Meeting at
St. Thomas More Catholic Church
Multi-Purpose Room
1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Directions: Call 919-968-8600 or click here
March Meeting |
Focusing Partnership for Harnessing Self-direction for the Mentally Ill
Overcoming mental illness is extremely challenging and daunting even with unlimited resources. With limited resources, which is the case for most of the mentally ill, the challenge becomes even greater. Harnessing self-direction and motivation in the context of supportive community can be a powerful force and even a saving grace in this situation of mental illness. Many people with severe mental illness are capable of harnessing and relying on their self-direction in learning an Egalitarian exchange called Focusing Partnership. With sufficient training in Focusing Partnership, the effectiveness of egalitarian exchange can approach the effectiveness of psychotherapy. A very small group of people across the mental health spectrum actually seems to respond to Focusing Partnership training better than to psychotherapy. Egalitarian exchange, once it is developed, is free. My model of focusing called "Domain Focusing," adds a domain for empathy/self-empathy. That domain is set up to facilitate accessing the wisdom of your particular faith. The presentation will include a guided exercise and a short dyadic exchange to give you a direct taste of the process. www.focusingnow.com (my web site) The research and the philosophical foundations of focusing are quite strong but not so well known. www.focusing.org (website of theFocusing Institute) is extremely generous with material. Robert L Lee, Ph.D. is a theoretician and innovator in Eugene Gendlin’s Implicit Tradition. He has been an international leader in training Focusing Trainers, Focusing Oriented Psychotherapists (FOT) and in developing Coordinators. He led the Advanced Certification Weeklong at The Focusing Institute in New York for 7 years. A licensed psychologist, Lee has developed a new model for teaching focusing (Domain Focusing), he has developed a theory and practice for change on the macro level for stubborn problems (Changing the Unchangeable through Focusing--Macroshifting), he has developed a comprehensive practice for working with difficulties in felt sense formation (Elusive Felt Sensing). In psychotherapy, he has outlined 4 Faces of Focusing in Psychotherapy and has developed special methods for using Focusing with anxiety and depression and with couple and group psychotherapy. |