Clients bring their relational fields with them into therapy, as do therapists. What are the clinical implications when this includes current and historical experiences of violent relational dynamics, as both survivors and/or perpetrators?

Domestic violence and abuse is a systematic pattern of behaviour between people who are personally connected (including intimate and sexual partners, family members, ex-partners, and people sharing parenting or caring responsibilities). Abuse takes many forms (economic, sexual, physical, psychological, coercive control, gaslighting, online abuse, threats and intimidation, monitoring or limiting anothers’ behaviour).

This experiential workshop led by Lucy Christopher will explore Gestalt therapy’s particular and valuable approaches when working with adult clients’ experiences of domestic violence.

In this workshop participants will:
- Explore their own relational fields, considering dynamics of power and control, and noticing what gets activated in us as professionals when supporting clients with experiences of domestic abuse.
- Consider how power dynamics inherent in the client/ therapist relationship may emerge, and finding ethical and authentic ways of working clinically with domestic abuse.
- Draw on intersectionality and field theories to consider how structural and socio-located inequity inevitably influence domestic violence dynamics.
- Draw on and start to apply some key Gestalt lenses e.g. creative indifference; choice and responsibility; intimacy, desire and contact; creativity; shame; experimentation; co-transference; and Gestalt’s phenomenological perspective.

For enquiries, contact: mandy@relationalchange.org

DATE: Thursday10 December 2026
TIME: 6 to 9 pm (UK time)
LOCATION: Online
COST:  £65
CPD Certificate provided

About Lucy Christopher
Lucy is a Gestalt psychotherapist and group facilitator. She has worked therapeutically with domestic abuse and sexual violence survivors for many years, offering a creative gestalt approach. Lucy is currently completing her supervision training.