Understanding and Working with Emotional Pain in Psychotherapy: From Brokenness to Transformation

Knowing how to work with emotional pain is fundamental to the psychotherapy process. At the heart of emotional pain is a “broken self”. The question is, what is broken and how can we help mend it? Whatever caused the breaking - trauma, loss, abuse, or unmet needs - if the experience feels emotionally unsafe or intolerable, it will likely be avoided or buried beneath layers of protective strategies and behaviours. These protective responses can present as depression, anxiety, relational difficulties or addiction. While these responses may serve the purpose of covering the emotional pain, in the long run, it is the covers that keep the pain trapped inside.

In this science-based and clinically grounded workshop, Dr. Elizabeth Bolger presents a practical, skills-based model for helping clients access and work through emotional pain. This workshop is for any therapist who works with emotional pain and is looking to better understand the structure of pain, its protective layers, and how to heal the pain. Rooted in 35 years of clinical practice, this workshop draws on Dr. Bolger’s research and training in Emotion Focused Therapy and her original research with Adult Children of Alcoholics.  This model of emotional pain has informed decades of work with complex trauma, loss, addiction, depression, anxiety, and relational wounds.