Full Course Description
Hope for Treatment-Resistant Depression: A Sensorimotor Approach to Change
The very nature of depression often thwarts efforts to treat it. After all, it’s difficult to change when you have no energy, no hope, and no capacity to concentrate. How can we challenge these chronic states? Using interventions from Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, this recording will introduce ways to help clients relate to their depressive symptoms mindfully, rather than identifying with them, and to manage physical symptoms through changes in posture, breath, and energy. You’ll discover how to:
- Help clients separate depressive thoughts from physical symptoms so that each can be treated separately
- Counter cognitive beliefs that reinforce depressive states by experimenting with new words, new actions, and new habits
- Use body-centered interventions, such as movement, to increase energy and focus in depressed clients
- Facilitate development of an “antidepressant lifestyle” rather than habitual engagement in the opposite
Program Information
Objectives
- Differentiate to clients depression as a somatic state, not just a psychological state.
- Determine cognitive schemas that reinforce depressive states to improve client outcomes.
- Appraise a Sensorimotor Psychotherapy approach to understanding depression.
- Assess three body-centered interventions that increase energy and focus in depressed clients.
- Evaluate Sensorimotor interventions that transform depressive beliefs.
- Evaluate the use of the social engagement system and its role in evoking an internal sense of safety as it relates to treatment.
Outline
Explain to clients about depression as a somatic state, not just a psychological state.
- Depression and the nervous system
- How depression aids survival in childhood
Identify cognitive schemas that reinforce depressive states to improve client outcomes.
- Making meaning of depressive feelings and states
- How negative beliefs affect the body and nervous system
Describe a Sensorimotor Psychotherapy approach to understanding depression.
- Teaching clients to become curious and interested
- Studying the interaction of thoughts, feelings and body reactions
Identify three body-centered interventions that increase energy and focus in depressed clients.
- Experimenting with movement and posture
- Techniques for increasing energy in the body
Explore Sensorimotor interventions that transform depressive beliefs.
- Beliefs condition the body
- The body conditions and reinforces beliefs
Discuss the use of the social engagement system and its role in evoking an internal sense of safety as it relates to treatment.
- The social engagement system as a neural or somatic system
- How therapists can make use of somatic communication to enhance therapeutic effectiveness
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/18/2021
IFS in Action: Leading Clients to Self-Leadership
Healing is a word derived from the German hailjan, meaning “to make whole.” To truly heal isn’t easy, since it involves reconnecting with polarized and often volatile subpersonalities, or parts within ourselves, including protectors, managers, and exiles. The Internal Family Systems (IFS) model helps clients access an undamaged inner essence called the Self, and from this Self they learn to lovingly relate to and transform their most troubling parts. In this recording, you’ll discover how to help clients transform their fragmented experience of Self. Explore how to:
- Apply strategies used in IFS therapy to contact the core Self
- Shift the role of therapist from the primary attachment figure to a container who opens the way for the client’s Self to emerge
- Use methods for transparently handling situations in which you get emotionally triggered by your client
- Get clients’ polarized, deeply conflicted, parts to negotiate with each other
This product is not endorsed by, sponsored by, or affiliated with the IFS Institute and does not qualify for IFS Institute credits or certification.
Program Information
Objectives
- Apply strategies used in IFS to contact the core Self.
- Practice shifting the role of therapist from the primary attachment figure to a container who opens the way for the client’s Self to emerge.
- Use methods for transparently handling situations in which you get emotionally triggered by your client.
- Employ strategies to get clients’ polarized, deeply conflicted parts to negotiate with each other.
Outline
- Apply strategies used in IFS to contact the core Self.
- The assumptions of IFS
- The naturally valuable state of inner parts
- Understanding exiles and managers
- Specify how to shift the role of therapist from the primary attachment figure to a container who opens the way for the client’s Self to emerge.
- Creating a safe and self-compassionate relationship of self to parts
- How parts change in this healing relationship
- Use methods for transparently handling situations in which you get emotionally triggered by your client.
- The importance of contacting your own core Self in session
- Describe how to get clients’ polarized, deeply conflicted parts to negotiate with each other.
- Avoiding the need for extensive grounding techniques and instead communicating with parts to meet their needs
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/18/2021
Relational EMDR as a Transformational Journey: The Power of Attunement
While EMDR is best known for the treatment of PTSD, it’s evolved into a comprehensive, attachment-based approach that addresses a broad range of clinical conditions. In this recording, you’ll learn how to enhance the power of EMDR by heightening the therapist’s use of self and creating an attuned experience that enables clients to process painful experiences that have been previously avoided or denied. We’ll explore how to assess a client’s readiness for the emotional challenges of bringing the past into present-day awareness and the trust in the therapist required to embark on this difficult journey. You’ll discover:
- The Adaptive Information Processing model of EMDR therapy that informs how present difficulties are informed by past experiences
- Relational strategies to navigate the moment-to-moment demands in and out of memory processing
- How to identify a therapeutic impasse and explore what’s needed to move the process forward
- How to negotiate the rules of engagement with clients, making it possible to navigate the uncertain territory of trauma processing
Program Information
Objectives
- Assess the Adaptive Information Processing model of EMDR therapy that informs how present difficulties are informed by past experiences.
- Demonstrate relational strategies to navigate the moment-to-moment demands of memory processing in sessions.
- Investigate how to identify a therapeutic impasse and what’s needed to move the process forward.
- Negotiate the rules of engagement with clients processing trauma.
Outline
- Describe the Adaptive Information Processing model of EMDR therapy that informs how present difficulties are informed by past experiences.
- Explain relational strategies to navigate the moment-to-moment demands in and out of memory processing in sessions.
- Explore how to identify a therapeutic impasse and what’s needed to move the process forward.
- Explain how to negotiate the rules of engagement with clients, making it possible to navigate the uncertain territory of trauma processing.
- Explore ways to co-regulate the client’s experience moment to moment
- Identify how to help a client generate new ways of relating that are reparative.
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/18/2021
Guilt, Shame, and the Traumatized Client: Finding Release from Toxic Emotions
Although trauma can affect clients’ inner lives in countless ways, most survivors grapple with deep-seated feelings of guilt and shame. Until these powerful and debilitating emotions are specifically addressed, it’s difficult for clients to fully heal. In this recording, learn how to compassionately help clients understand the root causes of shame and guilt, and offer creative strategies for releasing themselves from the grip of these toxic emotions. You’ll explore:
- The difference between guilt and shame, and why shame is so difficult to resolve
- The specific dynamics of trauma and early childhood coping strategies that promote and sustain shame
- How secondary gain and “protective parts” affect clients’ willingness to let go of shame
- How to cognitively, somatically, and creatively enhance the two antidotes to shame: self-compassion and curiosity
Program Information
Objectives
- Determine the difference between guilt and shame for clients, and why shame is so difficult to resolve.
- Determine the specific dynamics of trauma and early childhood coping strategies that promote and sustain shame.
- Evaluate how secondary gain and “protective parts” impact clients’ willingness to let go of shame.
- Assess the role the therapeutic relationship plays in helping clients process shame.
- Determine how to cognitively, somatically, and creatively enhance clients’ self-compassion and curiosity to help them let go of shame.
Outline
- Explain the difference between guilt and shame for clients, and why shame is so difficult to resolve.
- Guilt as a byproduct of an interpersonal exchange or a behavioral choice versus core feelings of worthlessness or being inherently damaged or “bad.”
- Apologizing and making amends versus fundamentally changing one’s sense of self
- Determine the specific dynamics of trauma and early childhood coping strategies that promote and sustain shame.
- Witnessing abuse, survivor guilt, the shame of keeping silent, the shame of “participating” in sexual trauma, misunderstanding the freeze response
- Taking ownership of trauma to preserve familial loyalty
- Explore how secondary gain and “protective parts” impact clients’ willingness to let go of shame.
- Reducing expectations, the risk of failing or disappointing others
- Rationalizing self-destructive and addictive behaviors
- Inner critics using shame to “motivate” and prevent abandonment
- Consider the role the therapeutic relationship plays in helping clients process shame.
- Modeling self-compassion and positive self-talk
- Using psychoeducation and curiosity to release clients from self-blame
- The healing impact of attunement
- Describe how to cognitively, somatically, and creatively enhance clients’ self-compassion and curiosity to help them let go of shame.
- Using the “crossroad of a thought” and “double standard” cognitive strategies to let go of shame
- Using “remembered resource,” sand tray work, art strategies, two-handed writing, and spirituality to creatively enhance compassion
- Using “focusing,” body map, and somatic resourcing to understand the somatic impact of shame and bring comfort to the debilitating emotion
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/18/2021
Treating Collective Trauma with Hakomi: Listening to the Body
The Hakomi Method is a multidimensional somatic approach to deep healing rooted in an understanding of the silent language of the body. In the moment-by-moment unfolding of their somatic awareness, clients learn to access the unconscious core beliefs that shape their response to trauma, even when it’s woven within the larger context of collective trauma. Discover how the therapist’s own somatic awareness can help clients untangle the complex area where individual and collective trauma meet, and learn techniques to stay attuned and somatically grounded to effectively work with trauma. In this recording, you’ll explore:
- The key Hakomi concepts of applied mindfulness and somatic awareness to help clients change rigid mental models
- Attachment- and compassion-based skills that facilitate a gentle inquiry into the body’s messages
- How to apply gentle interventions that can yield clients’ emotional defenses and trauma identities
- How to stay self-regulated, somatically grounded, and open-hearted when working with trauma-sensitive processes
Program Information
Objectives
- Use the key Hakomi concepts of applied mindfulness and somatic awareness to improve outcomes when treating trauma.
- Apply attachment- and compassion-based skills that facilitate the experiential process into the body-mind.
- Develop an experiential mindset to hold the multilayered complexity of trauma in sessions.
- Demonstrate the essential Hakomi personhood skills that help therapists stay grounded and self-regulated while in therapeutic engagement.
Outline
- Implement the key Hakomi concepts of applied mindfulness and somatic awareness to improve outcomes when treating trauma.
- Applied mindfulness is an integrated skills set by the Hakomi therapist to facilitate an in-depth process
- Learning to ask targeted questions to facilitate a safe somatic awareness for clients
- Not all somatic or mindfulness interventions are suitable for trauma clients, learning to differentiate what tool fits which client is essential for treatment success
- Apply attachment- and compassion-based skills that facilitate the experiential process into the body-mind.
- Hakomi holds the value of loving presence of the therapist as essential to convey compassion to the clients traumatic experience
- Applying attachment theory informed interventions to regulate clients internal somatic states
- Develop an experiential mindset to hold the multilayered complexity of trauma in sessions.
- Learn what it means to be an experiential therapist by trying out present moment and safe experiments that include play, breath and movement
- Recognize that trauma clients don’t fit one treatment approach size fits all
- Explain the essential Hakomi personhood skills that help therapists stay grounded and self-regulated while in therapeutic engagement.
- The role of the therapist is not just about a skill set but how they embody themselves and stay curious about their own process
- Developing a somatic repertoire to stay grounded in the body when clients trauma feels overwhelming or triggering
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
02/16/2021
Safe and Sound: How Your Voice Can Contribute to Healing Trauma
Can the way we use our voice actually help change a person’s nervous system? Polyvagal Theory provides a neurologically based understanding of how human vocalizations and the way we say what we say can support mental and physical health. Discover how the Safe and Sound Protocol promotes social engagement and safety in therapy.
Program Information
Objectives
- Investigate the nervous system’s response to auditory signals after trauma.
- Apply features of vocalization to enact desired responses changes in the nervous system.
- Extrapolate therapeutic interventions from research on trauma and the auditory circuits of the nervous system.
- Demonstrate 3 ways to use the auditory and vocal systems during trauma treatment.
Outline
- How trauma “re-tunes” the auditory system in trauma survivors
- How to apply the specific features of vocalizations and vocal music that can help create a sense of calm and safety for clients
- How to utilize the voice to support the regulation of clients’ nervous systems and support healing
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/19/2021
Treating Suicide Risk with Competence and Confidence: How to Move Beyond Our Fears
The thought of a client dying by suicide can keep even experienced therapists up at night. Moreover, fear of malpractice liability often leads them to practice defensively, resulting in unnecessary hospitalizations that can significantly hurt therapy outcomes. This recording features evidence-based innovations in the assessment, management, and treatment of suicidal risk. Learn new suicide-focused clinical skills, such as how to evaluate different suicidal states and match them with the most effective interventions and treatments. You’ll discover:
- How to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations and an over-reliance on medications
- Effective techniques to help suicidal clients manage states of acute risk through stabilization planning or use of technology
- Evidence-based approaches to reliably assess, target, and treat clients’ suicidal risk and different suicidal states using frameworks such as Collaborative Assessment Management of Suicidality (CAMS), DBT, and suicide-focused CBT
- How to use CAMS to differentiate direct vs. indirect patient-defined “drivers” of suicide and how to effectively target and treat drivers to decrease suffering and help save lives.
Program Information
Objectives
- Apply evidence-based assessment approaches that help stratify risk and reliably identify different suicidal states.
- Assess risk-management techniques that help a suicidal client manage states of acute risk.
- Apply evidence-based treatments that effectively target and treat different suicidal states.
- Assess how to avoid unnecessary hospitalization with suicidal clients, which can hurt therapy outcomes
- Develop practices that help decrease the risk of suicide-related malpractice liability.
Outline
- Apply evidence-based assessment approaches that help stratify risk and reliably identify different suicidal states.
- Assess risk-management techniques that help a suicidal client manage states of acute risk.
- Apply evidence-based treatments that effectively target and treat different suicidal states.
- Assess how to avoid unnecessary hospitalization with suicidal clients, which can hurt therapy outcomes
- Learn practices that help decrease the risk of suicide-related malpractice liability.
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
01/11/2021
Finding Meaning in Loss: The Sixth Stage of Grief
Many clients look for “closure” after a loss, but the process of finding meaning and a clear direction out of their pain can transform therapy into a deeper, more hopeful experience. How can therapists help their clients shift from simply exploring pain to experiencing healing and even posttraumatic growth? Learn new ways to help your clients relate to their suffering and move on in a way that honors the loved one they’ve lost. You’ll explore how to:
- Identify strategies to address guilt, shame, and stigma in special circumstances, such as child loss, sibling loss, parental loss, addiction, death by suicide and pandemic losses
- Develop a better understanding of the strength and limitations of the Kubler-Ross’s stage model as well as how a new stage can enhance posttraumatic growth and resiliency
- Explore powerful techniques for using grounded positive psychology to help witness vs. “fixing” grief
Program Information
Objectives
- Analyze four strategies to address guilt, shame, and stigma in special circumstances, such as child loss, sibling loss, parental loss, and death by suicide or addiction.
- Assess and evaluate the strengths and limitations of the Kubler-Ross’s stage model as well as how a new stage can enhance posttraumatic growth and resiliency.
- Evaluate three techniques for using grounded positive psychology to assist clients who are grieving.
Outline
- Identify strategies to address guilt, shame, and stigma in special circumstances, such as child loss, sibling loss, parental loss, and death by suicide or addiction.
- Understand how shame needs secrecy to survive.
- Identify the relationship between guilt and helplessness.
- Develop a better understanding of the strength and limitations of the Kubler-Ross’s stage model as well as how a new stage can enhance posttraumatic growth and resiliency.
