Working in the Relationship with a Fragile Patient
Presenter: Jon Frederickson, MSW
Date: Saturday, September 7, 2024
Time: 9:30 am - 5:00 pm EST
Hybrid Conference: St. John's Episcopal Church, 6701 Wisconsin Avenue, Chevy Chase, Maryland AND Zoom Online
6 hours of CE/CME
Fragile patients suffer from extreme anxiety. Why? They often fear you will be like a traumatizing person in their past. In these cases, anxiety regulation does not work. After all, If you represent a traumatizer from the past, the patient cannot trust you. Instead, we must identify who we represent in the patient’s past (the transference). Then we need to help the patient see the difference between the therapist and who we represent. Then the patient can form an alliance with you rather than have a misalliance with the imagined traumatizer. That means we need to think about the patient’s anxiety and defenses. It doesn’t make sense for the patient to use all those defenses with you. So who do you represent in his past where those defenses would make sense? How can we talk about the relationship? How can we help the patient see these relational patterns? We will study, moment by moment, a three-hour consultation with a fragile patient. It will show how to work in the relationship and address problems when forming a therapeutic alliance.
