Wine, Cheese and the Therapist’s Body with Jennifer Vera, MFT

​The Wine & Cheese events are an opportunity for likeminded therapists in our SPS community to meet, socialize, network and learn from each other. Come join us!

​Wine, Cheese and the Therapist’s Body with Jennifer Vera, MFT 

Though relational psychoanalytic theory helped move clinicians from a one-person to a two-person subjectivity, the field has struggled to acknowledge that there are not just two psyches, but also two bodies, in the room. Recognizing the therapist’s body in the room—and in the transference— has remained a site of tension, discomfort and avoidance.

The therapist is called upon to invite, explore and tolerate the client’s projections not only onto their emotional presence, but also to their physical body. As such, we must interrogate our own relationships with our bodies and develop a language for discussing these issues. Without this foundation, we are unlikely to possess the relational courage needed to approach this material with our clients.

Therapists who specialize in the treatment of eating disorders are often more practiced in this area, given the centrality of the body in the clinical content and intensity of affect surrounding it. Whether an idealized, feared or dissociated object, the therapist’s body exists dynamically in relationship to the client’s and offers an opportunity for a more deeply embodied, connected psychotherapy.

In this presentation, Jennifer Vera, MFT, will use case examples to explore how the physical body— hers and her clients’— have emerged in the treatment, and the challenges, vulnerabilities and richness of engaging relationally with this content. Particular attention will be paid to the range of visible and invisible identities, such as race, body size, and age, and how these manifest in the body.

Bio:
Jennifer Vera, MFT, is relational psychotherapist, clinical consultant and educator, in private practice in Sacramento, CA. She specializes in the treatment of eating disorders, ‘quarter-life’ transitions, reproductive and perinatal mental health, with a particular focus on supporting LGBTQ and BIPOC patients. Jen is also the co-founder of LEDE: Eating Disorder Education, an organization dedicated to increasing community access to culturally-relevant eating disorder treatment, while growing and training a diverse, inclusive community of eating disorder therapists.