- Be able to explain to clients Kubler Ross’s directions for helpful vs non helpful applications for the clients grief experience.
- Understand myths around acceptance.
- Explore powerful techniques for using grounded positive psychology to help witness vs. “fixing” grief.
- Learn how friends and family can interfere with support by pointing out silver linings.
- Become aware of how the family, friends and even professionals can let their own uncomfortably interfere with a client’s grief.
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/21/2021
Young Adults and the Addictive Cycle: What Lies Beneath
Rates of anxiety and depression among young adults have been skyrocketing for years. Unsurprisingly, an increase in addictive behaviors tracks closely. Although most therapists understand how depression and other clinical issues fuel the addictive cycle, they’re often not aware of how effective treatment for young people differs from approaches targeted toward adults. In this recording, the presenter will explore common experiences negatively impacting this age group as well as practical interventions that elicit and work with young people’s core beliefs to direct treatment. You’ll discover how to:
- Uncover critical experiences, such as cyberbully, sexual assault, emotional abandonment, and loss, that often underlie co-occurring disorders
- Effectively address clients’ deep-rooted views about themselves and the world
- Use practical tools, such as the Addiction Interaction template and Behavioral Acting Out framework, to offer direction for healing and an understanding of the function of addictive patterns related to behavior
- Explore the interplay of trauma and technology
Program Information
Objectives
- Analyze five critical experiences that fuel the mental health and addiction problems of young people.
- Distinguish two practical tools to aid in the disruption of the addictive process.
- Apply the core elements to a healthy treatment process.
- Measure the interplay of various forms of trauma with use of technology.
Outline
- Identify five critical experiences that fuel the mental health and addiction problems of young people.
- Physical Abuse
- Sexual Assault
- Emotional Abandonment
- Loss and Grief
- Apply the core elements to a healthy treatment process.
- Community
- Gender-Specific Programming
- Experiential Modalities
- Describe the interplay of various forms of trauma with use of technology.
- FOMO (fear of missing out)
- Cyber Bullying
- Describe practical tools for clinical use
- Addiction Interaction Template
- Behavioral Acting-out Framework
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
02/10/2021
Preventing Childhood Anxiety and Depression: How to Expand Our Paradigm
Given the increasing rates of child and adolescent anxiety and depression, it’s clear our current treatment paradigm isn’t working to proactively reach the young people who need help. It’s time we put an end to misinformed accommodations that only strengthen patterns of anxiety. Discover cutting-edge programs that get upstream of the problem, targeting parents and other important adults as key to mitigating and preventing childhood anxiety. Also, explore family systems approaches that teach both adults and children concrete skills to interrupt generational patterns of anxiety, depression, and emotional (mis)management. This recording will demonstrate how to:
- Apply parental coaching and collaboration as an integral component of intervention
- Identify family patterns that support generational anxiety and address them using skill-based interventions
- Challenge the most common “elimination strategies,” such as distraction and reassurance, that actually increase anxiety and impair functioning
- Use groups, psychoeducational classes, and school-based programs to reach more underserved families and youth
Program Information
Objectives
- Determine family patterns that support generational anxiety and address them using skill-based interventions.
- Apply parental and school-based coaching and collaboration as integral pieces of treatment.
- Assess the most common “elimination strategies” that increase anxiety and impair functioning.
- Use clinical tools within group sessions, psychoeducational classes, and school-based programs to help more underserved families and effectively treat anxiety.
Outline
- Identify family patterns that support generational anxiety and address them using skill-based interventions.
- How to recognize the 6 cognitive patterns of anxiety and depression
- Active assignments for families to create different responses and patterns
- Increase prevention through parents’ understanding of emotional family legacy
- Apply parental and school-based coaching and collaboration as integral pieces of treatment.
- Why seeing children alone inhibits prevention (and treatment)
- How to shift the common reactive paradigm in schools
- The importance of targeting and building concrete skills for prevention
- Assess the most common “elimination strategies” that increase anxiety and impair functioning.
- Common interventions that support anxiety and depression
- How to intervene with an active, “on offense” approach
- The backwards use of accommodations for anxiety
- Use clinical tools within group sessions, psychoeducational classes, and school-based programs to help more underserved families and effectively treat anxiety.
- Ideas for groups and other formats to focus on parenting prevention
- How accurate information and myth-busting strengthen families
- Setting the expectations of parental engagement (hint: it’s what parents want)
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/19/2021
Parenting through IFS: From Tears to Transformation
For all its joys, parenting is often a roller coaster of challenges. Even when parents are at the top of their game, the most routine curveballs—quarreling siblings, a child’s public meltdown, or a phone call from a teacher—can trigger unresolved shame, guilt, or anger. But the Internal Family Systems (IFS) approach can help parents more fully understand and heal the wounds their children will inevitably evoke in them, allowing them to better set healthy limits, while also creating a more nurturing family environment. You’ll discover how to help parents:
- Talk to children about difficult subjects by using “part of me language,” which cultivates honesty, clarity, and calm
- Explore their own reactive moments with compassion and respond to triggers with more empathy, using dialogues with inner parts
- Co-parent in a way that’s supportive, collaborative, and leads to a fuller expression of mature selfhood
- Recover from the inevitable moments when they “lose it” and take the necessary steps to repair with fuller awareness
This product is not endorsed by, sponsored by, or affiliated with the IFS Institute and does not qualify for IFS Institute credits or certification.
Program Information
Objectives
- Integrate “a part of me language” in family conversation to allow for safe ways to have difficult discussions with children.
- Create ways to engage parents in an exploration of their reactive moments with compassion and empathy instead of guilt and shame.
- Plan an agreement with parents that allows for healthy co-parenting and minimizes the negative impact they can have on their kids when they’re not at their best
- Demonstrate how to help parents lead from a place of power and set limits for their children while still expressing love and support.
Outline
- Parent Coaching vs Parent Healing
- Parent Coaching
- Parenting
- Starting the Parenting Journey
- Expectations Exercise
- Video (I was the perfect mom…)
- The Spiritual Dimension
- Family History: Legacy Gifts & Burdens
- Gifts and Burdens Exercise
- Parenting Styles & Attachment Styles
- IFS & Parenting
- Parenting Styles
- What IFS Brings to Parenting
- Video (Do you suffer from Par-ent-ing?
- Our Reactive Moments
- What causes you to lose it (exercise)
- List the reasons you can get activated.
- When Your Kids Become Your Perpetrator
- Video (Mom losing it)
- Examples
- World series
- Sleepover & football game
- Trick-or-treating & dinner
- Responsibility & Repair
- Owning our Parts
- Apologizing
- Connecting
- Triggering Exercise
- Overidentifying with their parts
- Co-Parenting
- Video (people with no kids)
- The Triggering Agreement
- Personal example
- Triggering Agreement Exercise
- Direct Access Parenting
- Parenting Books
- Parenting and Society/Culture
- Parenting and Attachment
- Parenting and the Brain
- Video (I’m not your friend, kid!)
- From Reactive to Responsive
- The Parent Self
- Parenting from Self
- Unique Circumstances
- Summary & Ending Exercise
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/20/2021
The Defining Decade: What 20-somethings Really Want from Therapy
There are 50 million 20-somethings in the U.S. and, more than ever, they’re looking for therapists. Yet too few clinicians specialize in this age group or are aware of its unique opportunities and challenges. Find out what’s so special about this “defining decade” and why 30 is not the new 20 in terms of starting a life. Rather than a developmental downtime, the 20s are a developmental sweet spot. In this recording, you’ll learn:
- Why “anxiety is the new depression” in this age group—and the most effective ways to address their concerns
- Why finding work and love is a mental health issue for 20-somethings—and how to make it part of your work with them
- How “the nocebo effect” informs diagnosis—and how to talk about the difference between development and disorder
- “Forward-thinking” interventions to help 20-somethings be intentional about the present and take responsibility for the future
Program Information
Objectives
- Determine why medication is not always the best medicine when treating anxiety in 20-somethings.
- Apply psychoeducation with 20-somethings to address the issues research shows they most want help with.
- Apply interventions that help this age group find work and love.
- Evaluate “the nocebo effect” and how it informs diagnosis with this age group.
- Apply “forward thinking” interventions in sessions with 20-somethings to give them the urgency and inspiration they need to engage with the present and take responsibility for the future.
Outline
- Explain why medication is not always the best medicine when treating anxiety in 20-somethings.
- Learn about the downsides of the use of psychotropic medications in this group
- Consider alternatives such as skill building and cognitive interventions
- Apply psychoeducation with 20-somethings to address the issues research shows they most want help with.
- Help clients engage with the facts about work and love in the 21st Century
- Be prepared to educate clients about their changing brains and bodies
- Apply interventions that help this age group find work and love.
- Learn the concept of “identity capital” and how to help 20-somethings know and add to their own value
- Learn the concept of “weak ties” or where new jobs and relationships come from
- Explain “the nocebo effect” and how it informs diagnosis with this age group.
- Understand and explain the difference between development and disorder
- Educate clients about the course of common mental health problems and how they change in adulthood
- Apply “forward thinking” interventions in sessions with 20-somethings to give them the urgency and inspiration they need to engage with the present and take responsibility for the future.
- Help 20-somethings develop “time perspective” or how to connect the present with the future
- Aid 20-somethings as they learn to plan beyond the “semester-sized chunk”
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/20/2021
The Misattuned Family: Techniques for Healing Attachment Trauma
Too many children feel hurt, angry, and disconnected from their parents; and too many parents feel discouraged that their child-rearing approaches aren’t working. Many parent-child therapies focus on improving behaviors without looking at the core issues underneath—attachment and trauma. This recording offers an approach that focuses on the physiologic, nonverbal connection between parent and child to improve the relationship. Using two attachment-based modalities—Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy and Theraplay—learn how to enhance regulation, connection, and joy between parents and children as well as guide parents to do reparative work around family trauma. Discover how to:
- Get to the heart of a child’s deeper thoughts, feelings, wishes, and beliefs without relying on the child’s ability to verbalize feelings
- Facilitate active dialogue between parents and children that’s both safe and gets to their core issues
- Practice scenarios for optimal arousal, affect regulation, and de-escalating child-parent dysregulation
- Learn gentle ways to intervene and redirect a misattuned or critical parent
Program Information
Objectives
- Practice activities that increase a sense of well-being and connection between family members.
- Facilitate active dialogue between parent and child using PACE to get at the dyad’s core issues.
- Practice recognizing escalation in child and parent and employing strategies for de-escalating the situation.
- Employ techniques to calm and refocus a parent’s energy and communicate messages in a constructive manner.
Outline
- Implement face-to-face between parent and child to create a sense of well-being, connection and joy
- Watch and practice activities that increase warm facial expressions, synchronized movement and rhythm
- Learn activities that work to calm a dysregulated child and engage a withdrawn child
- Learn to facilitate active dialogue between parent and child that is both safe and gets at the dyad’s core issues.
- Practice using PACE-Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy
- Learn techniques to discern underlying motives/feelings underneath a child’s behaviors
- Practice scenarios for de-escalating child and parent dysregulation optimal arousal and affect regulation,
- Detect and manage parent/child signs of escalation before they sabotage the session
- Learn techniques for reducing intensity of content to allow child to stay with difficult content
- Learn gentle ways to intervene and redirect a misattuned or critical parent
- Observe techniques for calming and refocusing parent’s energy
- Observe techniques for helping parent convey messages in a constructive manner
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/20/2021
Polyvagal Theory in Action: Harnessing the Healing Potential of the Autonomic Nervous System
At its most basic level, human communication is one nervous system responding to another, searching for signals that it’s safe to connect and flooding us with distress responses when it’s not. Polyvagal Theory has revolutionized our understanding of the complex, unconscious forces at play in therapeutic interactions, offering a road map to help us navigate and engage this deeply embodied system. Learn how to use the five pathways of the Social Engagement System to regulate your own states and enter into fuller autonomic attunement with your clients. You’ll explore how to:
- Use your own autonomic nervous system to create an environment of safety for your clients
- Develop the expressive range of your eyes, voice, breath, and body to enrich your nonverbal attunement skills
- Help your clients listen to their internal state and let go of their problem stories
- Reliably guide your clients from state to state and enhance their capacity for self-regulation
Program Information
Objectives
- Employ exercises designed to engage the neural circuits of your client’s Social Engagement System to improve clinical outcomes.
- Evaluate and track moments of autonomic disconnection to optimize repair in sessions.
- Create an environment of autonomic safety using the “inside, outside, and between” guide.
- Use your own Social Engagement System to effectively coregulate with clients.
Outline
- Employ exercises designed to engage the neural circuits of your client’s Social Engagement System to improve clinical outcomes.
- Present the architecture of the Social Engagement System with an overview of the function of cranial nerves V, VII, IX, X, XI describing the impact on relationships and autonomic regulation
- Teach specific exercises to activate each cranial nerve and ways to track the response
- Identify actions of the Social Engagement System in specific clinical issues and ways to engage the system to shape specific clinical outcomes
- Identify and track moments of autonomic disconnection and find the right repair in sessions.
- Present ways to map clinician autonomic response patterns
- Learn what constitutes an autonomic rupture and an effective autonomic repair
- Present ways to track levels of attunement and provide guided exercises to practice the repair process
- Create an environment of autonomic safety using the “inside, outside, and between” guide.
- Teach the organizing principle of neuroception
- Present ways to track visceral, environmental, and relational cues of safety and danger within the autonomic response system
- Practice ways to reduce cues of danger and create cues of safety using the autonomic experience of neuroception
- Use your own Social Engagement System to effectively coregulate with clients.
- Present a live demo to illustrate application of skills in a clinical session
- Offer guided dyadic practice
- Create personalized ways to use the five elements of the Social Engagement System as co-regulating resources
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/18/2021
Psychedelics in Therapy: New Ways to Catalyze Healing
As psychiatry struggles to develop new, more effective treatments, clinical trials combining psychotherapy and the drug MDMA, also known as Ecstasy, are producing stunning results. New research suggests that incorporating psychedelics like MDMA and psilocybin into talk therapy can dramatically boost outcomes with an array of issues, including PTSD, anxiety, depression, relationship blocks, even drug addiction. If ongoing trials continue with favorable results, FDA approval for certified therapists to use MDMA- and psilocybin-assisted therapy in their practices could be on the horizon. Guided in this recording by the psychiatrist at the helm of the MDMA-assisted psychotherapy trials, you’ll explore:
- The rationale for using drugs like MDMA, psilocybin and other psychedelics as catalysts for psychotherapy
- The MDMA-assisted psychotherapy process, illustrated with video clips
- How these inner-directed approaches to therapy respect and support clients’ innate healing intelligence
- New opportunities for psychotherapists to receive training in this approach
Program Information
Objectives
- Evaluate the results of clinical trials of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD and their treatment implications.
- Determine the clinical uses of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in the treatment of trauma.
- Appraise the role therapists play in the sessions while the client is under the effects of these drugs, and how to facilitate the talk-therapy sessions that precede and follow it to improve client outcomes.
- Assess the risks and limitations of MDMA and psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy.
