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Finding an Antidote to Shame & Self-Criticism |
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Frequently Asked Questions |
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A colleague in Vancouver sent the following enquiry:
“I have never heard of Dr. Paul Gilbert and am wondering whether you have any "reviews" of his presentations. I always attended Christine Padesky's workshops as I found her to be the best presenter out there these days. Due to time constraints, I am limited to the amount of professional development I attend. As such, it is vitally important to me that I know that my time spent at a workshop will be well worthwhile.”
Dr. Tener’s response:
I had never heard of Dr. Gilbert either, until a few years ago when a colleague of mine wandered into a presentation he gave on shame and told me about it. I started to read his books and go to his lectures and workshops, and was quite intrigued by what I heard.
His research and clinical background is quite impressive, going back about 30 years, during which time he has been particularly interested in depression and its relationship to the evolution of the human mind. He was especially struck by the experience of some depressed clients who could go through a perspective-taking exercise in an intellectual way, but would get no relief from it – there was no felt shift on a gut level.
As he explored this more he realized that he needed to develop ways of dealing with on-going self-criticism and shame that could be effective by being emotionally significant. His understanding of the ways the human mind has evolved led to his development of Compassion Mind Training, based on the human capacity, however atrophied, to offer soothing and nurturance. It turns out that the need for self-soothing, for self-compassion, exists for each of us, whatever the particular diagnosis. |
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This would be all very well in a book, but you asked what it was like to hear him in a workshop. I had gone to several of his workshops in the UK, from one to three days long, before bringing him to Canada. I find him warm, interesting, and rooted in both basic science as well as in clinical practice. I had to get used to some of his terms, but he explains them, and has them in handouts – and the more I understood his approach the more excited I got about it. I have been using his exercises with a number of clients, and find the approach deeply emotionally meaningful to people. It has made me much more alert to the existence of shame in my clients, even though they rarely use the word, and to its harmful effects.
The evaluations from the workshop Dr. Gilbert gave with Dr. Lee in Ottawa and Toronto in 2006 were very strong, with scores very close to those usually given at our workshops given by Dr. Padesky. Some of the comments from attendees about what they liked best were:
¨ “dynamic and knowledgeable speaker, humour, sharing personal experiences” ¨ “outstanding content, so reasonable and humane, helpful” ¨ “content of info, presented extremely well” ¨ “mixture of practice and theory” ¨ “multi-media, organized presentation”
He is not quite as crisp on time as Dr. Padesky is, and if allowed to would talk for several days about the background research – but he also understands that his audience is looking for a balance of theory, research and practice, and so by the end of the workshop he sends you home with some pretty neat clinical tools and the understanding to apply them.
You can see why I wanted to share him!
Cheers,
Lorna Tener, Psychologist Cognitive Workshops |