Group Training

Group Training in Outer Child / Abandonment Recovery Techniques is experiential. You learn by performing exercises and sharing feedback within a supportive group setting. Susan creates a safe, open, working, life-changing process within the group. Through training you:

         • Target Outer Child patterns of self sabotage. Outer Child is an overarching concept that encompasses defense mechanisms, character traits, knee-jerk reactions, habits and compulsions – all of your maladaptive behavior patterns.

         • Identify emotional triggers.

         • Connect dots between automatic defenses and primal abandonment fear.

         • Learn exercises that redirect attachment energy toward learning healthy new “automatic” behaviors.

         • Practice using new power tools to break through obstacles and propel you forward.

Abandonment component:

Through advanced training you learn to:

        • Discern acute abandonment crisis from chronic patterns such as mood or anxiety disorders, as well as long standing outer child patterns of self-sabotage.

        • Distinguish normal (albeit intense) abandonment grief from the onset of major depression

        • Identify acute symptoms of the emotional crisis of abandonment, including:

                 Re-emerging symbiotic feelings

                 Increased risk-taking

                 Neglected self-care

                 Anorexia

                 Suicidality

                  Panic

                  Need to self-medicate

                  Borderline regression and other forms of acting out

         • Identify chronic (versus acute) symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder of Abandonment. In "Journey from Abandonment to Healing (pages 41-42)" I outline a complete list of abandonment’s posttraumatic symptoms, which comprise what I have come to call the “outer child syndrome.”

                 Outer Child Post Traumatic Syndrome:

                 Difficulty forming primary relationships

                 Rejection-sensitivity

                 Poor self-image

                 Addiction

                 Co-addiction

                 Chronic insecurity.

        • Help clients work through tendency to get caught up in outer child patterns such as abandoholism or abandophobism, or stuck in one the five stages of abandonment grief.

        • Deal with the intense transference that our clients exhibit during their abandonment crises including (when their Outer Children are most triggered):

                Over-dependence upon therapist

                 Hostility

                 Missing appointments

                 Unrealistic expectations toward therapeutic process, etc.

        • Discern client’s tendency to temporarily revert to default defenses, i.e. becoming over-controlling toward the abandoner, punitive, self-abdicating, and outer child maneuvers.

        * Help the still fragile, narcissistically injured abandonment survivor move beyond protest, blame, self-denial, and acting out, and on toward emotional self-reliance, behavioral change, and increased capacity for love.

        * Learn effective new tools experientially within the safety and open sharing of a supportive group process.

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