Outline
- History of MDMA and Psilocybin
- Physiological effects and side effects, risk/benefit profile
- Design of past and ongoing non-profit-sponsored clinical trials of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy
- Results of Six Completed MDMA Phase 2 Clinical trials
- Design of ongoing Phase 3 Trials of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy
- Overview of psilocybin clinical trials
- Status of FDA drug development – MDMA and Psilocybin, including Breakthrough Therapy Designation
- The manualized therapeutic method used in clinical trials of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy
- Essential elements of “inner directed” approach
- Illustrated with quotes and videos
- Challenges that may arise
- Therapist training program for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
01/12/2021
Ancient Wisdom for Today’s Ailments: Connecting the Body, Mind, and Spirit
The long-term impact of trauma and stress are more than just mental health issues: they’re at the root of almost 80 percent of chronic illnesses in our modern culture. But ancient spiritual practices involving guided imagery, chanting, drawing, and movement allow us to reconnect with the innate healing power of our bodies, minds, and spirits. Experience processes that deepen access to the imagination and the inner wisdom that can guide personal journeys of growth, resilience, and recovery in a range of clinical contexts and settings. You’ll explore:
- How to use the genogram to help clients build resilience and hope, and attune to their sense of well-being
- Guided imagery practices to use with clients in therapy as well as community settings to help heal the body and heighten experiences of personal growth
- Practical exercises involving writing, drawing, and chanting that reestablish a connection with the heart when trauma and stress have shut off that channel to inner wisdom
- How to use music and movement in sessions to get around emotional blocks without spoken words
Program Information
Objectives
- Evaluate the connection between trauma, stress, and chronic illness.
- Apply three writing and drawing practices in a clinical setting to heal the effects of stress.
- Use the genogram as a clinical tool to deepen work with clients around health, resilience, and hope.
- Demonstrate guided imagery practices to use with clients in therapy and in community settings to help heal the body and heighten experiences personal growth.
- Assess how to help clients access inner strengths through creative processes that tap into the imagination.
Outline
- Explain the connection between trauma, stress, and chronic illness.
- Participants will increase their understanding of the current chronic illness incidences in the US population, and their understanding of the physiology of the stress response.
- The didactic portion of this objective will include a review of the current research on intergenerational trauma, stress perception, and health
- Apply three writing and drawing practices in a clinical setting to heal the effects of stress.
- Participants will explore the current research on the impact of journaling on stress perception and chronic illness.
- They will engage in writing exercises to address their own health challenges, along with those of their patient population.
- Use the genogram as a clinical tool to deepen work with clients around health, resilience, and hope.
- Participants will create a "theme-focused" genogram around a current symptom or challenge in their lives
- The research from this module of the training is based on the work of McGoldrick and the Center for Mind-Body Medicine.
- Use music and movement in sessions to get around emotional blocks without spoken words.
- Participants will deepen their understanding of the use of music as a tool for parasympathetic dominance and creativity.
- Assess how to help clients access inner strengths through creative processes that tap into the imagination.
- Participants will be guided in the appropriate application of personal and professional use of imagery, music, chanting, and journaling as tools for accessing innate wisdom.
- Describe guided imagery practices to use with clients in therapy and in community settings to help heal the body and heighten experiences personal growth.
- Participants will deepen their understanding of the use of imagery for trauma healing, managing stress, and understanding their own physiology.
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
01/07/2021
Taming the Amygdala: A Brain-Based Approach to Anxiety
New understandings in neuroscience have highlighted the central role the amygdala plays in anxiety. But how many of us can talk with our clients about the amygdala in a clear, engaging way that actually enhances treatment? This recording provides brain-based techniques that directly target the symptoms of anxiety at the neurological source. Discover effective strategies—designed to fit how the amygdala learns—that target triggers, panic attacks, nausea, and sleep problems. You’ll explore how to:
- Demystify the neurobiology of anxiety by introducing clients to the language of the amygdala in a way that engages them in treatment and makes interventions more effective
- Use neurologically informed CBT techniques to target the amygdala’s contributions to anxiety disorders, including OCD and PTSD
- Use cognitive restructuring, including cognitive defusion and reconsolidation, to resist cognitions that ignite amygdala-based responding
Program Information
Objectives
- Appraise the role of the amygdala in maintaining anxiety disorders for purposes of client psychoeducation.
- Demonstrate how clients who know the language of the amygdala have improved engagement and mindfulness.
- Use neurologically informed strategies, such as exposure, relaxation, exercise, and sleep interventions to produce changes in the amygdala and improve client outcomes.
- Use cognitive restructuring, cognitive defusion, and mindfulness techniques to reduce cognitions that ignite the amygdala activation that produces anxious responding.
Outline
Describe the role of the amygdala in maintaining anxiety disorders for purposes of client psychoeducation.
- Explain amygdala as an alarm system that responds to danger.
- Explain amygdala as storing memories of emotional importance.
- Describe responses of amygdala as not always appropriate to 21st century.
Explain the language of the amygdala.
- Explain that the amygdala communicates through bodily responses.
- Explain that the amygdala does not learn from books or lectures.
- Explain that the amygdala learns from experience.
- Describe the association-based learning process (i.e., classical conditioning)
Explain how clients who know the language of the amygdala have improved engagement and mindfulness.
- Recognition of ways to change amygdala responding is empowering.
- Recognition of the purpose of symptoms such as increased heart rate, muscle tension allow one to observe and interpret these responses differently.
- Attributing anxiety responses to amygdala helps client to dissociate from and take the role of an observer of these responses.
Use neurologically informed strategies such as exposure, relaxation, exercise, and sleep interventions to produce changes in the amygdala.
- Present exposure is a way of teaching the amygdala new associations and responses.
- Teach relaxation strategies that reduce amygdala in minutes.
- Identify the ability of regular exercise and adequate sleep to produce lasting changes in amygdala activation.
Use neurologically informed strategies such as cognitive restructuring, cognitive defusion, and mindfulness techniques to reduce cognitions that ignite the amygdala activation that produces anxious responding.
- Teach clients that the amygdala responds to cortex activity that presents threatening thoughts, images, or worries.
- Teach clients to recognize worries and anticipatory thoughts as simply thoughts and not as accurate predictors of the future.
- Train clients to observe and be curious about their anxiety responses rather than get caught up in the experience of anxiety.
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/19/2021
Bringing the Body into Therapy: Clinical Tools from Somatic Experiencing
It’s now widely acknowledged that the body can be an ally in healing and psychotherapy, and one of the keys to helping clients move beyond trauma and embody resilience. In this recording, featuring experiential exercises, you’ll learn to apply powerful clinical tools from Somatic Experiencing (SE), an approach developed by Peter Levine to treat trauma and other stress-related disorders by gently facilitating the release of thwarted survival physiology bound in the body during a traumatic or overwhelming event. You’ll explore:
- How to create a vibrant experience of resilience and wholeness in your work
- How implicit memory shapes our physiological and psychological responses to trauma and recovery
- Three skills to work with the autonomic nervous system to rebound from trauma and overwhelm
Program Information
Objectives
- Assess how implicit memory shapes our physiological and psychological responses to trauma and recovery.
- Apply the psychobiology of trauma and the survival responses of fight, flight, freeze as it relates to clinical treatment.
- Apply three skills to work with the autonomic nervous system to increase resilience and rebound from trauma and overwhelm.
Outline
- The science and skills of Interoception
- How awareness of sensation (interoception via the Insula) can read ANS states
- Introduction to stabilization skills based on interoception
- Introduce multiple somatic tools that re-wire implicit traumatic memory in the body
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/19/2021
Cultivating a Resilience Mindset: Rewiring Old Patterns for New Growth
When overwhelming anxiety or loss leaves your clients feeling stressed, or worse—traumatized—there’s a way not only to help them bounce back, but bounce forward. Recent discoveries in neuroscience have given us specific tools to facilitate posttraumatic growth, allowing clients to engage with virtually any challenge as an opportunity. In the process, clients can change old coping patterns, shift perspectives, and discover new possibilities. In this experiential recording, you’ll discover how to:
- Use body-based tools of breath, touch, movement, and visualization to restore equilibrium in the nervous system
- Help clients manage disruptive emotions and cultivate positive ones to shift brain functioning from states of contraction to openness and learning
- Adapt mindfulness practices to help clients identify dysfunctional coping patterns and uncover new, healthier behaviors
- Use brain-based techniques to transform mistakes and losses into opportunities for learning and empowerment
Program Information
Objectives
- Appraise the science behind neuroplasticity.
- Determine the role of the body in helping restore equilibrium to the nervous system.
- Demonstrate how post-traumatic growth tools can improve clinical outcomes.
- Determine how mindfulness practices can shift clients’ attitudes and behavior.
Outline
- Explain the science behind neuroplasticity.
- Neurons that fire together wire together; repeat an experience, repeat the neural firing; create new neural circuity
- Mechanisms of brain change: conditioning (the brain’s default), new conditioning (installing new patterns of response), re-conditioning (re-wiring old patterns of response) de-conditioning (the “play space” of imagination and visualization)
- Explore the role of the body in helping restore equilibrium to the nervous system.
- Traditional model of autonomic nervous system
- Application of polyvagal theory to restoring equilibrium
- Illustrate how post-traumatic growth tools can improve clinical outcomes.
- Resourcing with other people
- Resourcing with the positive
- Finding the silver lining in any adversity
- Coherent narrative to integrate trauma into life story
- Describe how mindfulness practices can shift clients’ attitudes and behavior.
- 7 basic steps of mindfulness
- What story am I believing now? Change every should to a could. Shifting common mental patterns, etc.
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
01/25/2021
Interrupting the Reign of Pain: Therapy Tools to Eliminate Chronic Pain
Typically, physical and psychological pain are treated separately, even when they’re deeply intertwined. Nearly half of all therapy clients suffer from chronic physical pain, which often has no clear medical cause, including back and neck pain, headaches, and fibromyalgia. We now know that all pain is constructed by the brain’s alarm mechanism, which can be activated by either physical injury or perceived emotional threat. In this recording, you’ll learn tools to simultaneously address physical and emotional pain in your work with clients. You’ll explore how to:
- Explain how the brain’s predictive coding mechanisms generate and moderate the experience of physical pain, and avoid the trap of clients hearing it as “it’s all in your head”
- Teach clients how to reverse rather than cope with chronic brain-induced pain using pain reprocessing therapy
- Implement Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy, which has been found to be more effective than standard psychotherapeutic treatment
- Understand cutting-edge research on chronic back pain, and determine if your client has psycho-physiologic-induced pain
Program Information
Objectives
- Appraise how the brain’s predictive coding mechanisms create and reinforce physical pain in clients.
- Determine in session if a client has psychophysiologic-induced pain.
- Analyze concepts of psychophysiologic pain to clients and implement pain reprocessing therapy.
- Perform Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy techniques to help alleviate clients’ pain symptoms.
Outline
- Knowledge about Psychophysiologic Disorders (PPD)
- How is pain produced and processed in the conscious and subconscious brain
- What are some of the common manifestations of PPD
- Relationship between stressful life events and PPD
- Overview of treatment of PPD
- How to assess if someone has PPD, including examination skills if appropriate (Medical assessment)
- Medical history
- Review of records and imaging studies
- Review of symptoms checklist lifetime and pain map, ACE score
- Medical examination or review of medical examinations
- FIT evaluation: Functional, Inconsistent, Triggered
- Provocative testing: imagination and pressure testing
- How to determine the psychological cause of PPD
- Early childhood history—priming events
- Teen and early adult history—triggering events
- Later life history, search for themes and patterns
- Connection between onset and exacerbation of symptoms and stressful life events
- How to educate patients and personalize information about PPD
- Explaining PPD 101—the information
- Review themes and relate life events to onset and exacerbation of PPD symptoms
- Obtain feedback and answer questions
- How to implement the basic cognitive and behavioral elements of treatment: Pain Reprocessing Therapy
- Education as a basis of treatment
- Understanding the concepts and applying them personally
- Believing in them and self-confidence to allay doubts
- Developing self-confidence for successful recovery
- Affirmations for recovery
- Somatic tracking and mindful awareness
- Conditioned responses and outcome independence
- Graded exposure
- Self-compassion
- Description of expressive writing exercises, handouts only
- List of writing techniques (Lists)
- Free writing
- Unsent letters
- Dialogues
- Gratitude
- Forgiveness
- Barriers to recovery
- Responding to life situations
- Writing a new life narrative
- Description of the role of meditative exercises, handouts only
- Mindfulness practices
- Attending to emotional states
- Decreasing self-induced suffering
- Tolerating symptoms as transient events
- Guided meditations
- How to guide a PPD patient in emotional awareness and expression exercises
- Basic principles
- Description of steps in the process
- Demonstration of the process
- Conclusions, Questions and Answers
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
01/06/2021
The Biology of Loss: How to Foster Resilience When Attachments Are Impaired
Bestselling author Gabor Maté has become a leading voice for the destigmatization and compassionate treatment of mental health and addiction. He’s the author of four bestselling books, including When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection, and the award-winning In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction.
He’ll discuss how trauma and emotional stress, often hidden below consciousness and interwoven into the very fabric of society, prepare the ground for disease. He'll also explore how to unlock our natural abilities for recovery and healing, particularly at a moment when therapists are struggling in unprecedented ways.
Maté will also cover the core elements of healthy human development and what happens when critical attachments are lost or severed. He will discuss what it really means for humans to be resilient in the face of attachment injuries. What emerges is a new paradigm for relating, grounded in the present moment while not flinching from the past.
Program Information
Objectives
- Measure the impacts of childhood trauma on psychological functioning and well-being in adulthood.
- Differentiate how to uncover early traumatic events of childhood and unconscious feeling states.
- Devise how to cultivate deeper therapeutic presence by bringing awareness to unconscious patterns and processes that may be exacerbating client symptoms.
- Demonstrate how to keep clients engaged in present-moment experiences using a mind-body framework.
- Evaluate recent developments in attachment research and trauma.
- Extrapolate how early loss can translate into maladaptive behaviors in adulthood.
- Propose 3 examples of skills for building resilience in the face of loss.
Outline
- Defining the impacts of trauma and hidden emotional stressors
- Understand the role of stress in the development of disease
- Review the stress reaction from the perspective of systems theory
- Understanding the nature of resilience as adaptation
- The ways in which we can overcome stress and foster resilience
- The social context of stress and problematic behaviors
- Moving past reaction to understanding origins as adaptations
- The attachment drive as a biological necessity
- A paradigm for developing resilience in the face of attachment loss
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/19/2021
Transforming Resistance: What to Do When Therapy Gets Stuck
Most therapists think of “resistance” as the main obstacle to therapeutic progress. But whether it manifests as a passive-aggressive response to interventions, desperation for help alternating with a refusal to collaborate, self-destructive behavior, or struggle for therapeutic control, the underlying conflicts about self-protection vs. trust in the therapeutic process remain the same. Even when clients sincerely want something different for themselves, they often can’t control the instinctive defensive responses evoked by the therapeutic relationship—but it doesn’t have to thwart therapy. In this recording, discover how to:
- Befriend the resistance by treating it as a resource and allying with it
- Reframe stuckness as a survival strategy and increase clients’ curiosity about the process
- Help clients use action, movement, and gesture to experience stuckness or resistance in new, more empowering ways
Program Information
Objectives
- Determine how to avoid “resisting the client’s resistance” to improve clinical outcomes.
- Evaluate how to befriend client resistance by treating it as a resource and allying it with it.
- Assess how to reframe resistance and stuckness as a survival strategy.
- Appraise action, movement, and gesture to help clients experience stuckness or resistance in new, more empowering ways.
