In our second blog post this month, Jennie Miller PTSTA, Director of Physis Scotland and tutor on the Certificate in Couples Work course shares with us her reflections on couples training with Physis Scotland.
It has been, in my experience, a common miss- conception that if you can work with an individual client its straightforward to just add another and see a couple. I have met many practitioners who have done this and then decided that couple’s work is not for them, this I see as a great pity.
TA training, wherever you train, is a fantastic robust and in-depth way to learn about how to be a counsellor and/or psychotherapist and there are many relationships out there who would really benefit from this, but- and here lies the vital part- we need to have good training in this and not just add another client to the mix. Through identifying this need and also being interested in couple work I have developed, over many years, a robust way of working with couple’s that I then went on to train and share with others. The Key to Couple Work is a dynamic short term therapeutic programme based on TA.
I was delighted to join Physis Scotland, and we are now offering this training which has a Physis Scotland Certificate. Moreover, we have just come to the end of our first course which was happily full with a waiting list and folk already signing up for our next one.
The term “lovely group” often gets banded about, but I can truly say we did have a lovely group from all over the UK. Within our cohort was a wide range of experience in couple work, from the novice through to the very experienced, and this brought a wonderful richness to our time together. There was a mix of modalities and over all experiences which added to questions and all our learning.
Over three weekends we worked though the model from assessment to each session and yes, we were on zoom. I made sure there were plenty of opportunities for the participants to work together in triads, thus experiencing the dynamic of being in a three. I also used creative techniques which everyone took to, it was lovely to hear the sharing and the lightbulb moments from the smaller groups and I enjoyed our larger group discussions.
By the end those who had been more nervous about approaching the work reported to feeling a new confidence and for the more experienced found they had learnt some new tools, all said that they felt this training will also benefit their individual work though learning about relationships and of course we all reflected on our own relationships. What training doesn’t come back to the “I”? And I can report that I thoroughly enjoyed our time together.