2027 Conference

Successful therapeutic outcomes depend on more than technique alone. Two core factors repeatedly shape meaningful change: the strength of the therapeutic alliance and the patient’s ability to safely experience parts of themselves that have been hidden, avoided, or defended against.

This conference is designed to support your personal and professional growth by focusing on the person of the therapist. Together, we will explore what happens within you as you sit across from your patients and how your inner world can become a meaningful source of clinical information.

We will consider questions such as:

• What arises in you emotionally during a session?
• How closely do you attend to your internal experience while you are working?
• Do you use your feelings and countertransference as guides in the room?
• Do you sometimes relate to your feelings as separate from, or even disruptive to, the therapeutic process?

Your feelings are always communicating important information. Yet unconscious defenses—such as self-doubt, imposter syndrome, rationalizing, and other protective strategies—can restrict access to that information. This conference will help you identify the barriers that block your connection to your inner world and teach you how to recognize, trust, and value your feelings in the therapy room.

As you build this capacity, you can become more confident as a therapist, strengthen your clinical judgment, and bring greater precision to your interventions.

The practice of self-attunement also supports a deeper connection with yourself and with the people closest to you. As you become clearer about your feelings and the defenses that keep them hidden, you gain a roadmap for your own emotional healing.

This roadmap can help you make healthier, more adaptive choices for your well-being and dissolve barriers to closeness with yourself, your patients, and your loved ones.