Holding (On) Amidst Uncertainty

On June 5, Dr. Haen presented “Psychotherapy in Authoritarian Times: The Challenges of Holding (On)”, a two-hour virtual workshop for the Houston Group Psychotherapy Society, an affiliate of the American Group Psychotherapy Association.

The workshop explored the challenges therapists face when authoritarian forces, social division, uncertainty, and threats to individual and collective freedoms enter the treatment room. Drawing on relational, group, and trauma theory, Dr. Haen considered how clinicians can create spaces of psychological holding while both therapists and clients are themselves living within the same destabilizing social environment.

Among the themes explored were the effects of internalized surveillance and epistemic injustice, the role of grief and rest in resisting dehumanization, and the importance of connection and imagination in maintaining a sense of agency and possibility. The workshop invited participants to consider not only how therapists can continue to “hold” their clients during periods of social upheaval, but what helps all of us to keep holding on.

Learn more about the program through the Houston Group Psychotherapy Society.