Clinical Consultation

Clinical consultation can be a space to deepen how you think about complex cases and become more confident working with what is happening in the therapeutic relationship itself. You may be looking to strengthen your ability to:

• Recognize enactments as they're unfolding and understand what they may be communicating about the client's internal and relational world

• Notice when you're being pulled into a particular role or dynamic without automatically acting from it

• Use your countertransference as meaningful clinical information

• Stay grounded in your own clinical perspective when a client evokes strong feelings, doubt, defensiveness, urgency, or confusion

• Speak directly and nonjudgmentally about what you're noticing or experiencing in the therapeutic relationship

• Know when and how to bring what is happening in the room into the conversation with your client

• Work thoughtfully with narcissistic defenses and other complex personality dynamics

• Move beyond the content of a session and become more attuned to the relational process unfolding underneath it

• Make sense of cases that leave you feeling stuck, confused, ineffective, overly responsible, or unsure of what is happening

• Develop greater confidence staying present with intense or challenging relational dynamics

• Think more deeply about case formulation, including how a client's history, defenses, attachment patterns, and personality organization are showing up in treatment

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The goal of consultation isn't simply to figure out what to do next in a difficult case. It's to help you develop a deeper understanding of what's unfolding in the therapeutic relationship, recognize what you're being pulled into, and feel more grounded and intentional in how you respond.