Past Catalyse Events
Mapping Mortality in CAT
To explore the ways in which we can work with the difficult conversations about mortality in therapeutic encounters
A 1-day workshop led by Mandy Wildman
Event Hashtag: #CATmort17
This event has now passed
Date: Friday 14th July 2017
Time: 9:30am to 4:30pm
Venue: Dalton Ellis, Manchester, M14 5RL
Fees: ACAT member :: £125.00
non-ACAT member :: £140.00
Please note there is an additional £15.00 fee if invoicing is requested.
The workshop fee includes lunch, refreshments and handouts.
Overview of workshop:
As psychotherapists, practitioners and clinicians we concern ourselves with the human dilemmas, difficulties, fears, distress and other preoccupations that life brings. We could perhaps say that our work is about understanding the human condition. In our lives we all constantly manage the tensions between opposites, moving between confidence and doubt, belonging and isolation, sickness and health, life and death. Our mortality is often not a subject that we find easy to approach, either with ourselves or with our clients and patients, but it is woven into every part of our life story.
This study day is designed to bring compassion, respect, and some humour, to a subject that can induce guilt, shame, confusion and anger. Its aim is to allow us to feel more at ease with our feelings, more confident in expressing them and more comfortable in talking with our clients about their experiences, as they present in our CAT work.
The day will use a variety of information from psychology, philosophy and literature to illustrate and explore the themes, and to consider our own thoughts and relationships with them. Small group activity will help participants explore and reflect on how we engage with issues of ageing, illness, mortality, loss, bereavement and decline in the therapy room. We will use CAT mapping to help us to consider these themes and to develop understanding, confidence and skills for therapeutic practice.
In particular we will:
- explore the ways in which we can work with difficult conversations about mortality in our therapeutic encounters
- explore our own reciprocal role procedures with our mortality and existential anxieties
- consider in what ways faith, ethics, family cultures and values influence our work with issues of mortality
- work towards developing the capacity to manage unbearable feelings, those within ourselves and those our patients and clients bring to therapy
- map the relational role procedures we might enact in our work with patients and clients when considering mortality and attendant existential issues of meaninglessness and isolation
Aims and learning outcomes:
The learning outcomes are designed to be of direct value in clinical practice and will be relevant to people working in a wide range of settings including mental health, physical health and palliative care.
The day will enable
- Preparation for working with these difficult conversations
- Enhanced communication and relational skills
- Increased capacity to engage in effective, realistic and compassionate dialogue around death and dying
- Enhanced cultural awareness and sensitivity when thinking about issues relating to mortality
- Increased resilience in ourselves as workers
- Greater confidence in working with complex issues that have no ‘solution’, so that we are able to be alongside our patients and clients when exploring these issues
Who is it for?
Qualified and trainee CAT therapists and other therapists with knowledge and understanding of CAT, including familiarity with mapping and reciprocal roles.
Facilitators: The workshop will be facilitated by Mandy Wildman
Mandy Wildman has worked in social care and health settings for approx 25 years, taking early retirement in 2013 to focus on working privately. Mandy’s initial training was in psychiatric social work and she worked in both hospital based and community teams. She began working in the NHS in 2000 and subsequently worked in forensic services until retiring in 2013. Whilst working as a manager she continued to hold a clinical caseload and to work as an associate member of the psychotherapy clinic. Mandy is a CAT Practitioner and is currently completing the academic components of the IRRAPT course. She is an Associate member of Catalyse, offering Personal Reformulations to trainees. Mandy Wildman has a private practice in which she offers mainly CAT work to individuals and has a long standing special interest in working with people who have experienced trauma of some type. More recently, due to both casework and personal experience she has worked much to understand issues relating to mortality and to try to understand these within a CAT framework.
