Endings in Psychotherapy with Josefine Speyer (Feb. 2024)

The seminar was very enriching and enjoyable.  Josefine shared with us her experience working with death and the dying and the importance for psychotherapists and counsellors to effect as good an ending to the therapy process as possible.  Josefine feels that a good ending for a client indicates a good piece of therapeutic work.   Preparation for an ending, from the beginning of the therapy process was discussed and suggested.  The seminar was very experiential and inclusive and we felt able to share openly our experiences of endings with clients.  We brought our own stories of the “bad ending” where the client ghosts us, or just disappears with no explanation.  Or the clients who seem to just “drift off”.  We thought about what constitutes a “good ending” and some of the key factors are; having a good working alliance, mutuality, collaboration, attunement, preparing and processing for the ending.

Josefine suggests that therapists need to have worked on their own experiences and issues concerning loss, to enable good therapeutic practice when working with endings.   She also spoke about the strong link between attachment styles and the ending outcome in therapy.

The subject brings up many feelings around loss, abandonment and protectiveness of our clients and ourselves and the seminar provided a safe space for practitioners to share deeply their experiences, both personal and therapeutic.   Our memories of past personal therapy which have either ended well or not, were also discussed and helped us to focus on the importance of endings.  There was a collective opinion that many trainings do not give enough importance and time to the ending phase of a therapy process. 

It was a thoroughly enjoyable day and provided me with much to think about in terms of my relationship with endings in my personal and professional life. 

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Average feedback scores from our event:

Organisation of event: 4.9 out of 5

Speaker: 4.4 out of 5

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Feedback from our event:

“I thought Josefine was engaging, warm and interesting” – Judith Howell, North Somerset

“A topic that is hard to access training on so really appreciate that it was made available and all the effort taken in putting it together. Very professional and knowledgeable” – anonymous

“Thank you for an excellent day! Brilliantly organised. Great quality of speaker, great ambience, great venue. Good interaction between us, felt very engaged” – Pippa Robinson