Outline
Describe how to avoid “resisting the client’s resistance” to improve clinical outcomes.
- Resistance and the psychotherapist
- “Dancing with resistance”
Explain how to befriend client resistance by treating it as a resource and allying it with it.
- Looking at the protective function of resistance
- Treating resistance as a “survival resource”
Assess how to reframe resistance and stuckness as a survival strategy.
- Understanding resistance in the context of trauma and attachment failure
- Communicating ‘positive regard’ for resistance
Explore action, movement, and gesture to help clients experience stuckness or resistance in new, more empowering ways.
- From resistance into empowerment
- Making use of the energy of resistance
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/19/2021
Mindfulness as Exposure Therapy: Avoiding the Avoidance Trap
Mindfulness is a popular intervention these days, well-supported by clinical research and brain-scan studies. But many well-meaning clinicians use mindfulness to distract clients from unpleasant thoughts and feelings, inadvertently reinforcing the avoidance cycle, which increases struggle in the long term. This recording will help you avoid the avoidance trap and translate research findings into powerful tools. Learn proven techniques for using mindfulness to help clients move more directly into transforming their relationship with difficult thoughts, emotions, and body sensations. You’ll discover:
- Specific tools to help clients break free from the circular traps they create by fighting with their own distressing thoughts
- Concrete practices to help clients move into the body sensations that underlie strong emotions, so they can transform them from within
- How to apply a three-minute exercise to help clients quickly move into challenging thoughts, feelings, and sensations to disrupt the avoidance cycle
- Increase therapist resilience and presence with challenging clients to improve your outcomes
Program Information
Objectives
- Utilize mindfulness exercises to increase awareness of cognitions underlying distressing thoughts.
- Demonstrate exposure to bodily sensations and decentering techniques to manage challenging thoughts and rumination.
- Integrate client training in a three-minute mindfulness exercise into clinical practice.
Outline
- Use specific tools to help clients break free from the circular traps they create by fighting with their own distressing thoughts.
- Definition of clinical mindfulness
- Understanding avoidance, negative reinforcement, and exposure
- Explain how to help clients move into the body sensations that underlie strong emotions to transform them from within.
- Decentering from challenging thoughts versus disputation
- Exposing to bodily sensations to undercut the distraction of ruminating
- Describe a three-minute exercise that clients can begin practicing immediately to build resilience.
- Exposing to thoughts, emotions, and body sensations
- Discovering and working with issues before they become overwhelming
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/20/2021
Psychotherapy and Neurobiology: Understanding the Science and Impact
Over the past 20 years, more and more therapists have devoted themselves to exploring the relevance of neuroscience for the practice of psychotherapy. This session will feature a provocative, far-ranging dialogue about the impact of neuroscience on our field and whether or not it has increased the effectiveness of psychotherapy. It will consider a range of questions including: What specific clinical advances have resulted from therapists’ expanded understanding of neurobiology? How has it extended our capacity for offering deep healing? What have we learned about how to better change both the mind and the brain? Has the therapeutic influence of neuroscience been oversold? What new breakthroughs may be on the horizon? You’ll learn:
- What research has taught us about the most important clinical applications of neurobiological principles
- How a better understanding of the relationship between mind and brain can change your practice
- What new research may shape the future direction of psychotherapy
Program Information
Objectives
- Determine the neurobiological underpinnings of the arousal system that create dysregulation that is necessary for the development of PTSD
- Appraise the three brain systems important for the understanding of psychotherapy
- Determine the role of the default mode network in trauma recovery
- Appraise the clinical research surrounding the effectiveness of various modalities in healing traumatic stress responses.
- Propose several evidence-based methods that foster re-regulation of mind and body that can aid in reduction of symptomology that leads to continued trauma
Outline
- The Neurobiology of Trauma
- The body’s arousal system in the face of trauma
- Three brain systems
- Relationship between mind, brain, body, and relationships
- The Interplay of Trauma and the Brain
- The effects of abuse on the human brain
- The Default Mode Network’s role in trauma and recovery
- The Recovery from Traumatic Stress
- Evidence-based methods that can foster re-regulation of the mind and body
- The importance of developing regulation strategies
- The use of touch in therapy
- The use of psychedelics in treatment
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
01/11/2021
Dan Siegel’s Wheel of Awareness Practice: Reduce Stress, Improve Functioning, Slow the Aging Process, and More
In this workshop recording, interpersonal neurobiology expert Daniel Siegel will explore how advances across a range of disciplines—including brain science, psychiatry, attachment theory, quantum physics, and spirituality, to name just a few—have expanded our conception of consciousness, and what this means for the practice of psychotherapy.
Then he’ll guide you through his revolutionary Wheel of Awareness exercise. The Wheel can be used to reduce stress, improve cardiovascular and immune system functioning, and slow the aging process. It incorporates the three pillars of mental training: focused attention, open awareness, and kind intention. This session will demonstrate how to incorporate it into therapy to cultivate more meaning and connection in clients’ lives.
Program Information
Objectives
- Explore how advances across a range of disciplines---including brain science, psychiatry, attachment theory, quantum physics, and spirituality, to name just a few---have expanded our conception of consciousness, and what this means for the practice of psychotherapy.
- Discover the role of “conscious awareness” in the process of psychotherapy and how therapists can guide that experience to help clients feel connected to others.
- Explain the results of a systematic study of the Wheel of Awareness involving thousands of individuals and how what it can tell us about how to help clients bring more awareness into the process of change.
- Describe the four parts of the Wheel and how to use them in therapy to improve clinical outcomes.
- Recognize the systemic principles of chaos and rigidity and how they can help us better grasp our clients’ issues and guide them toward learning to savor the experience of life in a more balanced and fulfilling way.
- Apply the Wheel in sessions to reduce clients’ stress and improve cardiovascular and immune system functioning.
- Understand the role attachment play in affect regulation and how therapy can correct dysregulation.
Outline
Consciousness and Connection in Psychotherapy
The present state of humans on earth
Transformation of the path of humanity
- The role of mental health in important world issues.
One framework in science
- Consilience
- Ways to get involved in world change
Social fields
Mindfulness
The triangle of human experience
How change occurs
Understanding the interconnection of all people
The Wheel of Awareness
- Mind as an emergent aspect of embodied and relational energy flow
- Integration as the optimization of the self-organizing aspect of the mind
- Integrating Consciousness with the Wheel of Awareness
Discussion and Reflection
- Reflecting on the Wheel as a first-person immersion, and the Ten-Thousand Person Study
- Linking Subjectivity, Science, and Spirituality
- Learning, Living, and Loving from the Plane of Possibility
- Synthesis, Discussion, and Integration
Target Audience
- Psychologists
- Physicians
- Addiction Counselors
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Nurses
- Other Behavioral Health Professionals.
Copyright :
03/23/2019
The Ethical Dilemmas in Today’s Therapy: Clarifying Boundaries
The ethical rules for therapists used to be straightforward and unambiguous: no gifts, no dual relationships, and no out-of-session contact. But with the ease of virtual connection and the many ways in which the current tumult of politics and societal foment makes its way in therapy and challenges our boundaries, shifts in our profession’s norms have introduced new questions about professional boundaries. In this recording, you’ll explore:
- The impact of these times on therapists, and how fatigue and dysregulation affects ethical decision-making
- How to establish norms for transparency and client empowerment
- The do’s and don’ts of therapist self-disclosure, and
- How to handle ever-shifting online and social media boundaries with clients
- Best methods for dealing with ethical decisions when considering virtual vs in-person support
Program Information
Objectives
- Assess how to set the ground rules that establish norms for transparency and client empowerment.
- Explain the do’s and don’ts of therapist self-disclosure.
- Assess how to maintain our energy to ensure we make wise ethical decisions.
- Explain how to handle ever-shifting online and social media boundaries with clients.
- Apply best methods for dealing with safety and ethical decisions when considering virtual vs in-person support.
Outline
- Assess how to set the ground rules that establish norms for transparency and client empowerment.
- Stage 1- creating create the context for ethics with the client in the beginning of therapy
- Explain the do’s and don’ts of therapist self-disclosure.
- Participant will learn specific guidelines for how and when to use self-disclosure as an intervention
- Assess how to maintain our energy to ensure we make wise ethical decisions.
- Securing effective and ethical job performance by learning how to manage our energy in 6 domains
- Explain how to handle ever-shifting online and social media boundaries with clients.
- Each break out room will discuss how to create and maintain social media and internet access
- Apply best methods for dealing with safety and ethical decisions when considering virtual vs in-person support
- Designing best practice protocol for virtual and in person. Also designing consultation and supervision protocol
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/18/2021
Racial Trauma and the Polyvagal Response: Mind-Body Healing for African American Clients
Not only were African Americans disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 due to rampant socioeconomic disparities, but other brutal reminders of systemic racism continue to erupt across the country and in the news. Daily microtraumas and a feeling of not being physically safe or valued in our society lead to a state of stress, anger, hypervigilance, mistrust, shame, and fear. This recording explores how neuroceptions and the Polyvagal pathways shape the adaptive reactions of African Americas to race-based stress and trauma—and what clinicians can do to address them and the related emotional burdens we all carry. Discover how to:
- Create a safe, healing space for African American clients
- Identify triggers and symptoms of racial trauma, as well as how it’s processed in the brain
- Use mind-body techniques to deregulate the stress response and promote feelings of empowerment and safety
- Explore how therapy is affected by the emotional reactivity of both Black and non-Black clinicians when treating Black clients
Program Information
Objectives
- Evaluate the role the Polyvagal pathway plays in the African American client’s reaction to violence, police brutality, acts of racism, and discrimination.
- Investigate how microtrauma impacts the psychosocial development of African Americans from a historical perspective.
- Demonstrate how to identify and treat reactive symptoms and behaviors associated with the microtrauma of racisms, such as defensiveness and excessive worrying about safety and death.
- Assess how the therapeutic process can be affected by the emotional reactivity of both African American and non-African American clinicians when treating African American clients.
- Employ mind-body techniques in conjunction with Internal Family System theory to effectively deregulate the stress response and promote feelings of empowerment and safety.
- Analyze activated trauma memories involving violence and acts of racism.
Outline
Implement tools that address the impact of micro and macro-trauma on the psychosocial development of African American clients
- Introduction and application of self-soothing grounding, and deep breathing techniques as tools to de-escalate traumas.
- Application of the DBT describing skills to increase awareness of the present moment
- Review of how mindfulness can be used to increase awareness of symptoms and microtrauma reactions
Introduce Microtrauma as a fear-based conditional response to situations that elicit terror and powerlessness.
- Review literature on trauma and the brain response
Examine the role the sympathetic nervous system plays in their reactions to microtraumas.
- Review nervous system
- Discuss parasympathetic response (ventral vagal)
- Parasympathetic stress response immobilization
- Sympathetic Stress Response: Mobilization Flight/Fight Response
Provide clinical treatment interventions that determine levels of reactivity and offer treatment modalities.
- Reprocessing of memories
- Deep breathing techniques
- Grounding and tapping
- CBT thought stopping and disputing techniques
- Introduction of SUDS and Body scanning techniques
Incorporate trauma and shame reducing techniques in sessions to help African American clients access memories that keep them stuck in the narrative of victimization
- Recreating the shame
- Self-affirmations
- Creating a practice of self-compassion and non-judgmental stance
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
02/17/2021
A Journey into Transgender Mental Health: Transcending the Binary
When seeking care, nothing is scarier to transgender individuals than a provider who’s poorly informed about the issues facing their community. From discrimination and harassment to mental health issues and the process of transitioning, having a clinician who’s informed and affirmative can make a huge difference in ensuring transgender individuals get the help they need, ultimately decreasing the risk of suicide in this population. Through firsthand accounts coupled with clinical information, this recording will explore how you can be an affirmative provider. You’ll discover:
- Areas of common clinical concern and treatment when working with transgender individuals
- How gender dysphoria is commonly experienced
- The medical, social, and psychological aspects of transitioning all therapists should be aware of
- The critical aspects of incorporating trans-affirmative care into your practice
Program Information
Objectives
- Assess the factors that can impact the mental health and treatment of individuals who are transgender.
- Evaluate the impact of gender dysphoria and its potential causes.
- Assess the medical, social, and psychological aspects of transitioning as it may relate to client experience.
- Integrate trans-affirmative care into your practice.
Outline
List several factors that can impact mental health and treatment when working with individuals who are transgender.
- Coming out and beginning to transition
- Discrimination and harassment
- Pronouns and names
- Common clinical concerns
Explain gender dysphoria and how this is commonly experienced.
- What is gender dysphoria?
- Examples of triggers that may cause dysphoria
Describe the medical, social, and psychological aspects of transitioning as it may relate to client experience.
- Medical aspects of transitioning
- Social aspects of transitioning
- Psychological aspects of transitioning
Describe how to incorporate trans-affirmative care into your practice.
- Do’s
- Do Not’s
- 10 Things trans guys want you to know
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/19/2021
Healing Cultural Trauma with IFS: A Culturally Sensitive Approach
Despite an increased willingness in our profession to discuss issues of diversity, including race, sexuality, gender, class, etc., we still have a long way to go in addressing the traumatic effects of systemic oppression. As therapists, we can acknowledge and try to remediate these negative effects by providing culturally sensitive care for people who often feel unseen or misunderstood. Using the framework of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, this recording offers practical skills to help heal the traumatic wounds of oppression. You’ll discover how to:
- Use the Intercultural Development Continuum with clients to explore how cultural perspectives impact communication and conflict style
- Apply the IFS model to help heal trauma, and acknowledge and own the parts of ourselves that become reactive when discussing issues of diversity
- Increase your ability to avoid microaggressions and help clients explore emotional wounds with culturally sensitive techniques including, “The U-turn” and “Unblending”
This product is not endorsed by, sponsored by, or affiliated with the IFS Institute and does not qualify for IFS Institute credits or certification.
Program Information
Objectives
- Determine how to use the Intercultural Development Continuum with clients to explore how cultural perspectives impact communication and conflict style.
- Apply the IFS model to help clients heal trauma and address inner parts that become reactive when discussing issues of diversity.
- Apply two culturally sensitive techniques to help clients explore emotional wounds.
- Determine how to work from an anti-oppressive framework to enhance clinical outcomes by improving your therapeutic alliance with clients.
- Perform assessment and treatment for psychological distress induced by marginalization.
Outline
- Describe how to use the Intercultural Development Continuum with clients to explore how cultural perspectives impact communication and conflict style.
- Explore the six stages in the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity
- Examine the three types of cultural conflict styles
- Apply the IFS model to help clients heal trauma, and acknowledge and own the parts of ourselves that become reactive when discussing issues of diversity.
- Apply the basic principles of IFS to Cross Cultural Communication
- Utilize the IFS model to discover our own implicit bias
- Use the “8Cs” to understand the difference between operating from Self and Parts
- List two culturally sensitive techniques to help clients explore emotional wounds.
- Practice doing the U-Turn
- Explore why Unblending helps in intercultural communication
- Understand how unburdening will increase capacity for compassion and connection
- Utilize the U-Turn, Unblending and Unburdening to successfully conduct Relational Repairs as needed
- Explain what it means to work from an anti-oppressive framework to enhance clinical outcomes by improving your therapeutic alliance with clients/patients.
