Our Wee Minds Matter – in life, therapeutic practice and supervision

This workshop will provide an opportunity to explore the importance of early relational experiences which lay the foundations for our future emotional, social and cognitive health and well-being.  This is an invitation for participants to think about the self of the therapist, supervisor, supervisee in relation to their own lived experiences. We all have experiences of being infants and receiving care, which have shaped our identities and relationship with emotions as we grow and develop into adults.  These experiences influence our identities as psychotherapists and inform the conversations we have in our family lives, our clinical practice and supervision relationships. 

The workshop will offer a mixture of theory and practice based examples from my work in Wee Minds Matter, the NHS GGC Infant Mental Health Team.  My work with families is organised by an infant mental health framework, which is underpinned by current neuroscience, trauma and attachment narrative ideas.  A systemic framework pays attention to power imbalances, inequality and marginalised voices.  Infants are our most vulnerable members of society and need adults to make sense of their experiences and to articulate their voices about their communications of their emotional needs.  A cultural lens supports an exploration of beliefs about parenting and attachment experiences, which shape our expectations about self, others and the world around us.  Making sense of our inner conversations about our own infant experiences and our stories of love, fear, abandonment, care and comfort is important to create therapy and supervisory contexts which encourage safety and co-regulation.

Participants will be invited to join at least two self-reflective activities to explore how to make use of our own stories of infancy and the ways in which we have learned about emotions and regulating our nervous systems when feeling safe or unsafe.  People will be encouraged to honour and respect their own personal boundaries in relation to what feels safe enough to explore or share.

Participants will receive a handout with resources and references to take away to support curiosity and compassion for our own lived experiences and ideas about how to use lived experiences as our resources in our personal and professional contexts.