eiseEducation

Medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) often confound both physicians and psychotherapists, as patients experience real and often debilitating distress without clear biomedical causes. In this engaging webinar, Dr Simon Heyland will trace the typical journey of MUS patients through the healthcare system—frequently marked by diagnostic uncertainty, frustration, and referrals—before arriving in the therapy room. From there, he will offer a conceptual overview of contemporary psychodynamic understandings of symptom formation, highlighting how unconscious emotional conflicts and relational dynamics may become encoded in bodily experiences. The webinar will also introduce key techniques from the Conversational Model, illustrating how this relational and affect-focused psychotherapy can help patients begin to articulate, regulate, and transform the distress underlying their physical symptoms. Drawing on clinical examples, this webinar is ideal for mental health professionals seeking a deeper and more compassionate framework for working with MUS.