Coaching, Workshops, and Readings
- relationships of all sorts (professional, romantic, platonic, etc.)
- career choices
- sexuality
- recreational life
- emotional development
- and many more
Session: 1 hour
COPMI is the acronym of Children Of Parents with a Mental Illness.
The workshop “Traumatization” is looking into:
- classical traumatization (PTSD cf. ICD 11)
- complex psychic post traumatic stress disorders (complexe PTSD cf. ICD 11)
- causes for traumatization
- needs of a child and traumatization
- prevention strategies
Every issue will be elaborated on from the perspective of a child and enriched with personal experience.
A very important aspect is to establish a dialogue with the audience.
As workshop: ca. 1,5 hours (incl. break) / as advanced training (in depth perspectives): 6-12 hours (1-2 days)
The workshop “Wishes to the Support System” is looking into:
- traumatization
- identiy
- stress / burdons
- stigmatization
- grief
- …and many more.
Based on personal experience, I elaborate on all of the above mentioned issues and many more.
Every aspect will have a specific wish out of the perspective of a child.
Here, also, a dialogue with the audience is key.
As workshop: ca. 1,5 hours (incl. break)
The workshop “Insights” provides specific aspects which are relevant in the up-bringing and the life of a COPMI.
Among them are
- fears / anxiety
- social relationships
- self-esteem
- shame
- trauma
- identiy and self reference
- psychcological and psychotic stress
- grief
- and many more.
The above mentioned aspects are depicted and elaborated on uisng quotes from other COPMI, who were interviewed in a privately conductred study among 13 people of my network.
Based on personal experience, I elaborate on all of the above mentioned issues and many more.
Furthermore, I do talk about larger issues such as the support system in general or which needs should be met (cf. workshop “Wishes to the Support System”).
As workshop: ca. 3 to 4 hours (incl. break) / as advanced training (in depth perspective): 6-12 hours (1-2 days)
I read assorted passages from my autobiography „Als Sei Nichts“ (“As If Nothing Happened”, in German) to the audience and discuss them.
Clients can pick which aspects to focus on, depending on their event.
The most popular focus to date was “Experiencing Childhood as a COPMI”, so the audience can get a first hand report on what kind of stress I had to experience and what it actually means to grow up with a paranoid-schizophrenic mother who does not accept the fact being mentally ill.
The audience, in return, will get the chance to ask questions and is encouraged to discuss certain issues after the actual reading.
Reading: ca. 1,5 to 2 hours (incl. break)
Autobiography "Als Sei Nichts" ("As If Nothing Happened", in German)
Cover
I am eleven years old when my mother sat me down and says: “Your father has died.” He threw himself in front of a train.
It’s the beginnin of twenty years of extraordinary stress, the search for love and acknowledgement as well as stigmatization, taboos and supressing a much needed process of grief. Because just a few years after the death of my father, I was to lose my mother also. Her paranoid schizophrenia makes her incapable of fulfilling her role as a mother. When I was 31, we find her dead in the living room: apparently suicide by sleeping pills.
It took me a long time to understand: I have not only lost my parents but also the lightheartedness of my childhood and adolescence. Not before I turned twenty, I was able to begin the journey to actually grow up and become an adult – in a world which gives me the feeling “as if nothing happened”.
An autobiography.
About the book
With relentless words and supported by reflexions, Christian Kloß paints a picture of how it must be to grow up as a COPMI. With two suicides and a mother who does not accept her mental illness and therefore no treatment, the author depicts an exceptionally severe case. The book draws a lot from the author’s extensive experience in psychotherapy, hence providing many insights into the situation of adult readers with a COPMI background. Shame, anxieties, and grief are being treated as well as everyday challenges of an adolescent child: social relationships, career choices, or recreational activities. With his book, Christian Kloß protrudes to the challenging cores of growing up as a COPMI: their search for identity and and the question “Who am I?”.
- Pages: 324
- Size: 14,8 cm x 21,0 cm (DIN A5) / 5,8″ in x 8,2″ in
- ISBN: 978-3-7345-7040-7 (Hardcover, in German)
- ISBN: 978-3-7345-7041-4 (e-Book, in German)
- Publication date: April 5th, 2017
You can order the book via the author – individual dedication included.