- Establish shared meanings of key terms, to include: culture, diversity, race, equity, bias, privilege and power
- Explain the theory of Kyriarchy
- Identify tools and practices that are culturally relevant to respond to the complex experience of oppression
- Explore the four primary Legacy Burdens in our society: Racism, Patriarchy, Materialism, and Individualism
- Provide assessment and treatment for psychological distress induced by marginalization.
- Explain ways that structural oppression impacts the inner psychic system
- Analyze challenges and barriers that perpetuate health disparities and re-victimization in the clinical setting
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
02/02/2021
Tips and Tactics for Talking about Race: A Toolkit for Therapists
Racial injustice remains an important issue in all aspects of our society, and the world of therapy is no exception. But despite the omnipresence of race in our lives, healing and meaningful conversations about it remain too often somewhere between difficult and impossible, characterized by avoidance, discomfort, and awkwardness. Clinicians and other human services workers are relied upon to navigate these difficult conversations, but many lack the requisite tools to do so. In this recording, you’ll explore:
- Tips and tools for promoting sustainable conversations about race within and outside of therapy
- Relevant “Self of the Therapist” issues that may impede and/or facilitate meaningful conversations about race
- The four critical developmental stages for effective conversations involving race: preparation, encounter, engagement, and execution
Program Information
Objectives
- Apply the four critical developmental stages for effective conversations involving race: preparation, encounter, engagement, and execution.
- Explore relevant “Self of the Therapist” issues that may impede and/or facilitate meaningful conversations about race.
- Discuss the range of situations in which racism emerges as a therapeutic issue.
- Explain how to address race-related issues in the consulting room.
Outline
- Five steps to repairing damaged relationships
- Understanding race in therapeutic situations
- How to respond to overt racism
- The cost of not responding as a therapist
- When to actively confront
- Precursors to conversations about race
- Defining our “race”
- Identifying our prisms
- Ethnicity versus race
- Three options for engaging in the topic or racism
- Problems resulting from the term “racism”
- Strategies for talking about race
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/20/2021
Social Justice as Healing Work: Moving Beyond Neutrality
Regardless of what brought them to therapy, our clients are clearly impacted by racism, sexism, ableism, heterosexism, ethnocentrism, and classism—and they’re more vocal and politically engaged than ever. How can we dialogue about these issues without divisiveness or awkwardness? What’s our responsibility to participate in the larger conversation about social justice movements? How do we help clients see their issues in a wider social context and find ways to better navigate and challenge systems of oppression? In this recording, you’ll explore how to:
- Intervene on the systemic power imbalances that occur in session without shaming or othering
- Use practical tools like the Social Identity Wheel and ADDRESSING framework to assist clients through the issues of privilege guilt and subjugation stress
- Consider the functional limits of therapeutic neutrality and develop a clear stance around diversity, inclusion, multicultural competence, and justice
- Engage your own social identity to further clients’ relational goals
Program Information
Objectives
- Use practical tools like the Social Identity Wheel and ADDRESSING framework to assist clients through the issues of privilege guilt and subjugation stress.
- Apply your own social identity to further clients’ relational goals and improve the therapeutic relationship in sessions.
- Execute intervention on the systemic power imbalances that occur in session without shaming or othering.
Outline
- Consider the functional limits of therapeutic neutrality in the current sociopolitical landscape.
- Use practical tools like the Social Identity Wheel and ADDRESSING framework to assist clients through the issues of privilege guilt and subjugation stress.
- Engage your own social identity and political perspective to further clients’ relational goals.
- Intervene on the systemic power imbalances that occur in session without shaming or othering.
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
01/28/2021
A Shame-Free Path to Cultural Competence: Rising to the Challenge
Even with an increased appreciation of the importance of multicultural awareness, many therapists feel confused about how to work effectively with clients from different cultural backgrounds. Too often, fear of even inadvertently offending a client constrains them and flattens the therapeutic experience. Fortunately, most therapists already possess the tools they need to reduce misunderstandings and repair relationships when unintentional transgressions occur. Exploring cultural issues beyond ethnicity (gender, religion, age, etc.), this recording will offer practical strategies to help you feel more comfortable in your ability to meet the needs of whomever you have the opportunity to serve. You’ll discover:
- Specific strategies to address cultural differences as well as reduce and repair offenses that can damage the therapeutic relationship
- How to identify and incorporate a variety of culturally relevant influencing factors in treatment
- Ways to increase cultural self-awareness and other-awareness to improve rapport building in sessions
Program Information
Objectives
- Demonstrate the use of clinical strategies to address and reduce cultural offenses in the therapeutic relationship.
- Appraise a greater variety of culturally significant influencing factors on treatment.
- Determine how to increase cultural self-awareness and other-awareness to improve rapport building in sessions.
- Evaluate ways to increase your confidence in your ability to effectively treat clients from all cultures.
Outline
Demonstrate the use of clinical strategies to address and reduce cultural offenses in the therapeutic relationship.
- A Client-centered approach to cultural competence
- Strategies for identifying & addressing microaggressions
Identify a greater variety of culturally significant influencing factors on treatment.
- Ethical implications of cultural competence in assessment and treatment
- Cultural experiences therapists often misunderstand (e.g. ethnicity, diverse families, age, gender, religion)
Describe how to increase cultural self-awareness and other-awareness to improve rapport building in sessions.
- Clarifying commonly misunderstood diversity language
- Application of cultural competence on client rapport as well as advocacy
Explore ways to increase your confidence in your ability to effectively treat clients from all cultures.
- Strategies for increased self-awareness and acceptance
- Reducing barriers of shame and guilt in increasing cultural competence
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/20/2021
Trauma in the Urban Community: Exploring the Wider Context
There’s nothing “post” about the PTSD many people living in impoverished, urban communities experience daily. But effective interventions for these clients requires a commitment to understanding the complexities of their experience and identifying the traumas, both hidden and visible, rooted in a lack of basic necessities and jobs, unhealthy family relationships, drug addiction, unfair policing practices, and ongoing violence. This recording explores trauma through the lens of epigenetics and generational trauma as well as physical health in the light of the ACEs study. In this session, you’ll explore:
- The environmental risk factors for PTSD and major depressive disorder within an urban and impoverished population
- How to widen the trauma-informed care lens by identifying family-centered specific interventions
- The correlation between trauma in the urban environment and the rise in suicide rates of African American children
Program Information
Objectives
- Assess the environmental risk factors for PTSD and major depressive disorder within an urban and impoverished population.
- Utilize family-centered interventions for treatment of trauma.
- Analyze the role of epigenetics and generational trauma in urban communities as it relates to treatment.
- Measure the impact of the ACE study as it relates to ongoing and continuous trauma within the urban and impoverished population.
Outline
- Describe the environmental risk factors for PTSD and major depressive disorder within an urban and impoverished population.
- Continuous trauma comparing murder rates in Baltimore & Chicago in comparison to current war zones.
- Food apartheid. Food’s impact on the microbiome, inflammation, & mood symptoms.
- Toxic living environments ex: houses with lead paint, rodent infestation, & its impact on mood.
- Inadequate access to mental health care due to socioeconomic biases present in the health care industry
- Explain how to widen the trauma-informed care lens by identifying family-centered specific interventions for treatment.
- SEL training in schools. Expansion of programs such as NAMI family to family.
- Community partners such as church staff learning mental health first aid & engaging parishioners in forums about mental health.
- Explore the role of epigenetics and generational trauma in urban communities as it relates to treatment.
- Socio economic factors that result in a high ACE score
- Explain the impact of the ACE study as it relates to ongoing and continuous trauma within the urban and impoverished population.
- Maladaptive behaviors linked to ACE often associated with urban crime
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
02/08/2021
Couples Therapy Meets Sex Therapy: Toward an Integrated Approach
You can’t help couples really achieve more intimacy without exploring the sexual dimension of their relationship. But generally, clinicians who focus on attachment tend to pay less attention to sexuality, and vice versa. This recording will focus on a dialogue between two clinicians with contrasting approaches as they offer their perspective on effective ways to address the pressures that can reduce sexual fulfillment in contemporary relationships. You’ll explore the increasing prevalence of nontraditional couples who practice kink, polyamory, and open relationships. Discover how to develop a more integrated couples approach by:
- Integrating sexuality issues into Emotionally Focused Couples therapy
- Identifying attachment issues that can significantly impact a couple’s sexuality
- Helping couples develop a sexual life with or without sexual desire
Program Information
Objectives
- Determine how to integrate sexuality issues into EFT couple therapy.
- Evaluate attachment issues that can impact a couple’s sexuality.
- Determine how to help couples develop a sexual life with or without sexual desire.
Outline
- Explore how to integrate sexuality issues into EFT couple therapy.
- Discussion of how to increase couple communication and connection as safe context to integrate sexuality issues.
- Identify attachment issues that can impact a couple’s sexuality
- Presentation about how to conduct a relational sexual history including identification of attachment wounds associated with adult sexuality.
- Describe how to help couples develop a sexual life with or without sexual desire
- Discussion of expansive models of sexual response that do not require sexual desire as a necessary component.
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/19/2021
Working with Narcissistic Abuse: Addressing the Impact of High-Conflict Personality Styles
Narcissism is a ubiquitous term these days, but when it shows up in therapy—even indirectly—most clinicians aren’t sure how to approach it. The dearth of training on high-conflict personality styles, coupled with a reticence to “label” people who are close to the client but not in the room, has meant that many clients suffering from “narcissistic abuse” in familial, intimate, or workplace relationships don’t get the help they need. This recording will offer the most up-to-date research on antagonistic personality styles, and provide a practical roadmap for working with clients with patterns of narcissistic abuse. You’ll discover:
- How to identify the characteristics of narcissistic abuse that are often misdiagnosed
- A holistic treatment approach that can be applied to any clinical practice
- An actionable framework for educating clients about narcissism
Program Information
Objectives
- Apply a holistic view of the dynamics of narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder, and “narcissism-adjacent” personality styles, using a framework that captures the range of antagonistic personality styles.
- Evaluate the phenomenon of narcissistic abuse, the manner in which it is manifested, the impact on individuals, and the overlapping patterns that affect clients.
- Formulate an actionable framework for working with clients experiencing narcissistic abuse.
Outline
- Apply a holistic view of the dynamics of narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder, and “narcissism-adjacent” personality styles, using a framework that captures the range of antagonistic personality styles.
- We will review the diagnosis of NPD but then broaden that understanding using a combination of the alternative model for personality disorders from the DSM-5, a discussion of personality dynamics that overlap with narcissism, and a review of co-occurring diagnostic patterns.
- Describe the phenomenon of narcissistic abuse, the manner in which it is manifested, the impact on individuals, and the overlapping patterns that affect clients.
- Define what is meant by narcissistic abuse and the putative behavioral, cognitive and emotional patterns associated with this pattern.
- Discussion of other patterns from which NA needs to be distinguished
- Risk factors for narcissistic abuse
- Provide an actionable framework for working with clients experiencing narcissistic abuse.
- Review of a systematic plan that is designed to assess for and address narcissistic abuse
- Discussion of how to integrate this psychoeducational and treatment approach into existing theoretical frameworks
- Review adjunctive and consultative considerations when working with clients experiencing NA.
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
01/20/2021
The Dating Crucible: Navigating the Common Challenges
With more and more people choosing to marry later in life and sometimes not at all, knowing how to date well in today’s fast-paced world is essential. Learning relational metaskills can help clients avoid anxiety and depression linked to recent dating trends and approach beginnings and endings with more integrity and self-awareness, reducing collateral damage to both self and others. In this recording, discover an integrative approach for helping your clients deal with common modern dating challenges, including using dating apps, identifying red flags, navigating commitment milestones, and breaking up. You’ll explore:
- How to teach relational self-awareness as an essential metaskill for success in romantic relationships
- How to help clients advocate for their relational needs with romantic partners
- An integrative approach to helping clients move from fear and relational ambivalence toward empowerment and clarity
Program Information
Objectives
- Analyze the relationship between recent dating trends and clinical symptoms, like anxiety and depression, and how they inform treatment interventions.
- Determine how to help clients set boundaries and advocate for their relational needs with romantic partners.
- Evaluate with clients the importance of relational self-awareness in creating a successful romantic relationship.
Outline
Explain the relationship between recent dating trends and clinical symptoms, like anxiety and depression, and how they inform treatment interventions.
- Present research findings about increased rates of depression and anxiety in emerging adults and how dating can be affected by mental health challenges.
- Provide clinicians with tools they can use to disrupt patterns of avoidance, disconnection, and self-abandonment.
Identify how to help clients set boundaries and advocate for their relational needs with romantic partners.
- Describe the low accountability / low vulnerability dating climate and explore how it reinforces that which is already challenging—asking for what you need.
- Provide clinicians with tools that help clients build relational self-awareness so that boundary-setting becomes an expression of relational empowerment (versus control or self-protection).
Explore with clients the importance of relational self-awareness in creating a successful romantic relationship.
- Define relational self-awareness and we will focus on how to help clients understand how their past can create constraints to openness/curiosity/vulnerability/trust which are essential for those who are dating.
- Teach vulnerability cycle mapping (Sheinkman & Fishbane) as a tool to help clients move from the language of “red flags” to a relational approach to assessing goodness of fit.
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/19/2021
Treating Couples Well: Collaborative Techniques for Challenging Times
Couples often struggle in therapy with having too many issues to tackle in too little time. Luckily, you can help couples design their own treatment plan—right from the first session. In this recording, learn a collaborative process to help couples to decide together whether and when to work on making changes in the here and now, or focus on healing wounds from the past, or explore family-of-origin dynamics. This model gives couples ownership of “their” therapy, rather than requiring them to submit to a therapist’s agenda. We’ll discover how to:
- Help couples develop a collaborative plan for treatment in the first interview
- Offer couples a variety of techniques to work on communications, behavior changes, problem-solving, and sexual intimacy
- Provide an amends-and-forgiveness protocol for resolving past wounds from issues like infidelity, substance abuse, and betrayal
- Offer clients a focused approach to working on family-of-origin dynamics that shaped their development as a couple
Program Information
Objectives
- Develop a collaborative plan for treatment in the first interview.
- Utilize techniques to work on communications, behavior changes, problem-solving, and sexual intimacy for couples.
- Apply an amends-and-forgiveness protocol in session for resolving past wounds affecting the current relationship, such as infidelity, substance abuse, and betrayal.
- Analyze family-of-origin dynamics that shape couple development.
Outline
- Describe how to help couples develop a collaborative plan for treatment in the first interview.
- In the first interview, couples are offered three different possibilities for organizing their work.
- Working on here and now issues behaviorally
- Working on making amends and forgiveness for past hurt and betrayals in the relationship
- Starting with an evaluation of the family of origin issues that have influenced the couple
- Specify how to offer couples a variety of techniques to work on communications, behavior changes, problem-solving, and sexual intimacy that they can apply to here-and-now issues at home.
- Couples are taught several ways of communicating more effectively, managing conflict, becoming more nurturing, and negotiating decisions.
- Apply an amends-and-forgiveness protocol in session for resolving past wounds affecting the current relationship, such as infidelity, substance abuse, and betrayal.
- Couples each take a turn expressing their hurt and angry feelings fully, being responded to by their partner with an amends letter of apology and then follow up with the couple negotiating amends actions.
- Discuss how to offer clients a focused approach to improve treatment outcomes for working on family-of-origin dynamics that shaped their development as a couple.
