Michiel van Vreeswijk
Michiel van Vreeswijk, MSc is clinical psychologist and CEO of G-Kracht Mental Health Care Institute, The Netherlands. He is a certified supervisor and personal therapist in cognitive behavioral therapy (VGCt; Dutch CBT society), certified supervisor schematherapy individual and group schema therapy (ISST, Dutch society of ST) and specialist group therapy (Dutch society of group psychotherapie: NVGP). Michiel van Vreeswijk gives regularly schema therapy workshops/ supervision/ personal therapy in the Netherlands and worldwide. He is (co-) author/ editor of several schema books/ chapters/ articles.
All you need is: Tough love to live your life fully in a healthy state.
Co-presenting with Jenny Broersen
Sometimes you get stuck in schema therapy. Patients understand their schemas and modes and what they should do to change, but seem not to dare their life at the fullest. Patients who seem to undermine their progress in becoming more resilient. Almost clinging to maladaptive modes every time there is a chance to change. Trying to tackle all the different schemas and modes individually has not been successful and seem to lead to desperateness. When you are at this point in schema therapy it is time to change strategy. To throw overboard all the separate schemas and modes and focus solely on the Undermining mode (with all it different colours). In this workshop we demonstrate a form of chair technique in which the client and the patient surpass the Undermining mode and actively work on creating a working alliance between the Healthy adult and Vulnerable child of the patient using though love as a limited reparenting style.A patient-therapist attempt to deal with affect fobia and transgenerational messages using ST and EMDR
A case of a woman in her thirties with a recurring depression, transgenerational issues, Emotional inhibition, Unrelenting standards, Detached protector, Demanding and Punitive parent (collectively introduced as the Undermining mode) is presented. The patient has had individual and group therapy in the past which has helped her to become depression free when she was discharged. After some time she comes back in need of some more therapy as she does not feel free to live her life as her little child mode would like to live. Some booster sessions with chair techniques are helpful but not enough. As a shared decision it is decided to do an experiment with EMDR in which she is trained by the therapist. She keeps track of how she implements it and both therapist and patient try to refine the process. In this case presentation, in which the patient is actively involved, the patient and I present the intervention based on observation and collected data, share our findings and ideas. We also discuss the process of collaboration to this point of the presentation and how it can be helpful to strengthen the Healthy adult and possible pitfalls.