Therapeutic Coaching for Couples
Intensive Transformational Couple Therapeutic Coaching – a two day course of coaching in effective communication, connection, encounter, intimacy and healing accumulated wounds.
- Is your marriage or partnership strained?
- Are you trying to heal your relationship after an affair?
- Are you managing the effects of addiction in your relationship and looking to change?
- Do you want to create a relationship that is safe, passionate, and long lasting?
- Is separation or divorce looming?
- Do you want to improve your relationship and re-connect with your partner?
- Are you interested in learning skills that will help you create more effective communication in your relationships, not only with your spouse or partner, but also with your children?
When your most intimate relationship is feeling strained, it is painful and stressful. Couples can find themselves behaving in ways they could never have predicted in those early loving times. Any children in the relationship can be affected and this can add to the stress all round. Whether you are married, engaged, beginning a new relationship, in a committed partnership, or wanting to repair communication in any relationship, this intensive course can help:
- Develop new ways of resolving conflicts together
- Re-establish effective communication with your partner
- Increase passion and intimacy
- Recreate and enhance the friendship you share with each other
- Develop your confidence in your abilities to communicate more effectively and connect on a deeper level in all your relationships.
Consultancy in the Workplace
Teams in conflict; teams wishing to address stress management to aid healthy team productivity; teams who have been traumatised by specific events; teams who want in house training on specific topics, are all met with bespoke prepared facilitation to meet the needs of the particular group. Jan has offered critical incident debriefing to organisations, and supervised for London Ambulance Service supporting their peer Support Teams. She has given training to teams in residential care, developing their understanding and skills in meeting the needs of people with learning disabilities, autism, the epilepsies, and ‘challenging behaviours’.
Consultancy for Film Companies
Consults with Film companies to support those making films and those who are the subjects of films. Has worked on documentaries as well as docu drama and drama films. Areas of particular experience: childhood trauma/abuse; vicarious trauma (especially important in those making films involving traumatic material); end of life and bereavement; learning disabilities; Autistic Spectrum Disorder. See publications below. Works face to face, on Skype and on phone, as well as travelling when necessary.
About Jan
Jan Hawkins is a Person-Centred therapist, supervisor, group facilitator and trainer. Informed by trainings in psychodynamic, CBT, SFT, and other therapeutic traditions, prior to arriving home in the Person-Centred Approach, she is passionately committed to providing relationships in which clients, supervisees and groups are able to change and grow in self directed, yet accompanied, ways.
Jan ran groups for Survivors of childhood abuse during the early nineties, controversially offering groups with women and men together, and for those who had experienced any type of abuse. Many students and supervisees reported their difficulties in locating good, practical and developmental training for practitioners focussing on the issues raised by a history of childhood abuse. In response to this expressed need in 1994 Jan created, and co-facilitated, a Diploma course in Counselling Survivors of Childhood Abuse, the first initiative of its kind in Europe. Since then, through FDP, Jan has continued to run post counselling training courses and study days with a conviction that experiential learning is imperative for the continued development and deepening of the core attitudinal qualities of empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard, which are crucial to Person-Centred and other relationship focussed therapies. She has been particularly keen to encourage therapists to extend their practice to people with learning disabilities, many of whom suffer silently from their legacies of childhood abuse.
A background in lecturing in psychology and special needs, and her experiences over 30+ years since working with her first client in therapy, Jan feels blessed to have worked in a variety of settings. With a core of therapy and supervision, she also consults with filmmakers, and supports palliative care teams in their work. Jan feel she does one thing, but does it in a variety of ways!
Thought of the Week
“Each of us behaves according to how the world appears at the moment of behaving. From this vantage point there is no such thing as illogical behaviour – every person is behaving in a way that makes the most sense to him or her at that particular instant. What may seem illogical from an external point of view is only an inadequate understanding of what the world looks like from the internal view point of the behaving person”
(Purkey and Novak, 1984).
Due to the continued uncertainty with the COVID Pandemic, all study days in the New Year term will be on Zoom. Please know that anyone whose finances are affected by the virus, is welcomed to join the day either on a trainee rate of £25 or free, assuming there is already a viable group.
So please do let me know if any of the following study days, certificated for 6 hours of CPD, appeals to you, and if you need the free or trainee places.
Each day will consist of some input on the topic, experiential processing, and space to discuss practice issues relating to the theme. Each workshop will be from 10.00am till 4.00pm with a longer than usual lunch break to allow for Zoom rest and will cost £65. If you would like to attend, please send the attached slip with your booking fee. Jan Hawkins facilitates each day, having a passion for experiential, ongoing learning opportunities for practitioners. Jan has been teaching for over thirty years and a therapist for over 30 years.
Why Love Matters
Saturday 9th January 2021
This day is based on the book by Sue Gerhardt: Why Love Matters. By understanding the neurology of early attachment and in particular the damage done to the brain by lack of nurturing or worse, of early trauma, we can help our clients to understand better some of the gaps they experience in their social lives. Recognizing difficulties which the client may always have blamed him/herself for as actual deficits in neurological connections can be liberating. It may even prevent some of the self-abuse that follows such difficulties in adult attachments. At the same time this book acknowledges the research which shows that relationship-based therapies can actually develop neuronal connections where they previously did not exist. For those of us who feel that love maters in therapy relationships, this is the hard evidence for the real and persistent change we see occur in clients who may have needed longer term therapy to heal the harm done by early neglect and/or trauma.