- Couples utilize family pictures and stories to reveal patterns of relationship, communication, nurture, and conflict that shape each member’s of the couples expectations, hopes and fears as they form a family on their own. Couples discuss their individual trauma histories and how that’s impacted them in their relationship. Couples assist each other in dealing with their family of origin issues.
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
01/08/2021
The Gottman Connection: Exploring the Ultimate Clinical Assistant
Teletherapy can be challenging—and couples teletherapy can be doubly so. You’re managing a therapeutic relationship with two clients simultaneously while guiding them to manage their own—all in real-time and across a screen. Using clips of actual teletherapy sessions, discover how to take couples teletherapy to the next level with a new scientifically based relationship assessment method and software platform that’s accessed by both clinicians and couples, helping clients practice what they learn long after a session is over. With the therapist’s guidance, the Relationship Builder helps couples restore and strengthen effective conflict management, emotional connection and friendship, romance and sex life, trust and commitment, physiological calmness and resilience, and a shared meaning system. Explore how to:
- Do a thorough teletherapy assessment of a relationship’s strengths, challenges, and moment-by-moment dynamics, so therapists can focus on relevant interventions only
- Integrate a set of new online teletherapeutic tools that can be used with couples living together or apart for building essential relationship skills
- Help couples deal with conflicts and difficulties between sessions by using the Relationship Builder to access appropriate tools and exercises
Program Information
Objectives
- Apply a thorough tele-therapy assessment of a relationship’s strengths and challenges in a complete written report and treatment recommendations to improve outcomes.
- Investigate the actual moment-by-moment dynamics in the complete written report and treatment recommendations to improve outcomes.
- Employ into your couples therapy a set of new online tele-therapeutic tools called the “Relationship Builder” that can be used with couples living together or apart.
- Assess how to help couples deal with conflicts and difficulties between sessions by using the “Relationship Builder” to access appropriate tools and exercises.
Outline
- Tele-therapy assessment of a relationship’s strengths and challenges.
- Tele-therapy session review and discussion
- Moment-By-Moment Dynamics
- Overview and how to understand and explain these dynamics
- How to describe the couple’s interactions during conflict and events discussions
- Written report and treatment recommendations
- How to explain them to clients
- Improve treatment outcomes
- “Relationship Builder”
- Overview
- How these tools can be integrated into your couples therapy
- How this tool can be used with couples living together or apart.
- How to help couples deal with conflicts and difficulties between sessions by using the “Relationship Builder” to access appropriate tools and exercises.
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/20/2021
Low-Sex and Sexless Couples: The Rediscovery of Pleasure
How do you help couples in low-sex and sexless relationships? This recording will uncover where lack of desire originates and how to treat desire discrepancy using contemporary interventions and treatment models. Through real case studies, we’ll focus on three areas that are often at the root of low- or no-sex marriages—pleasure resistance, avoidance, and rejection—and the most effective strategies to help couples achieve sexual empathy and long-term erotic recovery. You’ll discover:
- Techniques to work with couples around desire vs. arousal and performance vs. pleasure
- How to create individualized models for treatment using integrative sex and couples therapy when treating sexual dysfunction
- Clinical strategies for healing arousal dysfunction, renewing and rekindling desire, and integrating a trauma model into your work
- How to address the three areas of pleasure disorder, and why they often involve issues around betrayal, trust, identity, and self-esteem
Program Information
Objectives
- Apply techniques to work with couples around desire vs. arousal and performance vs. pleasure.
- Assess the ins and outs of helping couples create monogamy agreements and other interventions for renewing low- and no-desire relationships.
- Distinguish how attachment-based vs. individuation-based approaches compare when treating sexual dysfunction in couples.
- Use clinical strategies for healing arousal dysfunction, renewing and rekindling desire, and integrating a trauma model into your work.
- Determine how to address the three areas of pleasure disorder, and why they often involve issues around betrayal, trust, identity, and self-esteem.
Outline
- Intro
- Lack of desire in sexless and low-sex couples
- How to treat desire discrepancy
- Desire v arousal
- Performance v pleasure
- Monogamy vs agreement
- Dyads
- Sexual empathy – case study
- Erotic recovery
- Interventions for low and no desire relationships
- Attachment vs individuation - case study
- Clinical strategy for arousal dysfunction, renew and rekindle desire
- Healing trauma and betrayal, trust, identity, self esteem
- Q&A
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/20/2021
Sexual Health and the Trauma Survivor: How the Therapist Can Help
Clients with sexual abuse histories often come to therapy with questions about their sexual expression and the obstacles they encounter in intimate relationships. They may find themselves engaging in trauma reenactment rather than safe, consensual sex and need a non-judgmental space to explore what sexual recovery means for them. Even well-trained trauma therapists often lack the personal comfort, language, and skillset necessary to assist their clients through this process. This recording will provide concrete strategies to help trauma survivors live more sexually fulfilling lives. You’ll explore:
- How different types of sexual abuse and trauma manifest in sexual behaviors, and how to help clients experience healthy sexual gratification
- How to help clients differentiate between unhealthy trauma reenactment and healthy play
- Five tools to help clients manage out-of-control sexual behaviors
- The countertransference issues that often arise for therapists around clients’ erotic interests, sexual expression, and behaviors in order to avoid negative judgment and inadvertent shaming
Program Information
Objectives
- Evaluate how different types of sexual abuse and trauma manifest in clients’ behaviors and relationships, and how these manifestations inform treatment interventions.
- Analyze methods that help clients differentiate between trauma reenactment and trauma play.
- Demonstrate five important ways to help clients manage their sexual behaviors.
- Determine how to help clients understand what constitutes healthy sexual expression for them.
Outline
- Evaluate the different types of sexual abuse and trauma manifest in clients’ behaviors and relationships, and how these manifestations inform treatment interventions.
- Identify the different forms of trauma including simple trauma, complex trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder
- Articulate methods that help clients differentiate between trauma reenactment and trauma play.
- Identify the difference between trauma reenactment and trauma play.
- List the different ways trauma reenactment and trauma play manifest to determine success of treatment.
- List five important ways to help clients manage their sexual behaviors.
- Define out-of-control sexual behaviors
- List how erotophobia manifests from sexual abuse
- Describe how to help clients understand what constitutes expression of sexual health for them.
- Define PLISSIT model (Permission, Limited Information, Specific Suggestions, and Intensive Therapy)
- Identify a SAR (Sexual Attitude Re-assessment)
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
01/04/2021
Teaching Men Love: How to Challenge Traditional Masculinity’s Playbook
The ability to feel love is not the same thing as being able to show and sustain it. Many men don’t know how to do things like be vulnerable, articulate emotional needs, or ask for help—all of which run counter to traditional masculinity’s playbook. This recording will focus on how to teach men to handle themselves in more loving ways, even if that sometimes requires a complete deconstruction and reconstruction of what it means to be a man. Learn how to:
- Help men disarm an upset partner with humility and generosity instead of a defensive argument
- Increase men’s willingness to cherish both themselves and their relationship with their partner
- Help men grow more of what they want from their partner through actively appreciating what they’re already getting
- Get therapeutic “buy-in” from even difficult men by enlisting their own best self-interest
Program Information
Objectives
- Evaluate how to treat men disarm an upset partner with humility and generosity instead of defensive argument.
- Determine ways in psychotherapy to increase men’s willingness to cherish both themselves and their relationship with their partner to improve well-being.
- Demonstrate how to help men grow more of what they want from their partner through actively appreciating what they’re already getting in the context of treatment.
- Apply 3 strategies for how to get therapeutic “buy in” from even difficult men by enlisting their own best self-interest.
Outline
- Help men disarm an upset partner with humility and generosity instead of defensive argument
- The Art of Relational Ju-Jitsu
- Becoming a “generous gentleman
- Increase men’s willingness to cherish both themselves and their relationship with their partner
- Developing a cherishing relationship to oneself
- How to “do love”
- Help men grow more of what they want from their partner through actively appreciating what they’re already getting
- Shifting from complaint to request
- Positive feedback as relational strategy
- Thinking like a team
- Get therapeutic “buy in” from even difficult men by enlisting their own best self-interest
- The wisdom of a systemic perspective
- Forming an alliance with the “functional adult” part of the man
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
01/06/2021
The Neurobiology of Healing Relationships: Trauma Work Meets Couples Therapy
Our ability to navigate hard conversations and find the courage to risk deep intimacy depends on our ability to access the brain states that foster an emotional connection. But when a brain has experienced serious trauma, it can easily be triggered into dysregulation, limiting our capacity for intimate relationships. This recording will explore the neurobiology of how trauma can affect intimacy and review evidence-based approaches to assist with a couple’s emotional re-connection. You’ll discover how to:
- Identify which brain states will impede your clients from engaging in relational health and using the tools you are trying to give them
- Create a working relationship with your client’s brain to promote trauma recovery and healthy relationships simultaneously
- See how applying memory reconsolidation in couples therapy can undo emotional schemas that make relationships feel scary and painful
Program Information
Objectives
- Assess the states of your client's brain that impede emotional connections.
- Create a working relationship with your client’s brain on multiple levels to promote trauma recovery and healthy relationships simultaneously.
- Apply memory reconsolidation principles to couples therapy.
Outline
- Identify the states of your client's brain
- Define the locations and functions of the subcortical and cortical systems
- Identify integrated and disintegrated states in the brain
- Define the relationships between these systems and why working with a subcortically lead brain state (disintegrated) is so difficult
- Assess disintegration vs integration.
- Use tools that work with the brain to end this state and come back to regulation and connection
- 2nd consciousness
- Time outs
- Relational jujitsu
- Create a working relationship with your client’s brain on multiple levels to promote trauma recovery and healthy relationships simultaneously
- Your client’s ability to choose an integrated brain state is essential to them utilizing skills that will help them to heal.
- Using inner child work in couples’ sessions
- Use the witnessing of personal work to shift relational dynamics
- Apply memory reconsolidation principles to couples therapy
- Define and explain memory reconsolidation
- Identify emotional schemas that are problematic
- Learn couples interventions that bring the ability to rewire these emotional schemas home with your couples.
- Core negative image
- Dead stop contracts
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/21/2021
Unleashing the Power of Family Therapy: An Introduction to EFT with Families
By zeroing in on underlying attachment needs, Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) offers a powerful process for transformational change. This recording will show you how to confidently lead family members through distress and past injuries to create new relational patterns, bond with each other, and experience a fuller sense of security. Whether you work with individuals, couples, or families, discover how to:
- Use EFFT as a guide through a family’s emotional dynamics and key attachment issues
- Create new patterns of emotional healing that engage a family’s natural ability to repair
- Identify protective patterns that block individuals from opening to vulnerability and growth
- Implement a three-stage process for achieving deeper family connections through creating new alliances, accessing vulnerabilities, and engaging new patterns of positive interaction
Program Information
Objectives
- Support the theoretical basis for EFFT model of psychotherapy and explore the primary research behind it.
- Create new patterns of emotional healing that unblock a family’s natural ability to repair.
- Assess the protection patterns that can develop in clients that must be addressed in EFFT.
- Utilize three techniques from EFFT’s three-stage process for resolving familial conflict and maladaptive behaviors.
Outline
- Understanding Attachment Theory & Emotions in Families
- Stage One in EFFT and Multiple Infinity Loops
- Getting Parental “Buy-In” to take the lead in creating positive interactions
- Going Deeper- Stage Two In EFFT
- Helping children risk sharing their attachment needs
- Stage Three in EFFT
- Helping families celebrate secure attachment
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/21/2021
New Perspectives on Porn: Its Uses and Misuses
True or false: porn desensitizes people to genuine intimacy? Or wait: is porn use a normal, healthy expression of human sexuality? Although porn is a confusing and polarizing topic that can easily trigger therapists’ negative countertransference, Americans visit more porn sites each month than they do Amazon, Netflix, and Twitter combined. Critics say that this just goes to show we’re living in a “porn-addicted” society, but it’s a “porn-phobic” one as well. Regardless, therapists are on the front lines of addressing the effects of porn on self-regulation and relationships. You’ll discover:
- How to assess for when porn is a problem in relationships—and when it’s not—and avoid therapeutic potholes in the process
- A CBT-based program for helping clients regulate their relationship to porn when it’s problematic
- How to explore a client’s self-diagnosis of “porn addict”
- A review of “ethical porn” and how it can be used to help with a range of common sexual problems
Program Information
Objectives
- Assess for when porn is a problem in relationships and when it’s not, and avoid therapeutic potholes in the process.
- Determine how to handle clients’ self-diagnosis of “porn addict” and work with them to explore the context and assumptions surrounding their self-assessment.
- Analyze the CBT-based program for helping clients regulate their relationship to porn when it’s problematic.
- Evaluate “ethical porn” and how it can be used to help patients with a range of common sexual problems.
Outline
- Assess for when porn is a problem in relationships and when it’s not, and avoid therapeutic potholes in the process.
- Criteria for discerning when porn contributes to the sexual health of a relationship versus when it undermines sexual health.
- Porn use as it relates to attachment styles.
- Explain how to handle clients’ self-diagnosis of “porn addict” and work with them to explore the context and assumptions surrounding their self-assessment.
- Reviewing the evolution of the sex addiction model to current day.
- Assessing when porn is being used maladaptively and is a symptom of other mental health issues.
- Describe the CBT-based program for helping clients regulate their relationship to porn when it’s problematic.
- Customizing a moderation-management/harm reduction model.
- Assessing when a higher level of care is required.
- Evaluate “ethical porn” and how it can be used to help patients with a range of common sexual problems.
- Look at trends in feminist porn, queer porn, couples porn.
- Explain criteria for ethical porn and how to use in sex therapy clinically.
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/21/2021
The Accidental Sex Therapist: Sex Therapy Tools Anyone Can Use
When a client unexpectedly reveals a sexual problem, many clinicians find themselves thrust into the role of “accidental sex therapist.” In this uncomfortable position, too many shy away from addressing the sexual issue, thinking they lack expertise. But all it really takes are some simple conceptual tools and a willingness to learn what’s truly going on in the bedroom. In this recording, we’ll examine how to handle common sexual problems with confidence and skill. Discover how to:
- Ask the right questions that get to the heart of what’s really going on in bed—and in each person’s head—during sex
- Teach clients a new vocabulary to describe their level of arousal, and help them stop expecting themselves to function sexually when they’re not really aroused
- Recommend techniques to improve the erotic climate of a relationship, such as enjoying moments of mutual arousal even when sex isn’t on the menu and doing simple mindfulness practices in bed
- Empower clients to feel more confident communicating their sexual needs and feelings
Program Information
Objectives
- Assess couple’s communication skills related to intimacy using simple questioning.
- Teach clients communication techniques to describe their level of arousal to their partner.
- Propose mindfulness techniques to improve the erotic climate in a relationship.
Outline
Develop specific questions that get to the heart of what’s really going on in bed---and in each person’s head---during sex.
- Psychological arousal, as opposed to physiological arousal, is a more reliable indicator of sexual readiness and a better predictor of sexual satisfaction.
- Most people report that psychological arousal has core features such as the following:
- Absorption in the moment
- Self-acceptance, lack of judgment
- Temporary impairment of intellect
- Distortion of time sense
- Regression to more infantile modes of being
- A feeling of “selfish connection” that’s different from ordinary adult interaction.
