Upcoming 2025 ONLINE Seminars & Presentations
Emotional Alchemy for the Therapist’s Soul
Facilitator: TJ Walsh, MA, LPC
Meeting Time: 7:00- 8:30 pm EST
Dates: September 10,17, 24
CEs: 4.5
Course Description:
Emotional Alchemy is the practice of turning raw, often overwhelming emotion into creative insight and grounded action. It’s a way to work with what’s real—the stuff that lives under the surface—through intuitive image-making and reflection. It’s not about the product. It’s about the process. As helpers and healers, we’re trained to hold space for others, but we also need ways to metabolize what we absorb—especially the things that don’t quite have words. In this seminar, we’ll explore how painting (yes, even messy, weird, “I-don’t-know-what-this-is” painting) can help us transmute what’s stuck, unknown, or heavy…into something useful, beautiful, and alive. We’ll work with Emotional Alchemy’s stages of transformation—naming, holding, metabolizing, transmuting, and integrating—alongside modern psychoanalytic ideas like reverie, aesthetic communication, the analytic third, and the importance of tending to the person of the therapist.
Learning Objectives:
1. Describe the stages of the Emotional Alchemy process (naming, holding, metabolizing, transmuting, integrating) and explain how each stage supports therapist self-reflection and emotional regulation.
2. Demonstrate the use of intuitive painting as a self-tending tool for processing emotional residue and preparing for clinical work.
3. Differentiate between cognitive reflection and embodied emotional processing, and discuss the role of image-making in accessing unconscious material.
4. Evaluate the impact of personal emotional states on therapeutic presence and plan creative self-care rituals to support ongoing clinical clarity.
5. Identify countertransference signals through reflective art-making and summarize how these insights can inform ethical and attuned therapeutic practice.
About the Facilitator:
TJ Walsh, BFA, MA, LPC, NCC, CCTP is an innovative painter and dynamic psychotherapist, educator, brand strategist, and higher education administrator based in Philly. He writes and speaks on the topics of art, culture, faith, and mental health and his work is exhibited and published internationally. TJ has worked at the colorful intersection of creativity, art, therapy, and education for over 20 years and is an expert in creativity, relationships, fear, and procrastination. He received his BFA in Graphic Design from The University of the Arts, Philadelphia and his MA in Clinical Counseling Psychology from Eastern University, Saint Davids, PA. He is trained psychodynamically, is a Certified Clinical Trauma Professional, and has advanced training in Emotionally Focused Therapy. Prior to his work in mental health and higher education administration, he was a Creative Director, Art Director, and Director of Communications for several national and international nonprofit organizations in NYC and Philly where he specialized in brand development, corporate communications, non-profit marketing, social media engagement, fundraising communications, project management, and strategic planning.