IAHIP - Two Day Sibling Therapy Workshop

Two Day Sibling Therapy Workshop

17/02/2026 09:24 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

Sibling Therapy
Peter and Jane Show Us How Childhood Relationships Shape Adults' Love and Work Life

Presenter: Dr. Karen Gail Lewis.

Since the publication of her most recent book, Sibling Therapy: The Ghosts from Childhood that Haunt Your Clients’ Love and Work, (Oxford University, 2023), Dr Lewis has held dozens of podcasts, media interviews, and workshops on teaching the concepts of this book to therapists. She has taught this course in the US and in several European countries. We are delighted to welcome Dr Lewis to Ireland to deliver this unique two-day workshop. Dr Lewis has had an extraordinary career spanning 50 years of clinical practice, supervision and teaching as a highly regarded psychotherapist /family therapist. Dr Lewis’s work is widely published in journals and she is also the author of several books.

www.drkarengaillewis.com

Two Day Sibling Therapy Workshop

Why talk about siblings when you are never asked to work with them? When you have no interest in ever working with them? Because, for your clients who have brothers and sisters, they are each other’s their first peer love relationships.

Relationships for young siblings are like a “first marriage,” where they learn or don’t learn to love, fight, negotiate – skills necessary for adults in their love life, at work, and with friends. Their early images of each other become frozen, and then in adulthood, through “sibling transference,” they may recreate their early relationships patterns, falling back on what is familiar.

Day 1 will explore the conceptual framework of sibling therapy and facilitate participants to consider and assess if their clients' presenting problems may have a connection to unresolved early childhood sibling issues, or are contributing to where they are stuck in life or therapy.

Day 2 will cover the practical aspect and participants will start to build a ‘clinical toolbox’. They will learn how to start and conduct a sibling interview, design a range of clinical tools, recognize and use their own feelings and to consider the skills necessary in working with adult siblings.

This is an interactive workshop that includes role play, small group discussions, and other experiential exercises.

At the end of this workshop participants will be able to:

understand how adult relationships may replicate the early childhood relationship (siblings as a first marriage concept)
assess if there is a sibling connection with your individual and couple clients
identify four concepts that are specific to sibling therapy: frozen images, crystallized roles, and unhealthy loyalty, and sibling transference
initiate the concept of sibling therapy to clients and help them decide how to invite siblings to a session
start a sibling therapy session
recognize and use their own feelings (transference and countertransference) understand the skills necessary for doing sibling therapy
learn and practice some “clinical tools” for when stuck in a session.

A set of notes will be provided.

Dates: