Understanding and Working with Emotional Pain in Psychotherapy: From Brokenness to Transformation 

Elizabeth Bolger, Ph.D., Psychologist

Live Online Workshop

Overview

Knowing how to work with emotional pain is fundamental to the psychotherapy process. At the heart of emotional pain is a “broken self”. The question is, what is broken and how can we help mend it? Whatever caused the breaking - trauma, loss, abuse, or unmet needs - if the experience feels emotionally unsafe or intolerable, it will likely be avoided or buried beneath layers of protective strategies and behaviours. These protective responses can present as depression, anxiety, relational difficulties or addiction. While these responses may serve the purpose of covering the emotional pain, in the long run, it is the covers that keep the pain trapped inside. 

 


In this powerful, thought-provoking workshop, Dr. Elizabeth Bolger teaches you how to help clients face and process their underlying pain and let go of the covers that have hidden it and organized their interactions with others.  Dr. Bolger presents a model of emotional pain rooted in more than 35 years of clinical practice and offers a practical and skills-based approach for helping clients access and work through emotional pain; it is a useful framework to help clients that is theoretical, clinical and research based. 


This workshop is for any therapist who works with emotional pain and is looking to better understand the structure of pain, its protective layers, and how to heal the pain. This workshop draws on Dr. Bolger’s research and training in Emotion Focused Therapy and her original research with Adult Children of Alcoholics.  This model of emotional pain has informed decades of work with complex trauma, loss, addiction, depression, anxiety, and relational wounds.  


Objectives

In this workshop, you will learn how to: 

 

  • Distinguish between emotional pain and painful emotions 
  • Identify emotional pain as it appears in clients’ narratives and behaviors 
  • Help clients become aware of the unique way they experience themselves as broken, whether they feel damaged, disconnected, incomplete, or fundamentally flawed 
  • Identify and assess the emotional reactions, behaviors, and aspects of identity clients use to cover up their emotional pain 
  • Use the concept of the Covered Self as a transdiagnostic case formulation tool to clarify client difficulties and establish meaningful therapeutic goals 
  • Apply targeted interventions to help clients allow, face, and work through their experience of brokenness within a strong therapeutic frame 
  • Support clients in integrating emotional pain and developing a more authentic, self-compassionate identity, one that allows for deeper, healthier, and more fulfilling connection with others 

This training follows the arc from brokenness to transformation, offering strategies and interventions to work with what clients bring into therapy: the protective covers, the hidden pain, and the path to healing. 


Details

Date: March 12 & 13, 2026

Time: 9:30AM – 4:30PM (Eastern Daylight Time) 

Format: Live Online Workshop 


Registration Rates

Early Bird Rate: $330 (+applicable taxes)

Regular Rate: $389 (+applicable taxes)


Student Rate: $260 (+applicable taxes)

  • Students are eligible for a student rate. Please sign up here to access student benefits.
  • Student rates apply to individuals currently enrolled in an undergraduate, master's, or doctoral program at a recognized post-secondary institution.


Refund Policy

Cancelling 7 days or more prior to the start of a live one or two day workshop, or webinar series:

  • Refund: Full refund will be processed, minus a $50 administrative fee

  or

  • Transfer: Full payment can be transferred to another upcoming workshop or training that we provide. Please email our training and workshop team at training@cpeh.ca to request a transfer.

 

Cancelling after 7 days prior to the start of a live one or two day workshop, or webinar series:

  • Refund: No refund
  • Transfers: Full payment can be transferred to another upcoming workshop or training that we provide. Please email our training and workshop team at training@cpeh.ca to request a transfer.



Elizabeth Bolger, Ph.D., Psychologist

Dr. Elizabeth Bolger completed her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at York University in Toronto where she was trained in Humanistic and Experiential Psychotherapy. Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT) has been a primary influence on her development as a therapist.   


Dr. Bolger is a certified EFT supervisor. She has been a skills trainer at the Institute of Emotion Focused Therapy for Complex Trauma and Couples Therapy and consults to other professionals on EFT for individuals and couples. Currently, she is a therapist and consultant at the Centre for Psychology and Emotional Health.   


Dr. Bolger has many years of experience working in the treatment of addiction in both in-patient/residential and outpatient counselling services where she worked with individuals, couples and family members. She is the co-creator of a multi-modal addiction recovery model grounded in the relational and task principles of Emotion Focused Therapy and co-developed an early recovery empty chair task promoting self-care.   


Dr. Bolger research with Adult Children of Alcoholics has made an important contribution to the understanding of emotional pain in psychotherapy, guiding her own clinical experience and informing the work of others with a number of clinical problems for over thirty years. Her work on emotional pain has been presented at numerous conferences and published in academic journals.