Develop better ways of working with clients trapped in their feelings of shame and worthlessness by learning to:

• Move beyond the limitations of acceptance and unconditional positive regard
• Recognize internal attachment disorder
• Help clients reconnect with their disowned self
• Integrate parts work into your approach
• Use somatic methods with traumatized clients

Janina Fisher, Ph.D., is assistant director of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute, an instructor at the Trauma Center in Boston, and a former instructor at Harvard Medical School. She lectures and writes about integrating neuroscience research and body-centered approaches into traditional psychotherapy.

Discover ways to avoid unnecessary struggles through openhearted acceptance of yourself and the client by:

• Understanding the role of exiled “parts” in your client's reactive responses
• Deepening awareness of your own parts
• Learning how to access the compassionate inner “self”
• Exploring the fundamentals of parts work
• Managing common traps like client anger and over-dependency

Richard Schwartz, Ph.D., is director of the Center for Self Leadership and the originator of the Internal Family Systems model. His books include Internal Family Systems Therapy and, most recently, You Are the One You've Been Waiting For.

Learn how to move beyond subtly blaming the client, giving speeches, or becoming defensive when therapy stalls by:

• Recognizing when you sound like a disappointed parent
• Making the impasse explicit without blaming the client
• Acknowledging your own role when treatment bogs down
• Learning to repair ruptures in the therapeutic alliance
• Developing a community of practice with tough cases

William Doherty, Ph.D., is a professor and director of the Citizen Professional Center at the University of Minnesota. He’s the author or coauthor of 12 books on families and family therapy, including Take Back Your Marriage, Take Back Your Kids, and Family Therapy, with Susan McDaniel.

Learn how to form genuine relationships with self-absorbed, arrogant clients lacking in empathy by:

• Gaining and retaining therapeutic leverage
• Mastering the art of empathic confrontation
• Assessing your own vulnerabilities and triggers
• Putting clients in touch with their inner lonely child
• Using homework assignments to generalize therapeutic learnings and strengthen retention

Wendy Behary, L.C.S.W., the founder and director of The Cognitive Therapy Center of New Jersey and of The New Jersey Institute for Schema Therapy, is the author of Disarming the Narcissist: Surviving and Thriving with the Self-Absorbed.

Get practical guidance on a range of clinical methods that will help you overcome stagnation and create therapeutic movement with your most hard-to-treat cases by learning:

• The danger of relieving the client’s pain too soon
• How to set mutually agreed upon goals
• How to focus clients on compelling reasons to change
• When to slow the pace
• The "Columbo" approach to overcoming stalemates

Clifton Mitchell, Ph.D., is a professor at East Tennessee State University, where he received the Teacher of the Year award in 2002. He’s the author of Effective Techniques for Dealing with Highly Resistant Clients.

Explore how to match treatment approaches with client characteristics to avoid stalled sessions by understanding:

• Assessment for six key client characteristics
• Reactance: defiance vs. compliance
• Coping style: internalizers vs. externalizers
• Stage of change: precontemplation, contemplation, and action
• Other characteristics: religion/spirituality, culture, and preferences

John Norcross, Ph.D., A.B.P.P., is a professor of psychology and distinguished university fellow at the University of Scranton, a clinical psychologist, and editor of the Journal of Clinical Psychology: In Session. He’s the author, coauthor, and editor of many books and publications, including Psychotherapy Relationships That Work.

It’s no secret that many therapists consider the field of addictions treatment to be dangerous foreign territory with its own special language and methods. But increasingly, therapists and substance abuse professionals alike have begun to recognize the connection between addictive behavior and traumatic life experience. In this video, Janina will present an approach to addictive behavior that:

• Focuses on the interactive relationship between the underlying trauma symptoms and the impulse to “use” to regulate unbearable feelings and sensations
• Provides a meaning-making component that lessens shame and offers inspiration to live a “life beyond trauma”
• Integrates Sensorimotor Psychotherapy techniques that teach clients how to regulate their nervous systems, decrease anxiety, tolerate sadness and loneliness, and ground themselves both physically and emotionally
• Engages the client’s right brain through drawing, diagramming, movement and gesture, as well as utilizing traditional cognitive interventions.

Janina Fisher, Ph.D., is assistant director of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute, an instructor at the Trauma Center in Boston, and a former instructor at Harvard Medical School. She lectures and writes about integrating neuroscience research and body-centered approaches into traditional psychotherapy.

Therapists are supposed to make clients safe and secure, creating a cozy haven from a cruel world, right? Well, when it comes to treating anxiety, there’s growing evidence that the quickest, most effective approach involves instructing them to ramp up their fears while telling themselves how much they welcome the experience. In this video, you’ll learn how to help clients shift their relationship with their fears and override the responses that perpetuate them. After this session you'll be able to:

• Explain how to rapidly engage anxious clients in the therapeutic alliance and change their mindset toward their fears.
• Identify why the first step to changing an overwhelming response to anxiety is accepting the perceived threat as something the client can approach and change.
• Implement strategies to help clients transform their fear into a challenge to be met or a puzzle to be solved.

Reid Wilson, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist who directs the Anxiety Disorders Treatment Center in Chapel Hill and Durham, NC. He is also Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. He is author of the just-released Stopping the Noise in Your Head: The New Way to Overcome Anxiety and Worry and the classic self-help book Don't Panic: Taking Control of Anxiety Attacks. He is co-author of Stop Obsessing! How to Overcome Your Obsessions and Compulsions, as well as Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents: 7 Ways to Stop the Worry Cycle and Raise Courageous & Independent Children.

When working with trauma cases do you often see clients go into flight, fight, and/or freeze? Do they yell at you, insult you, or leave the session? Are there times you find yourself angry at your clients or just downright don’t like them? Do you recognize your own flight, fight, and/or freeze response? Welcome to the messy, often confusing world of trauma treatment. In this video, you’ll explore practical in-session techniques as well as a framework to help you recognize what’s happening when things heat up and get intense. After this session you'll be able to:

• Describe how to assess the client’s motivation, stage of change, and preferred mode of learning and how to build a therapeutic collaboration around it
• Summarize the importance of therapist transparency
• Explain how to empower clients by making the therapy process as safe and explicit as possible
• Explore intra-family violence or include additional family members in your sessions

Mary Jo Barrett, MSW, the founder and director of the Center for Contextual Change, teaches at the University of Chicago. She’s the coauthor of Systemic Treatment of Incest and coeditor of Treating Incest: A Multimodal Systems Perspective.

Linda Stone Fish, MSW, PhD, the David B. Falk Endowed Professor of Marriage and Family Therapy at Syracuse University, is the author of Nurturing Queer Youth.

Get the insight and practical tools you need to handle even your most angry clients, defuse your own triggers and use empathic confrontation. Get two 90-minute audio recordings, as well as her workshop handouts.

Many therapists speak of the privilege of witnessing another’s authenticity, beyond the cheery “I’m fine” presentations of self that human beings work so hard to maintain. In the process, clinicians get the chance to experience a particular depth of connection with clients that’s unlike any other. And when clients take a leap that propels them out of some longstanding, misery-making behavior, therapists feel their own hearts lift. Hear from leading experts Terry Real, Mary Jo Barrett, Courtney Armstrong, Ron Taffel, Margie Nichols and Hedy Schleifer as they answer the question, "What's your most memorable therapeutic moment?"