CENTER FOR ALLIANCE-FOCUSED TRAINING
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Mindfulness in interaction
Mindfulness practice involves learning to pay attention to whatever emerges in the moment, with an attitude of openness, curiosity and nonjudgmental acceptance. The emphasis in mindfulness practice is not just on the observation of one’s internal experience in specific settings but also on mindfulness-in-interaction. Although the most well-known mindfulness exercises involve meditating while sitting, the general emphasis is on integrating mindfulness into everyday life. A variety of different strategies are taught for doing this (such as practicing while walking or engaging in everyday activities, like eating or working).
Therapist mindfulness plays a key role in alliance-focused training. Clinicians have become increasingly interested in the use of mindfulness-based interventions for treating patients, and more recently in the value of therapist mindfulness training for purposes of developing an accepting and nonjudgmental stance. Our emphasis is on the cultivation of mindfulness skills in therapists in order to help them develop the skills of 1) attending to whatever emerges for them in the present moment, and to cultivate an attitude of openness, curiosity and non-judgmental acceptance towards both their own experience and the experience of others, 2) refining their capacity to become aware of ways in which they are unwittingly participating in repetitive, maladaptive interpersonal patterns with their patients, and 3) cultivating their ability to pay attention to subtle intuitions, feelings, and images that they themselves are experiencing, which can potentially offer important points of departure for exploring, alliance ruptures and therapeutic impasses.
Therapist mindfulness plays a key role in alliance-focused training. Clinicians have become increasingly interested in the use of mindfulness-based interventions for treating patients, and more recently in the value of therapist mindfulness training for purposes of developing an accepting and nonjudgmental stance. Our emphasis is on the cultivation of mindfulness skills in therapists in order to help them develop the skills of 1) attending to whatever emerges for them in the present moment, and to cultivate an attitude of openness, curiosity and non-judgmental acceptance towards both their own experience and the experience of others, 2) refining their capacity to become aware of ways in which they are unwittingly participating in repetitive, maladaptive interpersonal patterns with their patients, and 3) cultivating their ability to pay attention to subtle intuitions, feelings, and images that they themselves are experiencing, which can potentially offer important points of departure for exploring, alliance ruptures and therapeutic impasses.
Metacommunication
A common intervention used to explore and repair ruptures consists of metacommunication. This process entails an attempt to step outside of a rupture or vicious cycle that is currently being enacted by treating it as the focus of collaborative exploration: that is, communicating about the transaction or implicit communication that is currently taking place. Accordingly, therapists need to develop the ability to step back from what is going on in the therapeutic relationship, to participate in what is going on while observing it at the same time. This is where the skill of mindfulness comes into play. Metacommunication can be thought of as a type of mindfulness-in-interaction. It involves bringing one's complete attention to present experience on a moment-to-moment basis -to the interactive process as it unfolds. It involves attempting to put into words an implicit or intuitive sense that we have of what may be taking place. Metacommunication involves a number of specific principles: For more information, click here.
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