Techniques for Creatively and Compassionately Addressing the Impulse to Self-Harm and Relapse – Lisa Ferentz

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Many clinicians still insist that clients sign and abide by a standard safety contract as a way to manage self-harm and addictive behaviors. This inevitably creates a power struggle between clients and therapists and forces clients to “white knuckle” their destructive urges without giving them alternative ways to navigate and process the deeper reasons why they turn to acts of self-destruction.

This recording will offer therapists a viable alternative that helps to de-code the deeper trauma-based communication, metabolize emotions, access clients’ creativity and self-compassion, while teaching them healthier ways to self-soothe that don’t lead to an endpoint of guilt or shame.

1. Appraise limitations and risks for the use of standard safety contracts.
2. Evaluate the three components of CARESS and how to prepare clients to use the model when they get the impulse to harm themselves or return to their addiction.
3. Assess various CARESS techniques and identify at least four open-ended questions that can be used to process clients work.

Why standard safety contracts don’t work

• evoking power struggles
• re-enacting victim -perpetrator dynamics
• leaving clients bereft of healthy replacements

Incorporating CARESS

• walking clients through the model
• negotiating alternative ways to communicate, release endorphins, and self-soothe
• why contacting the therapist is not a part of the contract

Processing Clients’ artwork

• why therapists’ interpretations are detrimental
• asking open-ended questions to elicit clients’conscious and unconscious communication
• identifying the iconic images that connect to trauma narratives