Without Conscience: understanding psychopathy
Friday 29th January 2021
Much research has gone into attempts to define and understand ‘psychopathic personality disorder’ (sometimes alternatively known as ‘sociopathic personality disorder’). There tends to be an assumption that psychopathy always leads to violence and/or murder. We hear about serial killers being ‘psychopaths’. Yet these are only a few of the 4% of the population’s psychopathic personalities. For many therapists, we may rarely or never see a client who has this cluster of personality traits, but we will see lots of clients who have been affected by them. Men and women locked into abusive relationships and finding themselves unable to leave. Clients who are overwhelmed by managers at work who wield power, and in whose presence, they lose confidence and their own frame of reference. This day will be an opportunity to focus on the character traits which make a psychopathic person worth understanding. For people with conscience, it can be almost impossible to comprehend that there are those among us who behave without conscience.
What happens to our clients in the event of our sudden death or illness?
Saturday 13th February 2021
A crucial, yet underexplored aspect of our work as practitioners, is how we consider our clients’ potential reactions to our unexpected death or illness. This study day will allow participants to explore their feelings, attitudes and beliefs about the impact on their clients, in the event of their own sudden illness or death. There will be space to plan for such eventualities, as well as to look at the practical implications for ensuring that the best interests of clients are attended to, should the practitioner be suddenly forced to stop their practice due to illness, or death. Given the pandemic, exploring this subject seems especially pertinent. I have, myself, recently updated my plans, and contracted with a new counselling Will executor. Join with others to explore this sensitive subject.
Clean language
Friday 19th February 2021
Based on work by David Groves, a pioneering New Zealand psychotherapist, who worked with repressed traumatic memories,developing an approach which fitswith the PCA, byusing only the client’s language. Paying particular attention to the client’s metaphors, and developing a way of working which enabled clients to lead in their own healing, his work is mainly known by NLP and/or hypnotherapy practitioners. However, I have found that clients often (especially those traumatized as children) naturally head towards a trancelike way of experiencing, and that some therapists miss this opportunity to accompany the client into a deeper healing opportunity. This day will allow particpants to learn about the clean language approach, how to spot a client going into trance, and how to avoid becoming an obstacle to that process.
The healing power of story: The Emperor’s New Clothes
Saturday, 6th March 2021
For those who recognise the sense of bewilderment of seeing through something or someone whilst others seem to be in agreement about what is there, this story can be deeply empowering. This day will explore the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes, and the loneliness of seeing what others do not, the difficulty in keeping quiet, or the cost of speaking up. This day may be useful to practitioners as well as for anyone who is looking for a personal development opportunity and is drawn to this story.
Domestic Abuse
Friday 12th March 2021
Supporting clients who are living in abusive relationships can be painful and frustrating. Unless the DA is flagrantly physically violent, many clients do not recognise that what they are living with is domestic violence. Verbal, emotional, financial and sexual abuse chip away at the target’s confidence such that it becomes almost impossible to see a way out. Women and men who are on the receiving end of domestic abuse may present for therapy for anxiety, low self-esteem, depression and a whole host of other difficulties which they have not linked with the domestic abuse they are enduring. This day will allow participants to explore their own attitudes and beliefs around this difficult subject, as well as share ideas and strategies which have empowered their clients. The pandemic has thrown many into further abusive situations – how do we support our clients and ourselves?
Publications
Collateral Damage: Casualties of Alcohol Misuse: An Anthology
Paperback – 17 Jan. 2020
This anthology contains chapters written by individuals who have been affected by loving/caring about someone close, whose use of alcohol has impacted on the relationship. There is so much literature focusing on the experience of alcohol addiction or dependency in the medical and professional helper material, but scant attention given to those who live with and/or are affected by the person whose drinking is causing harm. Those who have given their time to this project have done so using their own voices. This gives the collection a variety of styles which provides the reader with a wide set of experiences. The editor is eager to encourage writing as a therapeutic option when processing painful experiences, especially where the individuals are unable – due to their loved one’s alcohol misuse – to have the open dialogue which might help them. Sadly in all the cases presented herein, the contributors are left to manage the effects of another person’s departure into a different world, a person they have loved and cared for. For those who love someone who misuses alcohol, this book will offer company. The contributors have shared experiences they have previously found impossible to talk about. Readers may find themselves in these stories, and as a result, feel less lonely.
Listening to their Voices: The Person-Centred Approach to Autistic Spectrum Disorder
Paperback – 17 Dec. 2017
This book includes verbatim interview contributions from individuals who have ASD, their parents, siblings, and some professionals. It is written by a therapist who works with all those groups, so that other chapters include examples of the lives and experiences of those with ASD. The purpose of the book is to introduce the how to of Person-Centred Planning, by introducing the Person-Centred Approach to anybody supporting people with ASD. Readers would include support workers, social workers, counsellors/therapists, medical practitioners, volunteers, and any other practitioners aiming to support people with ASD to reach their best potential in life.
Voices of the Voiceless: Person-Centred Approaches for People with Learning Difficulties
Paperback – 1 Jan. 2002
“Voices of the Voiceless” is an inspiring, passionate and comprehensive exploration that offers hope and encouragement to counsellors and practitioners working with people living with learning difficulties. Although the effects of learning difficulties and the effects of society’s treatment of people with learning difficulties are lifelong and often severe, counselling and healing are possible. The author argues that even those people who have the most severe learning disabilities can benefit from counselling, and not simply from behaviour management or medication to manage and control them. Jan Hawkins integrates 15 years’ experience of counselling and her 25 years’ experience as a mother of a person with learning difficulties. The book contains many moving accounts of the healing process and detailed examples of interdisciplinary working and the power the Person-Centred Approach offers for those who are metaphorically and often literally voiceless.