ANZAED WEBINARS 

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Eating Disorders and Gender Diversity in Young People – A Reflection on Improving Models of Care

Presenters: Dr Cate Rayner (she/her), Dr Alicia Tompson (she/her) & Dr Robert Eres (he/him)

Date: Tuesday 20 June 2023
Time: 1.30pm AEST (1.5-hours duration)
3.30pm New Zealand; 1.30pm NSW, ACT, VIC, TAS, QLD 1:00pm SA, NT; 11.30am WA
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Dr Cate Rayner (she/her) is is a General Paediatrician, who works clinically for both The RCH Gender Service and The RCH Eating Disorder Service. She is the current Director of The RCH Department of Adolescent Medicine, which is reviewing and adapting their service to incorporate lived experience and develop intersectoral approaches to improve care. She has extensive experience working with adolescents, with a particular interests in neurodiversity, developmental differences, and mental health.  She is also passionate about Medical Education and advocating for her patients more broadly, through teaching.
Dr Alicia Tompson (she/her) is a Senior Clinical Psychologist with the Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) Eating Disorder Service. She has extensive experience in supporting children and adolescents with restrictive eating disorders, and their families, in both public and private settings. She has also provided gender-affirming care to trans and gender-diverse young people within the RCH Gender Service.
Dr Robert Eres (he/him) is a psychologist and scholar with experience in youth mental health. He has worked in inpatient and outpatient settings within public and private hospitals, and enjoys supporting young people through challenging transitions in life and identity. Robbie is a strong LGBTQIA+ advocate and firmly believes in the role of connected communities in preventing emotional distress.  He is passionate about working with young trans and gender diverse people as well as their families, and feels privileged to share a portion of the young people’s gender journeys through the RCH Gender Service.

Webinar Overview: There is increasing recognition of the higher prevalence of Eating Disorders in trans and gender diverse (TGD) young people. As a result, there is a need to develop shared skills and approaches to providing gender affirming care and Eating Disorder care together. This presentation will use a clinical case to discuss challenges encountered and reflect on approaches that may help.

The Science and Art of Reflective Practice and Supervision

Presenter: Dr Annaleise Robertson 

Date: Wednesday 28 June 2023
Time: 12.00pm AEST (1-hour duration)
2pm New Zealand; 12pm NSW, ACT, VIC, TAS, 11:30pm SA, NT; QLD 12pm; 10am WA
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Dr Annaleise Robertson is an experienced clinical psychologist who specialises in systemic and psychodynamic frameworks for working with young people, their families, and the clinicians/teams that support them. Annaleise typically provides family therapy for eating disorders, including FBT and Family Therapy for Anorexia Nervosa (FT-AN) as done by Ivan Eisler and the Maudsley team. This approach, combined with applying systemic or psychodynamic frameworks, are useful additions for therapists who are new to or familiar with FBT, or for complex cases which feel stuck due to other individual or systemic issues. Annaleise prioritises formulation driven therapy and strives to help clinicians develop treatment plans which balance best research evidence, therapist experience and patient preference. Annaleise has worked in a full-time clinical role at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead since 2012, with extensive experience in both inpatient, outpatient and group therapy. She spent the past two years (2019-2021) living in London to undertake further study in these approaches at the Tavistock and Portman Institute and to work at the Maudsley Centre for Child and Adolescent Eating Disorders. Annaleise has provided regular training, consultation, supervision and workshops in eating disorders since 2013, including for the National Eating Disorders Collaboration (NEDC), The University of Sydney and has also developed a brief DBT-based family therapy adjunct.

Webinar Overview: Research demonstrates that people with lived experience of an eating disorder, their families and supports, and clinicians, are increasingly calling for a flexible and collaborative approach to treatment which is individually tailored, builds trust and understanding, while remaining grounded in evidence and best practice. This is where the science and art of reflective practice can be invaluable, and why it is included as an important element within clinical training, practice and supervision in multiple fields, like education, social work, psychology and medicine.

