Working with Disavowed and Undervalued Parts

“Disavowed and undervalued parts” are those parts of us that we try to ignore, suppress, or hide from ourselves. These can include:

• Emotions, such as anger or grief
• States of being, such as vulnerability, anxious states, neediness, or depression
• Attitudes and behavior patterns, such as being “lazy,” being overly eager in social situations, not caring, or caring too much

Many clients actually come to therapy with the goal of figuring out how to banish these parts from their lives. They will often say, “I wish this part of me would just go away.”

In this workshop, we will learn how to work skillfully with disavowed and undervalued parts.

This will take us on a group journey of facing this very present phenomenon (in its many forms), learning how to frame it skillfully with clients, working with accompanying shame systems, and providing corrective experiences for clients.

Learning Objectives:

1. Conceptualize the disavowal of parts of the self as an organizing system, and learn to more readily identify when this system is operating in a client’s presentation.
2. Learn to work with the protector parts that are driving the disavowal system, and to delineate which deeper experiences the protector parts are protecting against.   (We will also delineate several categories of deeper experiences that activate the protector parts.)
3. Learn how to assess the client’s relationship to the disavowed part on a scale of 1 to 4.
4.  Learn how to build the therapeutic relationship to adequately engage this material.
5. Learn framing skills—how to name the disavowal system in a way that begins to engage the client’s curiosity about the disavowed/undervalued part.  Learn to use framing in a way that is sensitive to the level of disavowal (on the 1 to 4 scale) that the client is engaging in.
6. Learn how to work more skillfully with clients who have disavowed or undervalued parts of themselves.
7. Learn the key techniques of Somatic Embodiment of Disavowed Parts, and Somatic Embodiment of Protector Parts.
8. Learn about working with undervalued parts across social location.
9. Learn the evolutionary psychology of shame—specifically, the function that shame served for our human ancestors embedded in human communities, and how that impacts us now.
10. Learn how to track for shame, both verbally and non-verbally.
11. Learn how to integrate shame skills while working with disavowed parts, and with the essential Hakomi skill of jumping out of the system (JOOTS).

Instructor Bio

Shai Lavie, M.A., Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, works with adults, adolescents, and families in private practice in San Anselmo, California. He got his Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies in 1995, and received his MFT license in 1999. 

Shai is certified in the Hakomi Method of mindfulness-based psychotherapy, and is a Certified Hakomi Trainer on the faculty of Hakomi Mallorca and the Hakomi Institute of California.  He is also certified in the Somatic Experiencing method of working with trauma, developed by Peter Levine. 

Shai has been practicing Vipassana meditation for over 30 years. For many years beginning in 2001, Shai taught meditation in the Teen and Family Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center (see www.spiritrock.org). 

Shai has done psychotherapy trainings for therapists at Family Service Agency, California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), Apple Family Works, New Perspectives/Bay Area Community Resources, JFK Counseling Center, Community Institute for Psychotherapy, various chapters of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, Aldea Treatment Services, Dominican College, Chapman University, Holos Institute, and Mt. Diablo Unified School District. 

Please look for articles from Shai Lavie in the September/October 2011 issue of Psychotherapy Networker (“In Search of a Lost Self”) and in the September/October 2011 issue of The Therapist (“Mindfulness-Based Family Therapy”). These articles can be found on the Hakomi Institute website. Please also look for Shai’s chapter (“Experiments in Mindfulness”) in the new book: Hakomi Mindfulness-Centered Somatic Psychotherapy: A Comprehensive Guide to Theory and Practice (W.W. Norton, 2015). Shai’s newest article, “Held Experience: Using Mindfulness in Psychotherapy to Facilitate Deeper Psychological Repair” published in the Fall 2015 issue of the International Body Psychotherapy Journal. 

Shai lives in Fairfax, California with his wife and daughter. He loves wilderness hiking, paddle boarding, climbing, frisbee, martial arts, and music.

Emmy Akiyama, MFT, and Karen Daley, MFT, will be helping Shai lead this workshop.  They are both Hakomi Teachers.

12 CE’s: (ACEP #5476): Hakomi Institute has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider (ACEP No. 5476.) Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Hakomi Institute is solely responsible for all aspects of the program.