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Services offered

Coaching Executive Leadership

Assessment of Culture and Communication

Coaching & Training Groups and Individuals

Group Facilitation

Charlotte Howorth, BSc, LCSW, ACC, has taught Focusing-Oriented Therapy for 25 years and practiced as an individual, couples, and group therapist for over 30 years, as well as an organizational psychologist for the last 15. She led The International Focusing Institute's two-year FOT certification course for twelve years - a role personally entrusted to her by Mary Hendricks, Eugene Gendlin's wife and the Institute's former director - and continued teaching it privately for six more. She has been a Lecturer in Social Work at Columbia University; former Clinical Director, and current Clinical Consultant for The Center for Human Development and Family Services, NYC; and is lead faculty of the Advanced Coaching Program for Interactualizer.  She also teaches for FORGE, NYC (Focusing Oriented Relating in Group Environments), and has taught workshops internationally for the last 17 years. Beginning Sept 2026 her latest offering is: Six Steps of Therapeutic Transformation with Charlotte Howorth, LCSW. “Not technique -  something subtler. In six live sessions, Charlotte maps the felt, relational movements beneath the words: the ground a session grows from, the moment a felt sense forms, the shift that carries new meaning forward.” For therapists, coaches, and helping professionals looking to deepen their work.

Register now for:

THE SIX STEPS OF THERAPEUTIC TRANSFORMATION

 

What creates change in therapy?
 
6 class introductory series in Focusing-Oriented Conversations
with Charlotte Howorth LCSW
 
For therapists, counsellors, coaches, focusing practitioners and helping professionals who want to deepen their understanding of therapeutic change and the one interaction.
Biweekly - now starting October 4th · 135 minutes each
10 Social Works CEUs ·
$500

About the Course
A therapy session is a kind of dance - between therapist and client, between the client and their own inner process, between what is known and what is only beginning to stir. Several tracks are often alive at once: the relational field, the emerging felt sense, the forward movement, the therapist's own resonance.

These workshops help you become more at home in that complexity - not by simplifying it, but by developing a richer feel for each of its dimensions - raising awareness, sensitivity and the skills to move in each.

Eugene Gendlin's six steps of focusing have long served as resonant handles into the subtle border between words and the larger dimension of the wordless. Inspired by them, I've developed a parallel set of six steps for Focusing Oriented Therapy - not a rigid protocol, but a map of the essential movements that make a session come alive. They're offered in Gendlin's spirit - not as technique, but as doorways into a process that is experiential, relational, and always unfolding.

We miss the essence of therapy when we reduce it to instructions. These workshops are about something else - the heart of Focusing Oriented Therapy - as a way of thinking and being. Not only what we do, but how, why, and from what place.

The Six Sessions

  • 1. The Focusing Attitude as Relational Ground  Every session begins before any technique: with an open, receptive, non-demanding presence. This isn't one step among others - it's the ground everything grows from. We explore how this quality is communicated, how to sense when it's missing, and how to return to it.
  • 2. Entering the Field of Lived Experience How do we help a client move from talking about their life to being in it? This session is about the movement into experiential process - pointing beneath the narrative and helping a felt sense begin to form. The art of making a "something" from what is still vague.
  • 3. Building a Relational Home Finding the right distance: between the client and the issue they carry, and between client and therapist. The right distance makes genuine contact possible without flooding or withdrawal - a home where the most vulnerable material can be welcomed and digested.
  • 4. Trusting the Forward Movement  Something opens. New meaning forms. The felt sense, held in the right presence, begins to carry forward. We explore that moment of genuine movement - what enables it, and how to support it without foreclosing it. This life-forward force isn't manufactured; it's recognized and met.
  • 5. Being on Its Side  At the center of FOT is the recognition that something in the client knows its own way - an implicit, directional movement wiser than any interpretation. This session is about trusting and aligning with that emergent process while staying present to both the client and the relationship.
  • 6. Taking in the Whole  Integration isn't an endpoint but an ongoing opening. The closing movement: stepping back to sense the whole - of the session, the issue, the arc of a person's struggle and growth. How does what happened here now live in me? And where does this session sit in the longer journey?

  • Each session includes:

  • Didactic teaching - grounded in Gendlin's process philosophy, extended through relational and neurobiological understanding
  • Clinical video - short excerpts from real sessions illustrating each step
  • Live Demonstrations
  • Discussion - space to bring your own clinical experience into dialogue
  • Experiential practice - because understanding lives in the body, not only the mind

  •  

    October 4, October 18, November 1,
    November 15, December 6, December 20

    10:00am-12:15pm Eastern

     

    Registration & Enquiries
    Contact Charlotte directly: charlottehoworth@gmail.com
    +1 (347) 489 9587 · www.charlottehoworth.com

     
     

    Scientific research from many disciplines shows that when people feel they are in an environment they can’t trust, the creative and more flexible areas of their brains and nervous systems shut down and they enter more of a programed survival mode. That is not only bad for productivity but for the quality of the work place on every level. A recent Gallup pole showed that 85% of workers worldwide hate their jobs, and especially their bosses

    I am a psychotherapist and a coach and have been working for over 20 years as a group facilitator and with executive leaders both in the work place and individually. I have lead many different types of groups in the form of workshops, retreats, and weekly therapy groups. I assess, train and coach leadership and staff of organizations to have more effective conversations, manage stress, and create a self-sustaining, personal growth oriented mental health environment.

