The Late-Session Surprise: Restoring Connection When the Plan Falls Apart
EFCT – Self-of-Therapist, Enactment Execution and Alliance Building
So much of our thinking is devoted to creating clear and coherent plans for sessions and working in the moment when the plan changes. There are moments when we are surprised and caught off guard, often just as we move toward an enactment we’ve invested with thought, empathy, and careful construction. We look into a partner’s eyes and realize we’ve missed something; it can feel like there isn’t enough time, that we invested so carefully in a particular goal, and yet we know that another step is asking to be taken than the one we had in mind.
This is a decisive hinge in any session. “Restoring connection” sometimes means tolerating anxiety, disappointment (ours and/or the clients’), the felt sense of smallness, and then recommitting to listening. This seminar names and normalizes these thresholds and shows how transparent curiosity, well-timed self-disclosure, and simple process moves can turn being lost into not only a potent alliance builder, but another cornerstone of the work’s foundation; it also recognizes that sometimes things fail. Rather than defending the plan, we pause, regain our curiosity, and acknowledge what we might not know yet; we renegotiate the enactment or repair and we step down from omniscience to travel alongside our clients. This is especially relevant for those clients who have felt tricked and let down, this honesty can be a corrective experience, and it relieves the clinician of having to be all-knowing.
Objectives:
Participants will leave with concrete ways to regulate themselves in the heat of the moment, make the dilemma explicit without collapsing safety, and convert late-session surprises into openings that advance bonding and reorganization.
Remain embodied and connected when late-breaking revelations arise while building enactments in EFCT.
Use self-disclosure and the vulnerability of “being lost” to strengthen the alliance and safety.
Apply practical process moves to work with therapist anxiety mid-session.
About Our Presenter ~ Mitchell Smolkin, M.A., RP
Mitchell Smolkin, M.A., RP, is a certified EFT Supervisor and Jungian Psychoanalyst based in Stockholm, Sweden. He has presented internationally for over 15 years and operates practices in Canada and Sweden, working with clients and supervisees worldwide. Mitchell routinely presented with Dr. Sue Johnson in Toronto at Externships; one of his couples was featured in an EFT training video, and another appeared in Attachment Theory in Practice, for which he assisted in editing Chapter 7. He has published in the areas of intergenerational trauma and memory and his opinion pieces have been featured in national newspapers. He is passionate about EFT and dedicated to sharing his clinical experience and learning with the broader therapeutic community.
mls@mitchellsmolkin.com
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This is a virtual event. Please join as this link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87926346343