And Who Would You Like Beside You? – Using Imagination as a Therapeutic Resource
This is a brief workshop and networking evening for helping professionals based on stories from the And How do You Feel About That? written by Aruna Gopakumar and Yashodhara Lal.
And How Do You Feel About That? brings together fifty stories based on real clinical work. It was written to demystify psychotherapy and give readers a glimpse of what actually happens in the conversation between therapist and client. The stories are simple and accessible, while also containing layers of therapeutic thinking that practitioners may appreciate differently. The book showcases the range of Transactional Analysis psychotherapy and the many ways its ideas can come alive in clinical work.
In this 2.5 hour evening, Aruna Gopakumar will take up two stories from the book to explore how we can help clients develop an internal experience of nurture, support and permission when these may have been missing earlier in life.
She will read short sections from the stories, unpack the thinking behind the interventions and demonstrate ways of using imagination as a therapeutic resource. Participants will also have an opportunity to experience one of the methods and consider how imaginative work might be adapted across different approaches to therapy.
The rest of the evening is for conversation. Over snacks, there will be time to meet other practitioners, exchange experiences and simply get to know more people doing this work.
Therapists, counsellors, coaches, therapists-in-training and other helping professionals are welcome, across modalities and levels of experience. All participants will get a copy of the book “And How Do You Feel About That”
About the Facilitator
Aruna Gopakumar is the Founder-Director of The School of You and a Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst in the psychotherapy field (TSTA-P). She is a psychotherapist, trainer and organisational consultant with over 33 years of experience, integrating Transactional Analysis, psychodrama and autobiographical storytelling into both her leadership development and psychotherapeutic work. She is the co-author of And How Do You Feel About That? (Penguin, 2022), has published in the Transactional Analysis Journal and contributed a Springer chapter on psychodrama supervision. An engineer and IIM Bangalore alumna, Aruna previously founded the leadership-development firm Navgati and has also served as President of the South Asian Association of Transactional Analysts.