- A deep sense of validation
- Questioning clients about their typical sexual experiences should include careful inquiry re the usual sequence of events (“Who typically does what to whom first? Then what happens next, and why?”), as well as re participants’ subjective experience at each stage (“How psychologically aroused do you usually feel when that happens?”)
- Case examples will be given, showing how simple questioning along these lines can yield valuable information that clients and their therapists can use to frame interventions to enhance psychological arousal.
- Theoretical: The idea of a “sexual self:” primitive, regressive, and rooted in the healthy narcissistic gratifications of early childhood.
Help clients learn a new vocabulary to describe their level of arousal, and help them stop expecting themselves to function sexually when they’re not really aroused.
- Once clients learn to self-observe their state of authentic psychological arousal, it often becomes clear that the major block to sexual function was that “their sexual self felt unhappy.”
- The therapeutic question then becomes, “How can we give the sexual self what it needs?”
- Clinical examples will be provided.
Recommend simple techniques to improve the erotic climate in a relationship---such as enjoying mutual arousal even when sex isn’t on the menu, and doing simple mindfulness practices in bed together.
- Most long-term, committed couples learn to make mutual orgasm the goal of lovemaking. Along the way, they forget to ask whether they’re authentically aroused.
- Re-focusing on arousal rather than orgasm becomes a central therapeutic agenda.
- Most long-term, committed couples refrain from experiencing arousal together unless they plan to have sex. Treatment should include practice experiencing frequent arousal “for its own sake.”
- Technique 1: “Simmering”: One or two minutes of mutual arousal, without expectation of sex per se.
- Most long-term, committed couples lose the intense sexual motivation they started with when their relationship was new. Most sex advice these days recommends trying to introduce novelty, adventure, or uncertainty. This is usually unproductive, for reasons we’ll discuss. “Sex dates” tend not work either, since desire is absent and the sex can feel artificial. Instead, the following will be recommended:
- Technique 2: The “Two-Step”: Instead of making a date to have sex, make a date to “do nothing in bed together.” Start with mindfulness practices – to be described (“Step 1”), before letting yourself get aroused (“Step 2”). Mindfulness facilitates arousal, since “paying attention to the present moment without judgment” is at the heart of psychological arousal.
- Most couples find that “Simmering” and “Two-Step” are far more user-friendly, feel more natural, and are more compatible with 21st Century schedules than traditional Masters and Johnson “Sensate Focus.”
Help clients feel more confident communicating their sexual needs and feelings.
- Too few couples talk much during sex. Or they try to “talk dirty” in order to “keep it hot.”
- Simple communication about your feelings of sexual arousal can often feel far more intimate and erotic.
- Clinical examples will be provided.
- A model will be provided for assessing whether a given communication is intimate or not.
Assess your own level of comfort with being an “accidental sex therapist” when individuals and couples unexpectedly bring up sexual problems during the course of therapy.
- Feedback will be solicited from attendees re possible difficulties they might anticipate in implementing the approach and techniques outlined above.
- Solutions and work-arounds for common difficulties will be presented.
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
01/19/2021
Untangling Toxic Relationships: Helping Clients Release Abusive Cycles
Helping clients disentangle themselves from a toxic relationship is difficult but important work, especially when powerful “trauma bonds” continuously draw them back to emotionally or physically abusive partners in an unconscious attempt to heal past wounds. How can therapists guide clients toward a conscious awareness of what’s keeping their relationship toxic and emotionally transactional? And how can we determine if a trauma-bond dynamic can be repaired in a relationship? In this recording, learn a specific process to help clients recognize the spectrum of toxic relationships, heal the wounds that create trauma bonds, and rediscover their Self. You’ll discover how to:
- Map the five stages of the trauma bond so clients can recognize the patterns in their relationship, reduce shame, and build pathways for change
- Explore concrete tools to help clients reclaim and reparent the Self
- Use an experiential “cord-cutting” intervention that releases clients from toxic dynamics to open themselves to post-traumatic growth
Program Information
Objectives
- Evaluate the spectrum of toxic relationships and trauma bonding in a clinical framework that can be used to assess and treat clients and heal relationships.
- Assess the specific psychological dynamics that can interfere with treatment with clients in toxic relationships and trauma bonds.
- Apply 3 clinical interventions to be used with clients for healing relationships and overcoming traumatic bonding.
Outline
- Define the spectrum of toxic relationships and trauma bonding in a clinical framework that can be used to assess and treat clients and heal relationships.
- Understand the signs of a toxic dynamic that is likely to remain abusive and detrimental to a victim’s wellbeing.
- Explore the indicators that a relationship can heal and recover from its trauma wounds.
- Explore the specific psychological dynamics that can interfere with treatment with clients in toxic relationships and trauma bonds.
- Learn to identify areas of resistance and what defense mechanisms may look like in the context of a toxic dynamic.
- Apply 3 clinical interventions to be used with clients for healing relationships and overcoming traumatic bonding.
- Learn how to identify the wounded part of the self and what it serves through Parts Work, map the “toxic dance,” integrate the skill of “reparenting the self,” and more!
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
01/17/2021
Nutrition Essentials for Mental Health: Strategies to Enhance Mood and Well-Being
If we are what we eat, then beyond the mind-body connection there’s also a food-mind-body connection. This recording will explore the latest nutritional research to inform psychotherapeutic practice and how diet can affect mood, as well as the links between depression, inflammation, and cognitive function. Ethics and scope of practice, why there is no one right diet for everyone, the application of the food mood diary and analysis, engaging and motivating your client for change, specific dietary nutrient and herbal protocols for depression anxiety, insomnia, cognitive health and PTSD, and alternatives to psychotropics.
You’ll explore how to:
- Provide your clients with a comprehensive overview of the basic principles of good nutrition, food preparation, and mindful eating
- Assess the conflicting research and differing recommendations about nutritional practices and alternatives to medicines that foster mental health
- Determine the benefits, risks, and deficits of a variety of popular diet types, from carnivore to vegan, depending on the needs of a given client
- Foundational nutrients for mental health
Program Information
Objectives
- Prepare clients with a comprehensive overview of the basic principles of good nutrition, food preparation, and mindful eating to improve symptoms and well-being.
- Assess the conflicting research and differing recommendations about nutritional practices and alternatives to medicines that foster mental health.
- Determine the benefits, risks, and deficits of a variety of popular diet types, from carnivore to vegan, depending on the needs of a given client.
- Demonstrate to clients the latest research on how diets can affect mood.
- Analyze with clients the links between depression, inflammation, and cognitive function.
- Evaluate foundation protocols for specific DSM categories of Mental Illness
Outline
- Provide clients with a comprehensive overview of the basic principles of good nutrition, food preparation, and mindful eating to improve symptoms and well-being.
- Discuss the role of proteins, carbohydrates and fats on brain mind function
- Assess the conflicting research and differing recommendations about nutritional practices and alternatives to medicines that foster mental health.
- Provide a range of research and explore its application and value to clinical practice
- Determine the benefits, risks, and deficits of a variety of popular diet types, from carnivore to vegan, depending on the needs of a given client.
- Identify bioindividuality concepts and the importance of non-ideological approaches
- Explain to clients the latest research on how diets can affect mood.
- Identify and how foods and herbs are precursors to amino acids and neurotransmitters
- Discuss with clients the links between depression, inflammation, and cognitive function.
- Explore the research on pro inflammatory foods and inflammatory and mitochondrial dysfunction in depression and memory.
- Provide foundation protocols for specific DSM categories of Mental Illness
- Identify specific nutrient protocols that can be applied to depression, anxiety and sleep maintenance insomnia
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
01/12/2021
Rediscovering Wonder: Cultivating Awe for Health, Happiness, and Connection
What do you feel when you gaze up at the Milky Way, listen to an incredible piece of music, or witness an act of great courage? This feeling, often complete with goosebumps, is awe—and researchers have discovered that cultivating it can create positive, lasting changes in physical and mental health. With a therapist’s help, clients can tap into awe as a powerful personal resource to promote hope, inspiration, and well-being. In this recording, you’ll explore:
- Why we experience awe, and the psychological impact of this universal human emotion
- How clients who seek out awe can not only improve emotional, physical, and brain health, but increase compassion, curiosity, and creativity
- Why some people are more disposed to awe than others and how to help all clients cultivate it in ways that help strengthen their connections with self and others
- Practical strategies for building an “awe menu” that’s unique to each client
Program Information
Objectives
- Assess the psychological impact of the experience of awe on stress and anxiety.
- Demonstrate practical strategies for increasing awe in daily life that can reduce client symptoms.
- Differentiate between clients who are more disposed or less disposed to awe to inform choice of intervention.
Outline
- Summarize the psychological impact of the experience of awe as it relates to clinical practice.
- Describe how awe increases positive emotions while decreasing stress and anxiety
- How clients can meaningfully increase experiences of awe to reduce psychological symptoms
- Illustrate practical strategies for increasing awe in daily life that can reduce client symptoms.
- Review 10 pathways to awe, including nature, inspiration, the arts, and more
- Discuss how clients can make lifestyle changes to enhance awe in daily life
- Discriminate between clients who are more disposed or less disposed to awe to inform choice of intervention.
- Review the literature on how personality and character traits play a role in one’s susceptibility to awe
- Discuss cultural factors that impact awe-related experiences
- Model strategies for identifying awe-inducing experiences to improve client level of functioning.
- How to help clients develop strategies to infuse their lives with greater awe
- Discuss how to bring awe into the therapy room as a valuable tool for change
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
01/06/2021
Overcoming Hopelessness: Working with Low- and No-Motivation Clients
One of the greatest challenges a therapist can face is when a client feels hopeless about the possibility of change. But whether this sense is due to doubts about therapy or the intransigent nature of their struggles, current research challenges the widespread assumption that clients must be strongly motivated in order to change. The Creative Relational Movement (CRM) approach is a set of ideas and practices that stimulate clients to engage in therapy, even when their motivation is low. You’ll discover:
- How to apply the five principles of CRM with “last chance” couples as well as with clients suffering from depression, anxiety, and substance abuse
- How to use the integrative Therapeutic Palette approach to help clients engage in their treatment, even when they may not see the point
- Specific mindfulness practices that facilitate immediate psychophysiological change
- How to offer “experiments in possibility,” even if they feel unnatural or even irrational at first
Program Information
Objectives
- Evaluate the integrative Therapeutic Palette approach to inform treatment interventions.
- Utilize mindfulness practices that facilitate psychophysiological change.
- Demonstrate how to use “experiments in possibility” in sessions and as between-session activities, even when these activities feel unnatural at first.
- Propose five practices to introduce with clients to increase hopefulness.
Outline
- How to apply the four principles of CRM with “last chance” couples as well as with clients suffering from depression, anxiety, and substance abuse
- The psychological and relational sources of hopelessness will be described, with case examples
- The research indicating that high motivation is not necessary for change to begin will be summarized
- The importance of sharing a theory of change with clients, that contrasts with their existing “theory” that change is impossible, will be discussed
- The five principles of the CRM will be discussed:
- Principle One: Insight does not automatically lead to new action
- Principle Two: Sustained daily motivation is not necessary for change
- Principle Three: Change feels initially artificial and irrational
- Principle Four: The importance of clients conducting nonbinding “creative experiments with possibility” – actions, which constitute “meaning in motion”, that evade clients’ constraining beliefs about the hopelessness of their situation and condition, and that help them step away and out from these beliefs and make meaningful positive discoveries about themselves and their lives’ potential
- Principle Five: The need to link change efforts to specific times of the day and week.
- Drawing from Heidegger’s phenomenological philosophy of being and the subsequent developments in existential psychology and psychotherapy, the theory supporting the need for “experiments with possibility” will be described
- Strategies (including issues of timing) for introducing these five principles with persons suffering from depression, substance abuse, and last chance couples will be described and illustrated, with case examples
- How to use the integrative Therapeutic Palette approach to help clients engage in their treatment, even when they may not see the point
- The Therapeutic Palette integrative approach to systemic therapy – especially the three “primary colors” or main organizing principles of integrative therapy -- will be described as a guide to choice points in terms of which theories and associated techniques to use at any one time
- The research on “client readiness” and therapist “responsiveness” will be described, and the social and perceptual psychology concept (and research) on “affordances” – openings and opportunities for a person to interact with their environment – will be described as it relates to the therapist’s opportunities for introducing interventions in the therapeutic system
- Specific mindfulness practices that facilitate immediate psychophysiological change
- The research on the effectiveness of mindfulness practices will be summarized, and the manner in which mindfulness practices directly affect the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and reduce fight-or-flight sympathetic arousal will be described
- Mindful breathing, walking, eating, and drumming will be demonstrated and participants will try all these forms of mindfulness practice
- Five Qi Gong moves (Qi Gong is an ancient Chinese form of internal martial arts) will be demonstrated and participants will try these moves
- The method of introducing the rationale for mindfulness practices to clients will be described
- How to offer “experiments in possibility,” even if they feel unnatural or even irrational at first
- The method of introducing the practice of “experiments in possibility” to clients and supporting their efforts to engage in these experiments will be described
- Participants will have an opportunity to present brief vignettes about individuals or couples they’ve seen in therapy who have experienced hopelessness and the presenter will provide suggestions as to how to help those clients engage in new action despite low or no motivation
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/19/2021
Rethinking ADHD: A New Treatment Approach
As ubiquitous as it is, the condition we misleadingly call ADHD is too often misunderstood, even by professionals. Rather than treating it as a deficit or a disorder, the best outcomes derive from a new strengths-based model that reconceives ADHD as VAST (Variable Attention Stimulus Trait). Discover cutting-edge interventions based on the VAST approach that can change the lives of clients of all ages. You’ll learn:
- How to explain the VAST model to clients in plain language, so they start seeing and using their unique brain traits as an asset rather than a curse
- The role of medication vs. nonmedication interventions for children and adults
- How to help clients avoid the major pitfalls of VAST, such as chronic self-attack, rumination, underachievement, substance abuse and other addictions, poor relationship choices, and the consequences of disorganization
Program Information
Objectives
- Evaluate several treatment interventions based on a VAST approach to ADHD that improve clinical outcomes.
- Assess how to explain the VAST model to clients in a way that helps them view their unique brain traits as assets.
- Investigate the major pitfalls of treatment and how to avoid them.
- Evaluate the role of medication and nonmedication interventions for children and adults.
Outline
- Describe several treatment interventions based on a VAST approach to ADHD that improve clinical outcomes.
- Learn how to understand and implement a strength-based approach to treating ADHD.
- How to take a strength-based history to develop the talents and strengths of a person who has ADHD.
- Assess how to explain the VAST model to clients in a way that helps them view their unique brain traits as assets.
- Learn how to see ADHD not as a disorder but as a trait.
- Learn how to reframe the challenges of ADHD in terms of Mirror Traits.
- List the major pitfalls of treatment and how to avoid them.
- How to Understand the Role of Medication in the Treatment of ADHD.
- How to Find the Right Dose of the Right Medication.
- Explain the role of medication and nonmedication interventions for children and adults.
- Learn to appreciate ways of treating ADHD without medication.
- How to examine the benefits of exercise, nutrition, and other non-medication approaches that promote a healthier mental and physical life.
