Counselling skills training

This specialised 5-day intensive program focuses on developing relational gestalt skills and is tailored for counsellors, other mental health professionals, those who use counselling in their work, and students of these professions.

Presenters: Belinda Gibson, Tony Jackson, Eva Deligiannis & Leanne O’Shea

Dates | 24 & 25 October, 22 November, 13 December 2024, and 14 February 2025

Where | Elie, Gestalt Centre Training Campus, 27 Royal Parade, Parkville

Fee | $1400. GTA students $1200. Includes GST.

Why attend this event

Articulate relational gestalt counselling skills by identifying core counselling skills that emerge from gestalt theory and are congruent with the holistic model of care and change in contemporary gestalt thinking. They are both a high-level summary of the skills taught in our 4-year training program and an entry-level course.

Focus on the development of these core counselling skills by zeroing in on specific needs of counsellors and student counsellors and by deepening foundational skills essential for effective gestalt counselling.

Locate skills within the context of the therapeutic relationships by practicing skills vital to the counselling process. These skills will be integrated into a gestalt framework, providing an understanding of their application within therapeutic relationships.

Support skill development feedback allowing participants to apply their skills in a supportive environment with immediate feedback and suggestions.

Program

Day 1: Turning up & tuning in

What is counselling and what are counselling skills? What are gestalt counselling skills?

Develop skills in beginnings and setting the scene; tuning into the other; alignment; presence; attending behaviours; and initial contracting.

Relational gestalt concepts: awareness, presence, therapeutic relationship, change

Day 2: Engaged & deep listening

Listening as an embodied act. Develop skills in listening, responding to feelings; noticing; observing verbal and non-verbal cues; working with silence; and listening with heart.

Gestalt concepts : Dialogue, phenomenological method and tracking experience

Day 3: Asking questions: exploring figure & ground

Questions help us clarify what the client is bringing to counselling. They help focus the time and identify what is important. Develop skills in respectful questioning; process and content questioning; open and closed questioning; contextualising questions; and the balance between challenge and support.

Gestalt concepts: field theory, figure and ground, paradoxical theory of change

Day 4: Identifying the presenting problem

The counsellor and client work together to identify what the client wants to talk about and how the counsellor might help.Develop skills in focusing on the client’s story to identify a presenting problem; contracting around what and how this conversation may go; designing interventions; and exploring what is possible.

Gestalt ideas: dialogue & phenomenology

Day 5: Identifying the underlying problem

The client’s presenting problem often points to more significant issues to be brought to light and gently worked with.Develop in reflection; thinking about client’s broader themes; attending to endings; and the role of supervision.

Gestalt ideas: Core Organising Themes and contact styles

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https://www.gestaltcentre.com.au/

About Gestalt Therapy Australia & the presenters

Gestalt Therapy Australia (GTA) has been training people to become therapists for 25 years. Our program provides an opportunity to become immersed in a holistic therapeutic system that supports deep work with others. The training supports building the therapeutic alliance; clinical thinking; ideas about change; and develops interventions and reflection across the arc of a therapeutic relationship.

The ConnectGround clinic offers internships to GTA students and graduates of other training programs. The clinic is where many gestalt therapists get their start in this work and the clinic staff are experts in helping to develop new therapists and counsellors.

Relational Skills takes the philosophy and practice of relational gestalt thinking into workplaces. With a focus on coaching training and supervision for coaches.

This 5-day training will be supported by faculty from each of these three areas. The training will focus on the skills necessary for all intentional counselling, psychotherapy, and coaching practice. We will make explicit core counselling competencies, tailor practices to hone these new skills, and build participants’ know-how and confidence.