Navigating Syntonic Resistance with ISTDP: Monthly Webinar

This monthly 6-part course led by Dr. Joel Town will focus on the use of ISTDP for working with clients who present with high levels of habitual, chronic avoidance of their emotions across situations and relationships. This process of unconscious avoidance makes individuals vulnerable to experiencing emotional conflicts. This commonly presents in the form of multiple, reoccurring symptoms such as problems with anxiety, depression, somatic symptoms, trauma, eating or body image, and relationship difficulties. Resistance is the unconscious process whereby clients repeatedly utilise defence mechanisms to detach from the therapist and withdraw from their feelings and emotions in therapy. During psychotherapy sessions, when the rise of emotions becomes a trigger for a client to become experientially avoidant, awareness and understanding of their feelings becomes more limited, and it prevents the client and therapist from working effectively together. Syntonicity refers to the situation whereby a client identifies with these avoidant behaviours to the extent they see them as part of their self-image and part of coping. The temporary relief a client experiences from avoiding anxiety-provoking emotional states is followed by long-term suffering unless these cycles can be transformed with new ways of coping.

In this course, the plan each month will be to review the entirety of a new initial trial therapy assessment session. This is the initial session whereby the client and therapy meet to develop an understanding of the presenting difficulties and to next begin to establish a working formulation and plan for treatment. We will study the unfolding processes whereby resistances emerge in-session, and the client and therapist adjust and pivot to overcome these challenges. We will also review how a treatment plan is developed in the session based upon in-session phases of inquiry, psychodiagnosis, and mobilization of the unconscious. The decision-making process and rational for transitioning between these different phases, as they apply to different patients, will be assessed through the use of case material and review of the course slides.

This course is an opportunity to watch the unedited recordings from the initial trial therapy session with highly avoidant clients. There will be structured opportunities throughout the 3-hour monthly meetings for group discussion, comments and questions, to guide individual and group learning in a supportive environment.

Participants

To protect patient confidentiality, all participants will be asked to sign a condition of admittance and need to be registered mental healthcare professionals or students registered in clinical training programs. Please email any questions or inquiries to info@dynamichealthservices.ca.

Time and dates

These 3 hour sessions will start at 9am Pacific Time; 12:00pm Eastern Time; 5:00pm GMT, on the following Wednesdays in 2026: January 7th, February 4th, March 4th, April 1st, May 6th, June 3rd .

Presenter

Dr. Joel Town is a Clinical Psychologist and Assistant Professor at Dalhousie University, Canada, in the Department of Psychiatry and the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience. He has 20 years of clinical experience providing psychotherapy. He is a clinician, researcher and certified ISTDP supervisor and trainer with the International Experiential Dynamic Therapy Association. He conducts training in Canada, United Kingdom, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Denmark and United States. He is the author of over 50 peer reviewed journal articles on psychotherapy process and outcome research.