Therapists’ empathy is an essential, yet complex aspect of clinical practice. It is consistently evidenced to be amongst the strongest predictors of therapeutic outcome.
This training went beyond basic content empathy. It included both theory and hands-on skill training combining attitudinal and specialized micro-skill training formats. It offered an integrative theoretical framework for therapist empathy that brought together Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) theory, social neuroscience, the empathy cycle, and the empathy channels model.
This training was led by Dr Christina Michael and was supervised by Professor Robert Elliott. The group of participants was registered psychologists and psychologists in-training from different parts of the world including the UK, Slovakia, India and Cyprus.
The two-day workshop involved skills practice in small groups supervised by Dr Christina Michael. Participants practiced empathic attunement and advanced empathic responses including Evocative Empathy, Exploratory Empathy, Empathic Affirmation, Process Empathy, and Empathic Conjecture.The format was a mixture of brief lectures, videos or demonstrations, experiential practice exercises in small groups, and discussion.
The course was taken for continuing professional education credit. This course was open to qualified therapists and students (Postgraduate Diploma/MSc Level or above) from person-centred, psychodynamic, CBT, ACT, and related backgrounds and to therapists who have attended any training in EFT. Signed certificates were sent to participants.