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
02/03/2021
Walk-and-Talk Therapy: The Ins and Outs of Moving Your Practice Outside
Are you exhausted from practicing over a flat-screen? Do you have a client who refuses teletherapy and only wants to meet in person, or a client who’s antsy and needs to move around? How about a teenager who’s uncomfortable with direct eye contact? Incorporating walking therapy into your practice can offer access to therapy for those clients who have been difficult to reach in a traditional office space. Learn how to incorporate movement and nature into an effective therapy session. You’ll explore:
- What clinical issues and clients are best suited for walk-and-talk therapy
- What to do when a client becomes openly emotional while walking through a park, and how to handle confidentiality in this setting
- Specific practices to make walking therapy effective
- Tips for handling an emergency or inclement weather
Program Information
Objectives
- Analyze the research and evidence showing the benefits of walking therapy.
- Assess how to handle issues around confidentiality in a public outdoor setting.
- Assess how to handle a client becoming openly emotional during a walking session in a park.
- Determine how to incorporate movement and nature into an effective therapy session.
Outline
- Discuss the research and evidence showing the benefits of walking therapy.
- What is walk and talk? Combining nature, movement, and therapy. Who has it worked well for? Case examples.
- What are the origins of walk and talk therapy? What are the various ways in which the practice is implemented? How did I get started? Marathon training as a natural lead to an outdoor private practice.
- Background, research, and history of walking therapy. Explanation of the physiological response to movement, and how movement affects mood and anxiety levels.
- Assess how to handle issues around confidentiality in a public outdoor setting.
- “Location, location, location”- the importance of space.
- Writing a comprehensive informed consent.
- Practical strategies for confidentiality challenges to being outdoors.
- Assess how to handle a client becoming openly emotional during a walking session in a park.
- Assessing the client’s needs.
- Understanding your role in the therapeutic relationship.
- Being flexible, and what that actually looks like.
- Discern how to incorporate movement and nature into an effective therapy session.
- Using nature as a prop, or third party in your session.
- Presenter will use video of outdoor sessions to demonstrate ways that nature supports the therapeutic process.
- Creative and applicable ways to weave nature into the therapeutic process. For example, rain, cold, and heat, can be a challenge. We can face it and live through it just like the challenges of life. Case examples.
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
01/05/2021
Emotionally Focused Therapy for Individuals: Expanding the Self
Emotionally Focused Therapy is a well-known approach to couples treatment. But how can it translate to work with individuals? This recording introduces EFIT (Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy), which focuses on helping individual clients shape a robust and resilient sense of self, ready to move into what Carl Rogers called “existential living.” EFIT privileges emotion and shapes corrective emotional experiences in each session to restructure negative ways of defining the self, organizing inner experience, and engaging with others. As in EFT for couples, attachment science offers a map that simplifies how we frame clients’ problems and shape their journey toward wholeness. You’ll discover:
- The key elements of the attachment perspective on personality and its significance for clinical intervention
- The process of change and the elements of the EFT Tango
- Micro-interventions to gradually move clients into transformative moments where vulnerabilities are encountered with balance and competence
- The applicability of EFIT with clients suffering from a range of symptoms and issues
Program Information
Objectives
- Analyze the key elements of the attachment perspective on personality and its significance for clinical intervention.
- Demonstrate the process of change and the elements of the EFT Tango.
- Analyze the micro-interventions used by the EFT therapist.
- Evaluate the applicability of EFIT for different clients with different symptomatology.
Outline
- Describe the key elements of the attachment perspective on personality and its significance for clinical intervention.
- The attachment perspective on personality – health and dysfunction.
- Outline the process of change and the elements of the EFT Tango.
- The EFT Tango and micro-interventions.
- Presentation and viewing of an EFIT session.
- Describe the micro-interventions used by the EFT therapist.
- Viewing and analysis of EFIT sessions and experiential exercises – assembling emotion.
- Outline the applicability of EFIT for different clients with different symptomatology.
- Exercises – the EFT Tango.
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/20/2021
Therapists as Agents of Hope: Our Role in a Game of Thrones World
In the toxic polarization of our society, most of us try to stay focused on our traditional work of personal healing, trying to steer clear of the struggles in our wider culture. But if “winter is coming,” a more proactive alternative is to expand our conception of psychotherapy to include building capacity for people to live in a pluralistic democracy that doesn’t rely on “saviors” of the Left or Right. How can we enhance our impact in a Game of Thrones world, where red tribes battle blue tribes, democracy is in retreat, and climate change threatens us all? Explore a larger vision for our role as therapists. You’ll discover how to:
- Identify the connection between your current clinical work and democratic renewal
- Develop skills in bridging gaps between groups who see themselves as opposing the political “other”
- Practice depolarization skills in your own life and work
- Connect with organizations and initiatives where you can use your knowledge and skills for the public good
Program Information
Objectives
- Evaluate how your current clinical work can enhance democratic renewal, thereby improving client functioning in the community.
- Develop skills in bridging gaps between groups who see themselves as the political “other.”
- Apply depolarization skills in your own work with clients and within the community.
Outline
- Sources of today’s political polarization
- How this polarization affects communities
- How it affects clients and therapists
- Strategies for helping clients depolarize in their own relationships
- Strategies for helping communities depolarize
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/20/2021
The New World of Psychopharmacology: Essential Updates for Mental Health Professionals
How many of your clients are taking psychotropic medicines prescribed by other healthcare professionals? Do you always know what they’re taking. Or understand why? And if it’s working or doing more harm than good? Despite who wrote the script, it’s your responsibility to know your clients' symptoms and reactions to medications, and to coordinate their care. This session focuses on providing practical and useful information about antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, and medication for insomnia, as well as the tools to handle the ethical decisions that surround psychopharmacology. Get to the bottom line on the most prescribed antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, and medication for insomnia on the market today, and learn how to discuss scope of practice with your patients in order to optimize their care. The goal is for you to leave better prepared to communicate with your clients as well as the prescribers. You’ll discover:
- The most effective ways to help your clients taking psychotherapeutic medications
- Understand the research behind common medications used for the treatment of depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, and insomnia
- Recent advances in the medications for depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, and insomnia
Program Information
Objectives
- Investigate the proper role of mental health professionals who treat clients receiving both psychotherapeutic medications and psychotherapy.
- Determine the traditional medications used for the treatment of depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, and medications for insomnia.
- Assess recent advances in the medications for depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, and insomnia.
Outline
- Why (and what) you should know about psychopharmacology
- Questions you can expect from clients and prescribers and how to answer them
- Latest information and newest medications for depression, anxiety, and insomnia
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
02/15/2021
Accelerating Therapy with DBT Interventions: Breakthrough Techniques with Your Toughest Clients
Clinicians frequently struggle with clients who are “stuck”—miserable yet unwilling or unable to move forward. Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) offers highly effective strategies for breaking logjams in therapy and increasing positive outcomes for tough challenges, such as threatening suicide, power struggles in therapy, nonadherence, and constantly shifting symptoms and problems. In this recording, learn to focus clients on creating a “life worth living” and discover how to:
- Create movement and flow in therapy using both acceptance- and change-based strategies
- Use specific evidence-based tools to quickly engage clients in therapy and determine how best to target symptoms
- Harness the power of dialectics and experience the benefits of mindfulness-based interventions
- Use behavior chain analysis to understand the function of behavior and apply it to therapy to improve outcomes
Program Information
Objectives
- Assess how to create discrepancy with values, goals, and behaviors to move therapy forward.
- Appraise specific evidence-based tools to quickly engage clients in therapy and determine how best to target symptoms.
- Determine how to develop skill with behavior chain analysis to understand the function of behavior and apply it to therapy to improve outcomes.
- Demonstrate how to create movement and flow in therapy using both acceptance-based and change-based strategies.
Outline
- Learn how to create discrepancy with values, goals, and behaviors to move therapy forward.
- Learn to quickly identify meaningful value-driven goals with clients.
- Identify behaviors that clients engage in that get them stuck.
- Effectively highlight conflict between behaviors and goals to jumpstart motivation to change.
- Describe specific evidence-based tools to quickly engage clients in therapy and determine how best to target symptoms.
- Establish appetitive long-term goals that resonate with clients and pull them towards meaningful change.
- Translate long term goals into specific therapy tasks to bring about change.
- Create a relationship between equals that engages client in the therapy process.
- Develop an organized plan for targeting symptoms to maximize therapy effectiveness.
- Recognize how to develop skill with behavior chain analysis to understand the function of behavior and apply it to therapy to improve outcomes.
- Learn when to use a behavior chain analysis to collaboratively assess factors that reinforce problematic behaviors.
- Increase willingness to target challenging behaviors by effectively and accurately identifying problematic behaviors and teaching effective replacement behaviors.
- Describe how to create movement and flow in therapy using both acceptance-based and change-based strategies.
- Apply acceptance-based strategies including validation and mindfulness in an effective manner to soothe clients and manage intense emotion dysregulation.
- Aggressively target change using problem solving, contingencies, skills training, exposure, and cognitive modification.
- Artfully use dialectical treatment strategies to break through power struggles, resistance, and treatment interfering behaviors.
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/20/2021
A Harm-Reduction Approach to Addictions
More than one-third of Americans struggle with problematic substance use and other risky or addictive behaviors, but they often have a great deal of ambivalence about changing them.
Even with clients whose issues are mild on the severity spectrum, it’s difficult getting to the heart of the complex reasons, unique to each person, for this roadblock to change.
This workshop offers a comprehensive psychobiosocial model for understanding and working with these behaviors through Integrative Harm Reduction Psychotherapy (IHRP), which can be immediately incorporated into your practice.
Program Information
Outline
Introduction
- Addiction as a Dilemma
- Valerie Case Study
Compassionate Pragmatism
Harm Reduction Principles
- Curiosity, Respect, Acceptance
- Small Incremental Change
- Collaboration
- Public Health/Medical Harm Reduction
Challenges & Diversity of People with Risky & Addictive Behavior
- Clinical Challenges
- Limitations in the U.S.
- The Tyranny of “Abstinence-Only”
- Motivational Stages of Change
- Scientific Revolution/Paradigm Shift
Theoretical Models
- Multiple Meanings Model
- Relational Psychoanalysis & Meaning
- Cyclical Psychodynamics
- Psychobiosocial Model
Integrative Harm Reduction Psychotherapy
- Seven Therapeutic Tasks of IHRP
Objectives
- Assess how addictive behavior reflects the interplay of biology, meaning, habit, and social context.
- Determine why the harm-reduction stance is essential to effective treatment across the spectrum of addictive severity.
- Evaluate seven therapeutic tasks that combine relational psychodynamic, CBT, and mindfulness interventions to address addictive behaviors and the whole person.
- Use strategies to address risky behaviors including Urge Surfing, Unwrapping the Urge, Microanalysis, Embracing Ambivalence, Decisional Balance, and the Ideal Use Plan.
Target Audience
- Psychologists
- Physicians
- Addiction Counselors
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Nurses
- Behavioral Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/22/2019
Awakening Positive Emotional States: How Imagery, Movement, and Play Can Enhance Your Work
Research from brain science and positive psychology shows that awakening positive emotional states through experiential tools such as imagery, music, movement, and play is the fastest route to shift mood, decrease anxiety, and stimulate creative problem-solving. But how do you help clients access resourceful states when they’re feeling hopeless and helpless? Discover how to help troubled clients reclaim inner states of peace, strength, joy, and vitality. Moreover, you’ll have opportunities to evoke your own uplifting states through experiential activities. Explore how to:
- Use imagery techniques to elicit desired emotions and engender positive feelings toward the self and the future
- Frame ideas, questions, and other interventions in ways that foster hope and boost motivation
- Craft music and movement interventions that lift depression, calm anxiety, and empower traumatized clients
- Use playful interventions that optimize learning and reinforce new behaviors
Program Information
Objectives
- Demonstrate how to help clients access resourceful states when they’re feeling hopeless and helpless.
- Use imagery techniques to elicit desired emotions and engender positive feelings toward the self and the future.
- Demonstrate ideas, questions, and other interventions in ways that foster hope and boost motivation.
- Determine how to gently lead discouraged clients into heartening experiences that enable them to reclaim inner states of peace, strength, joy, and vitality.
- Create music and movement interventions that lift depression, calm anxiety, and empower traumatized clients.
- Apply playful interventions that optimize learning and reinforce new behaviors in a clinical setting.
Outline
Explain how to help clients access resourceful states when they’re feeling hopeless and helpless.
- Discuss state dependent learning and research on psychological interventions to increase positive emotion and optimism.
Use imagery techniques to elicit desired emotions and engender positive feelings toward the self and the future.
- Demonstrate best possible-self imagery intervention & discuss research supporting it.
- Demonstrate symbolic imagery intervention to elicit desired emotional states.
Articulate ideas, questions, and other interventions in ways that foster hope and boost motivation.
- Demonstrate attune, lift, and lead communication techniques.
- Demonstrate how to redirect attention towards what the client desires.
Determine how to gently lead discouraged clients into heartening experiences that enable them to reclaim inner states of peace, strength, joy, and vitality.
- Demonstrate imagery interventions to reframe sense of self.
- Demonstrate interventions to evoke self-compassion.
Create music and movement interventions that lift depression, calm anxiety, and empower traumatized clients.
- Discuss music can be used to elicit desired emotional responses.
- Discuss research on the relationship between movement and emotional states.
Apply playful interventions that optimize learning and reinforce new behaviors in a clinical setting.
- Discuss how play optimizes learning and reinforces new behaviors.
- Demonstrate playful association games that can be used to reinforce new learning.
Target Audience
- Psychologists
- Physicians
- Addiction Counselors
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Nurses
- Behavioral Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/22/2019
Becoming a Solution-Focused Therapist: How to Make Therapy Briefer and More Effective
While most traditional therapies tend to focus on the problem rather than the solution, Solution Focused Brief Therapy offers a different pathway. Learn a deceptively simple process of asking targeted questions that can accelerate therapy with a range of challenging clinical issues, including anxiety and depression. In this recording, using session videos and demonstrations, you’ll learn how to tailor a solution-focused approach that honors each client’s path to healing. You’ll explore how to:
- Leverage the most positive aspects of a client’s experience to more quickly and effectively achieve clinical goals
- Ask the right targeted questions in ways that turn problems into movement toward solutions in every session
- Apply a new perspective on using the solution-focused approach that integrates recent developments, such as focusing on a desired outcome, using the client’s language to ask questions, and evoking client strengths in therapy
Program Information
Objectives
- Assess the research on the Solution Focused Approach as it relates to case conceptualization.
- Demonstrate the use of the Solutions Focused Approach to improve clinical outcomes with clients.
- Use the most positive aspects of a client’s experience to more quickly and effectively achieve clinical goals.
Outline
- Identify the differences between solution-focused and problem-focused approaches.
- Key tenets, theory and evidence behind SFBT
- How important is the problem?
- Why assessment, diagnosis and treatment planning doesn’t guide treatment
- Explain how to use the Solutions Focused Approach to improve clinical outcomes with clients.
- ”The details drive the change”
- The absence of symptomology v. the presence of what clients most desire
- What are the two most important words in SFBT?
- Assess the research on the Solution Focused Approach as it relates to case conceptualization.
- Intentional Questions – the Strength Behind SFBT
- Explore how to leverage the most positive aspects of a client’s experience to more quickly and effectively achieve clinical goals.
- Open, the Core of the Session, Closing the Session
- Case Examples
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
01/11/2021