Counselling Skills Training
Go beyond ‘doing’ into ‘being’.
Many EFT and NLP-based trainings give you tools. EFT Plus offers you not only a broader range of tools, but also the tool belt: a solid therapeutic frame comprising a deep theoretical and experiential understanding of the Being of both therapist and client; the confidence to navigate the ups and downs of the therapeutic relationship and a thorough, grounded grasp of the therapeutic process.
Why does EFT Plus Offer Counselling Skills Training?
We have trained EFT Practitioners for 15 years. Although, in the early days, we certified some gifted practitioners, we noted that many of them never made it into professional practice. We asked them why.
They told us that they felt all tooled-up with wonderful techniques and protocols, and were comfortable enough using these with other students and tapping buddies, but when it came to real-world practice, with real paying clients and with real issues, they didn’t feel equipped. They didn’t feel ready. They didn’t feel like a therapist. They didn’t feel confident that they had the skills to manage themselves in the therapeutic role, or the therapeutic relationship between themselves and the client, and the overall process of therapy as a whole from the first contact with the client to the last session and an appropriate ending.
We saw that simply teaching EFT as a tool does not go far enough. What was missing was the took ‘belt’: the therapeutic framework to contain the tools and the softer skills to support the techniques and protocols. The latter may guide you in what to do with the client, but they do not help you with how to be with a client.
Standard EFT trainings do not show you what to do when the client doesn’t fit the protocol. And most clients don’t! They do not show you how to sit with a client and co-regulate with them and to hold a safe facilitative space, so that both parties feel comfortable enough to truly engage and ’go there’, to the deep vulnerable places where real change happens. They don’t show you how to navigate the many curved balls that come at you during the process of therapy and from within the therapeutic relationship.
But we do.
The Toolbelt
Our Counselling Skills Training offers you the tool belt to support, hold and organise the tools you have already learned as a therapist, coach or helper. The tool belt enables you to BE with the client not DO to the client, and is made up of the therapist’s self-awareness and their understanding and lived experience of the Therapy Relationship and the Process.
When we have no tool belt our tools lay in disarray around our feet. We may pick up and offer whatever we feel might work for each individual issue a client brings. This might give both therapist and client some success or relief but there may be vital relational and process aspects missing.
Without the tool belt the client might feel unsafe, confused, lost, disempowered and dependent on the therapist. The client may not process between sessions, practise tools, understand why they are doing things, know where they are in the process or relationship. The therapist may also feel unsafe, ungrounded, confused, lacking in direction, under pressure to fix or anxious to ‘get it right’. Or the client and therapist may become stuck, play out patterns in the relationship and might either not recognise these or not know how to address them.
The tool belt helps you to answer the question ‘what if?’: What if I am uncomfortable with my client’s emotion? What if I feel emotionally unsafe in the session?’ What if my client gets angry with me? What if I feel angry at the client? What if there is a safeguarding issue?
In addition to the ‘what?’, the tool belt answers the question ‘how?’: How do I co-regulate? How do I stop second guessing myself? How to I get out of my own head and really be present to the client; How do I hold a safe space for the client? How do I feel safe? How do I know what to say or which technique to use? How do I support the client to really go there? How do I ask the right questions, offer the right reflections and challenge the client’s stuckness, all while maintaining rapport?
Our counselling skills modules explore all of these questions and much, much more.
Our Counseling Skills training modules
Through a series of monthly training modules we offer you a solid grounding in the theory, practice and skills of a person-centred therapist, to contain, and support your EFT practice, and to help you feel competent and confident as a therapist.
You can attend sessions on an ad hoc basis, picking and mixing the ones that are most relevant to where you are now - a perfect way to accrue your CPD hours.
Or you can become a yearly member of the Counselling Skills Group to attend as many sessions as you like at an affordable price. Attend every session to earn your certificate in Counselling Skills for EFT Practitioners.
Each two-and-a-half-hour session is a steal at only £35!
What will I learn?
Learnings will include:
Your self as your main tool and how to use it therapeutically.
How to handle your own ‘stuff’ and keep it out of the way of the work.
How to BE truly present with your client.
How to build rapport and maintain a facilitative therapeutic relationship.
How to hold a safe space for deeper exploration.
The secrets of co-regulation.
How to navigate the ups and downs and curved balls of the therapeutic relationship.
How to manage the process of therapy from first to last contact.
How to recognise and address safeguarding issues.
How to maintain an ethical practice.
Working with difference and diversity.
Working in a Person-Centred way.
Managing conflict within the client, yourself and within the relationship.
Handling stuck-ness in the client, the relationship and the process.
How to use clean language and avoid polluting the client’s experience.
How to observe, listen, encourage, empathise, question, challenge, reflect, paraphrase, summarise.
And much more …
When is this happening?
Regular monthly session dates and details of membership will be announced soon …
To find out whether these sessions are for you, come along to our very first taster session:
Your Best Therapeutic Tool: Your Self
Thursday 24th July 6.30 to 9.00 p.m. UK
Only £35
Via Zoom with Joanna Waddell
What our students say...