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SIMHA Training Day 2023

The event was held on Sunday, the 22nd of October and was open to all mental health professionals.

The topic of this year’s training was Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT). Attendees enjoyed a one-day training session with Dr. Joyce Chen, who was a certified EFT supervisor and trainer in China. She had been promoting EFT for individual therapy since 2013 and had written a book about working with EFT for Chinese readers.

EFT was an empirically informed approach to the practice of psychotherapy, effective with individuals and couples.

This was an immersive and transformative training event in EFT, designed to introduce aspects of EFT to clinicians who were interested in incorporating this approach into their therapeutic practice. The major skill set of EFT required therapists to be available, present, and develop empathic attunement. Therapists were trained to observe facial expressions, body language, and breathing patterns to assess emotional shifts in the therapeutic encounter. The second part of the training was presented with a video. Here, participants watched Professor Leslie Greenberg’s interventions in a session working with anger and shame, and how this could foster healing and emotional growth. Professor Greenberg was the primary developer of Emotion Focused Therapy.