Ten key skills in talking therapeutically and reflectively with a map

This workshop introduces ten key skills to help us talk and relate by mapping out the keywords and phrases of our discussions on paper.  This live, mutual and reflective process helps us see what we are saying, shape what we want to say and reflect on how the conversation is going.  It is proposed as a key and dynamic ingredient to building reflective capacity, relational thinking and therapeutic awareness.    

 The ten key skills of talking with a map are: 

1.   Staging and committing: sharing intentions, agreeing roles and setting out time, place and routine of conversations with pen and paper

2.   Tracking and recapping: key words go down on paper to establish a three way listening relationship and a shared, extended, conversational space for working memory

3.   Patterns of relating: noticing naming and negotiating links and gaps between words and stories using reciprocal role procedures

4.   Shimmering: finding words for feelings and staying with mixed and conflicting emotions

5.   Hovering: in among contrasting ideas, perspectives and personal ideologies

6.   Participating/observing: from inside out or outside in (observing eye and participating voices)

7.   Owning and authoring:  this is me/us, not me/not us or them. The orchestral challenge

8.   Encountering: each other in the immediate context and resonances of the discussion; mapping the here and now process between us to develop reflective and relational awareness about us now

9.   Writing, addressing and voicing: the maps and conversations to develop a conversational ear.

10. Making use, reviewing and concluding: bringing the work ‘home’ into an ongoing conversational, relational and contextual awareness

This half-day introductory workshop is for anyone whose work involves individual or group psychotherapy, counselling or reflective practice and would like to explore skills in mapping as we talk. The workshop is led by Steve Potter who is a Cognitive Analytic Psychotherapist, teacher and supervisor and had been teaching the process skills and ideas of 'talking with a map' to many teams and individuals in the UK and internationally for the past twenty years. A pilot measure for the routine monitoring of conversational and relational awareness session by session is included.  

The approach is an application of the concepts and tools of Cognitive Analytic Therapy.  It also draws on lessons from relational psychotherapies and creative writing.  A workbook of handouts and pre-reading is sent to participants a week prior to the workshop and the book Talking with a Map is available to purchase with a discount code after the workshop.  Follow up small group supervision is available in some cases.