November/December 2026: Therapy’s Emerging Existential Crisis: What We’re Learning about AI and the Lure of Certainty

Credit

Target Audience

• Social Workers
• Psychologists
• Addiction Counselors
• Counselors
• Marriage & Family Therapists
• Nurses
• Other Professions

Objectives

1. Evaluate how clinician and caregiver anxiety may impact one’s ability to remain relationally present amid clinical uncertainty.
2. Apply attachment-informed concepts to case conceptualization and intervention, including the caregiving system, co-regulation, intergenerational patterns, and earned security.
3. Analyze current evidence on trauma reprocessing and suicide prevention practices to make collaborative, evidence-informed treatment decisions.

Outline

Trauma Treatment and Clinical Decision-Making

• “The Trauma Reprocessing Debate: How to Know When Stabilization Isn’t Enough” — Daphne Fatter (2,282 words)
  • Frames trauma reprocessing as an effective option for a variety of clients with complex trauma and calls for ongoing risk-benefit assessment alongside informed consent

Attachment Across Generations

• “A Mother, Her Son, and the Manosphere: Two Takes on Parental Fear and Teen Withdrawal” — George Faller & Eli Harwood (3,687 words)
  • Presents two attachment-based approaches (Emotionally Focused Therapy and attachment-informed resourcing) for helping an anxious parent regulate her own attachment alarm and history
• “Invisible Daughters: Healing the Father Wound” — Terri Cole (2,087 words)
  • Introduces the father wound as a “worthiness wound” that shapes women’s attachment patterns and relationships with men, presenting attachment styles as adaptive and changeable through earned security

Rethinking Suicide Prevention

• “What Doesn’t Work in Suicide Prevention: Three Common Practices to Avoid” — Sally Spencer-Thomas (2,162 words)
  • Critiques predictive risk assessment, no-suicide contracts, and reflexive hospitalization as practices that can substitute procedure for connection
• “What Actually Works in Suicide Prevention: Reclaiming the Essential Skills We’ve Forgotten” — Sally Spencer-Thomas (2,266 words)
  • Presents an upstream, midstream, and downstream framework of relational, collaborative interventions grounded in recent evidence