Prairie St. John's 2024 Fall Conference with Dr. Alan Godwin

Title:

INSIDE THE MANIPULATOR’S MIND

Subtitle:

Helping Clients Understand and Avoid Emotional Exploitation

Course Overview:

Since personality disordered individuals lack what’s necessary to make relationships function in healthy ways, they resort to their only relational alternative: drama. Clients often present with complaints of mood struggles such as depression or anxiety. But when we explore the context in which their distress originated, we often discover that they’ve been manipulated into a personality disordered person’s drama. Dr. Alan Godwin will explain how to help clients avoid dramas and the mental health benefits of drama non-participation.

Presentation Description:

From guilt trips to gaslighting, emotional manipulation takes many forms, and it’s often so covert that clients have difficulty articulating how and when it’s happening. This highly interactive seminar explores the manipulator’s motivations for relating to others through drama, offering an inside-out analysis of the manipulation process. Discover effective strategies your clients can use immediately to begin recognizing and countering manipulation in any context while setting healthy relational boundaries. Combining decades of clinical practice and the latest behavioral research, Dr. Godwin offers comprehensive solutions you will be ready to use the next day to engage and empower your clients.

Course Content (including case examples and applications):

· The Personality Disorder’s Deficiency: Reasoning Abilities

· The Personality Disorder’s Reasoning Alternative: Drama

· The Personality Disorder’s Drama-Enticing Methods

· The Personality Disorder’s Drama Participation Impact

· The Client’s Drama Non-Participation Strategies

· The Personality Disorder’s Response to Drama Non-Participation

Learning Objectives:

Attendees can expect to:

· Explore the reasons why some individuals relate through manipulation

· Describe why some people have increased vulnerability to manipulation

· Examine the emotional turmoil resulting from up-close exposure to manipulators

· Discuss the strategies clients must use to counter manipulation

· Prepare clients to accept the limited depth occurring in relationships involving manipulation

· Demonstrate methods of countering manipulation in a variety of contexts

GET TO KNOW THE PRESENTER:

Dr. Godwin, Psy. D. is a licensed psychologist in private practice with over 33 years of experience. He counsels with individual adults and with couples. Dr. Godwin also serves on the adjunct faculty of the Graduate Counseling Department of Trevecca University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he teaches a class for doctoral students called Psychodynamic Psychotherapies. Dr. Godwin has developed expertise in working with personality disordered clients and with clients who’ve been negatively impacted in close relationships with disordered people. He has also developed and presented seven seminars nationally for mental health professionals through Cross Country Education, Vyne Education and PESI Education: "Helping Adult Clients Grow Up: Blend Object Relations Perspectives Into Your Therapies for Stuck Clients”, “Happily Incompatible: Clinical Strategies for Helping Couples Resolve Their Differences”, “Inside the Manipulator’s Mind: An Insider’s Guide to Ending Emotional Manipulation”, “The Psychological Disorientation of Manipulation: Strategies to Recover from the Drama”, “2-Day Conflict Resolution Certificate Course for Mental Health Professionals”, “Emotional Manipulation: Effective Strategies to Manage the Manipulator & Empower their Victims” and “Demystifying Personality Disorders: Clinical Skills for Working with Drama and Manipulation”.

Dr. Godwin has also authored three e-books entitled "Tired of the Drama: Handling People Who Won’t Be Reasonable", "10 Tips for Managing Holiday Dramas", and "Marriage Myths: 10 Things You Thought Were True About Marriage. . . but Aren’t"

He has been a guest on numerous radio and television programs across the U.S. and Canada and has written a weekly email entitled, “The Drama Review: In Relationships and Culture.” Certified in Alternative Dispute Resolution, he has dedicated himself to helping individuals, couples, churches, and businesses develop better ways of handling conflict. Dr. Godwin’s book, "How to Solve Your People Problems: Dealing with Your Difficult Relationships", released in August 2008, explains how and why conflict goes badly and how to make it go well with two types of people: those who are normally-wired and those who are personality disordered. He is currently working on a second book addressing the phenomenon of collective manipulation. Additionally, Dr. Godwin has conducted just under 1000 evaluations for couples who are adopting internationally.

Host or Publisher Prairie St. John's