Main description:

What do you do when your client flies into a rage or has a severe panic attack during a therapy session? Author Julian D. Ford explains how to harness such crises for breakthroughs.

Crises that erupt in the midst of a psychotherapy session can be overwhelming not just for the client but also for the therapist. Yet every crisis also can be a therapeutic breakthrough. With this book, therapists learn how to transform such critical moments in psychotherapy into powerful and positive turning points. Drawing from trauma and attachment theory and the essential principles of psychotherapy and crisis management, Ford explains how crises can be understood as episodes of extreme emotional dysregulation. With a series of indepth case examples, Ford shows how therapists can utilize emotion regulation as a practical framework to deescalate crises.

Each case study is a transcript of a psychotherapy session, complete with dialogue and commentary, featuring reallife expert clinicians who use a crisis as an opportunity to help clients face and resolve a sense of being damaged, betrayed, or abandoned.

With wisdom, compassion, and a deep understanding of human emotions, this book teaches essential skills that all therapists will need.

Contents:

Introduction
Part I: Foundational Principles and Paradigms
Chapter 1. How (and Why) Do Crises Happen in the Psychotherapy Session?
Chapter 2. Principles and Effective Practices for Crisis Management
Chapter 3. At the Core of Crises: Emotional Dysregulation
Chapter 4. Restoring Adaptive Emotion Regulation and Self-Regulation
Chapter 5. Therapists' Stress Reactions and Countertransference
Part II: The FREEDOM Model for Restoring Emotion Regulation
Chapter 6. Essential Elements in Psychotherapy
Chapter 7. TARGET: Psychotherapy for Emotion Regulation
Chapter 8: The FREEDOM Paradigm for Emotion Regulation
Chapter 9: Using FREEDOM with Clients Before Crises Occur
Chapter 10: Applying FREEDOM to Therapist Emotion Regulation and Managing Countertransference
Part III: Case Session Transcripts of In-Session Critical Moments
Chapter 11. A Crisis of Depression, Anxiety, Shame, Dissociation, and Self-Harm
Chapter 12. Sexual Abuse and Shame: A Crisis of Hopelessness and Avoidance
Chapter 13. A Crisis of Abuse, Shame, Dissociative Identity Fragmentation and Suicidality
Chapter 14. Repairing a Rupture in the Therapeutic Alliance
Chapter 15. Flight or Fight (Part 1): Responding to a Dissociative Flashback Case Transcript with Annotations and Commentary
Chapter 16. Flight or Fight (Part 2): Responding to the Eruption of Aggression
Epilogue