While there are varying definitions of reflexivity, it can be broadly defined as a process in which someone is able to examine their own responses and motives to any given situation, be mindful to the same in others, and think about the potential interplay between the two.

This webinar explores some of the science, theory and debate behind the importance of reflective practice, highlighting the different ways this can be incorporated into both evidence informed clinical work and supervision within the eating disorders field. This webinar will aim to include creative ideas for how to establish reflective supervision in different settings (1:1, small groups and large multidisciplinary teams), the importance of co-creating a safe supervisory space, the use of creativity, exploring parallel processes, and specific questions and tools that can be included in your current supervision framework. This workshop is intended to be helpful to both supervisors and supervisees, as well as anyone keen to learn more about the science and art of reflective practice.

Reflecting on Our Countertransference Responses to Find Ways to Engage Our Eating Disordered Clients with Severe and Chronic Shame and Self-Hatred

Presenter: Dr Sue Austin

Date: Friday 8 September 2023
Time: 3.00pm AEST (1-hour, 50 minutes duration)
5pm New Zealand; 3pm NSW, ACT, VIC, TAS, QLD 2:30pm SA, NT; 1pm WA
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Members (only) will need to sign in to register.

Sue Austin, Ph.D., Member ANZSJA, ANZAED Credentialled, works in private practice in Sydney and trained with the Australian and New Zealand Society of Jungian Analysts. She is also ANZAED Credentialled. Sue specialises in working with adults who have severe and chronic eating disorders and/or disorders of the self (i.e., people whose experience of subjectivity is abject) and her practice comprises general analytic work with adults and supervision of clinicians in Australia and internationally. She has run numerous clinical workshops and seminars in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the USA. See http://www.sueaustin.net.au/

Webinar Overview: The aim of this seminar is to provide a space where participants can sit further back in themselves than is usually possible in the consulting room and observe and think about their countertransference reactions to case material presented by a colleague. Being able to access this space is important because eating disorders can be understood as a pre-verbal/pre-symbolic attempt to express unbearable states of mental and emotional distress. From a psychodynamic perspective a patient can communicate these states by splitting them off and ‘transferring’ them, via their ‘transference’ to their therapist, who experiences their own response to these communications as their ‘countertransference’ reactions, such as feelings of intense frustration or being unable to stay awake. Sometimes this process is relatively transparent to the therapist but when working with people whose eating disorder is accompanied by severe and chronic shame and self-hatred, the therapist’s job of holding and thinking about the feelings and thoughts that have been transferred in this way can be extremely challenging. Developing a language with a patient which can be used to ‘talk towards’ the kind of distress that is communicated in this unconscious, body-to-body way often takes a long time and the therapist’s capacity to observe and think about their countertransference reactions is integral to it.

This seminar starts with two short exercises to: 1) establish a mindful space for reflection and 2) foreground a sensitivity to language and our choice of words. This is followed by the presentation of a case by a colleague. They and I will then discuss the case, slowing down and noting our countertransference reactions which we will use to try to imagine some the dynamics which shape this client’s inner life. These imaginings are treated as working hypotheses to be reality-tested against the client’s story and the clinician’s experience of working with them. The aim of working like this is to see if we can use our countertransference reactions to develop some threads of language or imagery which the clinician might, over time, be able to use to support the patient’s development of a sense of self, bearing in mind that this can also be experienced as extremely threatening by the patient.

The seminar is suitable for clinicians who are new to this approach to thinking about our countertransference reactions and, because we will be discussing a different case, presented by a different clinician, it is also suitable for those who attended Sue’s previous seminar on this subject and want to explore further this way of working.

We encourage anyone who is interested in presenting their case with Sue during this special supervision opportunity to please get in touch with Psychodynamic SIG co-chair Dr Annaleise Robertson (annaleise.robertson@health.nsw.gov.au) with a short description of your current place of work and deidentified clinical work/case you may be interested to explore.