    For more information about my psychotherapy work please visit
    www.howortherapy.com



    APPROACH

    I work from a view that people are naturally creative, resourceful and can find their own answers to moving forward. In addition to decades of work as a psychotherapist, my experience in organizational behavior and comprehensive psychological training, a psychotherapeutic philosophy and practice called Focusing informs much of my approach to coaching. It gives structure and depth to what is sensed just below the surface in order to find the clarity to move forward.

    EXPERIENCE

    • Focusing Oriented Relational Psychotherapist for over 25 years with a specialization and many years of experience in group work.



    • Coaching Executives for the last 20 years in how to be more effective leaders and helping them to make navigate career decisions.

    • Facilitating ongoing monthly staff conflict resolution and communication groups within organizations.

    • Mediation between staff and students at educational institutions.

    • Assessment and change of communication style and culture within organizations to increase work place well being and productivity.

    • Lead Faculty of the Advanced Coaching Program of The Human Potential Institute.




    TESTIMONIALS

    Human Potential Institute

    I recently worked with Charlotte when preparing for an important industry keynote on a fairly complex theme and cannot say enough about how helpful that process was for me. The coaching sessions helped me clarify my key areas, motivations and intentions and amazingly quickly gain insight into my strategies for succinctly presenting these. Needless to say, the presentation went superbly and I'm now running another keynote in a month on the very same topics. I'm truly grateful for such a unique and transformational process.
    Rod Francis, Head of Coaching Faculty

    Center for Human Development and Family Service (CHDFS)

    We can’t recommend Charlotte highly enough. She fully assessed the culture and communication style of CHDFS and has coaches and trained staff at every level within our company. I entered this process with trepidation and uncertainty but have found it exceptionally helpful, illuminating and we are already feeling the positive shifts within our company both practically and in terms of staff moral. Charlotte is very clear, grounded and has a very easy way about her that makes any potentially tricky interactions and situations manageable. She has an unusual clarity, insight, and an empathy that finds its way through potentially tricky spots and dynamics.
    Julio Barros, Executive Director

    Pacific College of Oriental Medicine

    Charlotte Howorth’s compassion and expertise shine through in each session. She is always professional yet personable. Charlotte has an amazing ability to connect with you and what you’re going through in a way that makes you feel seen and heard. She has a unique gift for creating a safe and supportive environment, allowing you to explore your thoughts and feelings honestly and openly. Charlotte has a deep knowledge of psychotherapy, active listening, and focusing. She expertly guides you, offering suggestions and encouraging reflection, to find the answers that resonate with your inner self. My work with Charlotte has given me effective strategies for working with students in difficult situations, resolving organizational conflict, and boundary setting for self-care.   In addition, Charlotte has facilitated several grief groups for both faculty and students when the college tragically loses one of its student’s.  These groups have been a vital resource for people to share their feelings and find a place of community and belonging together in the face of sudden loss.  Charlotte has been able to hold a powerfully safe and allowing space for us to come together in these difficult times.
    Ashley Kowal, Ed.D., VP of Student Services
    'The Pacific College of Oriental Medicine has asked Charlotte Howorth, LCSW to help mediate sensitive discussions between faculty members when there has been disagreement or discord.  In addition, she has mediated difficult and sensitive issues between faculty and students.  Charlotte sensitively and effectively brought the issues to the surface and helped faculty and students find common and positive common ground upon which to proceed.  I unequivocally recommend her sensitive and effective skills at mediating, resolving issues and finding common ground.
    Malcom Youngren, Chief Operating Officer

    Mac@Lo Hospitality

    Here I was, trying to think myself out of a box….not knowing how simple the answer was. Charlotte helped me tap into my emotional intelligence, my sense of self, my true self. She helped focus my thoughts and organize my perceptions….She helped me to stop thinking and talking and start listening, truly listening…. the focusing, the coaching…the approach into aligning my sense of self with my sense of business gave me the direction, the strength and the confidence to make some critical life changing decisions and start a new business. Life coaching, when done well, is the single most important step anyone can take. We all need direction; we all need reassurance and we all lack confidence at one point or another. While it is easy to find people that will support you, or tell you that you are right….or offer their opinion, it is very difficult to find the person that will guide you into supporting yourself, finding what is right for you, and listen to your own opinion with an unbiassed and open mind. Charlotte is that person. She has plenty of insights herself, and I value them tremendously, but what her coaching and process gave me is much more important. She gave me “myself” for the rest of my life. Since then, in a brief time period (three years) I have opened a business, relocated, succeed economically and emotionally on achieving exactly what I set myself to achieve, and given me the luxury to do it all side by side with my wife and partner.
    Sergio Maclean, Founding Member and Principle of Coy LLC and Mac@Lo Hospitality

    Exactly Business Data


    Charlotte has been my therapist and career coach since 2015. She helped me navigate a challenging and emotional transition from a job that I was at for 14 years. I couldn't have done it without her guidance and support. She offered practical tips as well as deeply-meaningful sessions that impacted my career and personal choices. She's a wonder!
    Deb Wong, Partner, Exactly Business Data, LLC