmental potential was never triggered, more depressed in their flatness, or more dissociative 'deadened' ones who have shut down after trauma, each requiring different approaches.

We will examine the early and later roots of such experiences, and use neurobiological and psychodynamic approaches alongside an awareness of autonomic states, including our own embodied countertransference reactions to such clients. The lecture will outline key theoretical ideas and also make use of clinical material, video clips, and audience discussion.

Book here - https://tavistockrelationships.ac.uk/forthcoming-events/1264-shut-down-states