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Introduction:

Working with different emotions has been a core difficulty in social work clinical practice.  This workshop aims at exploring and understanding the nature and functions of each of the major categorical emotions, namely anger, sadness, fear, shame and compassion.  

 

Anger can be destructive when it is under-regulated while it can be very empowering when it is expressed assertively.  

 

Sadness can be overwhelming when we experience losses while it can be soothing if it can be expressed in a goal-directed path.  

 

Fear can be survival-threatening to us which makes us run away from, yet it can strengthen our sense of existence if we dare to stay and live with it.  

 

Shame is a soul-eating emotion which makes us feel shrinking, but it is the most honest emotion telling us who we are.  

 

Apart from exploring different emotions individually, it is even more important to understand how they are intimately intertwined with each other and how they interplay with each other to appear as a complexity of mixed emotions.  With the unconditional acceptance and embracing compassion, we can truly be ourselves with all our apparently unpleasant emotions which are in fact friendly guidance of our core needs.

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With an in-depth understanding of different emotions, we shall be able to choose appropriate intervention strategies and skills to help those suffering from overwhelming or detached emotions.  This workshop introduces how to use a process-experiential emotion-focused therapeutic approach to facilitate corrective emotional changes.
 

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Objectives:

This workshop aims at:
1.    furnishing an in-depth understanding of different categorical emotions, namely anger, sadness, fear, shame and compassion
2.    equipping the perceptual skills of using a process-experiential approach
3.    learning how to make emotion assessment
4.    learning how to choose appropriate emotion-focused interventions to facilitate emotional awareness, expression and reflection

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Course Outline:

1.    Exploring the nature and functions of anger, sadness, fear, shame and compassion
2.    Exploring how different emotions interplay with each other
3.    Differentiated interventions of different empathic responses
4.    Empathic attunement – diving into emotional experience 
5.    Empathic affirmation – containing vulnerable emotions
6.    Empathic exploration – allowing emotional expression
7.    Accessing and staying with emotional experience 

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Content︰

•     Didactic presentations

•     Experiential exercises

•     Case presentation and discussion

•    Simulated practice of counseling sessions

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Content︰Cantonese supplemented with English

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Training Materials︰Mainly in English

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​Trainer︰

Mrs. Catherine Poon

B.A., M.S.W., M.BuddhStud.
Emotion-Focused Therapist (Individual and Couples)
Registered Social Worker
Certified Counselor (HKPCA)
Associate Fellow (HKPCA) 
Approved Supervisor (HKPCA) 
Certified EFT Trainer (Individual Therapy) recognized by the International Society for Emotion Focused Therapy (isEFT)

 

Mrs. Catherine Poon has worked with the Hong Kong Catholic Marriage Advisory Council (HKCMAC) for over 20 years as a counselor.  She specializes her clinical work with clients of emotional dysregulation, depression, anxiety, and childhood attachment trauma, and couples with chronic physical/mental illnesses, addictive behavioral problems and extra-marital relationship.  Apart from clinical practice of individual and couple counselling, she has supervised social work students at different universities and family mediator trainees from different social service agencies.  She maintains a humanistic person-centered approach in her clinical practice and supervision.

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Mrs. Catherine Poon has been trained in Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) with Professor Leslie Greenberg since 2004. She has given presentations, provided skills coaching in the Module Workshops, and conducted monthly supervision groups in the yearly Training Programs in EFT (Individual & Couples) jointly organized by the EFT Clinic of York University and HKCMAC from 2007 to 2017.  Over the years, she has led hundreds of supervision group sessions.  She is recognized as a certified EFT individual therapy trainer since 2016.
 
She is currently in private practice.  She continues to provide individual and couples therapy, training workshops on EFT (Individual and Couples), Advanced Empathy and Mindfulness-informed clinical work, and EFT supervision for local practitioners.  She is an Honorary Lecturer at the University of Hong Kong from 2015 to 2020, teaching Emotion-Focused Interventions and Marital Counseling for Master degree students of counseling and social work.

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