Training

 

 

 

At RTC we have an enormous library of recorded training materials (audio and video) related to couples therapy. Below is a list of all the videos with their related links – all categorized by subject. We would love if you could help us increase our library. If you have training audios and videos that can be uploaded – please e-mail Laura to get the process started.

By Subject

Abandonment

Abuse

  • Abuse in Families – Claudia Black, Eliana Gil, Cloe Madanes – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Conversation Hour

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

  • Acceptance and Commitment Therapy as a Form of Process-Based Therapy – Steven Hayes – Evolution fo Psychotherapy 2020 – Evidence-based therapy is moving in a process-based direction. In this workshop I will introduce Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) as a form of process-based therapy that can be build around an extended evolutionary model and applied to a wide range of human concerns.
  • What Process-Based Therapy and Commitment Looks Like – Steven Hayes – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – In this short series of actual client “real plays” I will show what process-based ACT looks like, and relate clinical methods to the psychological flexibility model as integrating into a multi-dimensional, multi-level extended evolutionary meta-model.

ADD/ADHD Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder

  • Healing ADD – Daniel Amen – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Based on the brain scans and clinical histories of over 20,000 patients with ADHD, this workshop will help clinicians properly diagnose ADHD and subtype it into 7 different types. They will also learn the clinical symptoms, brain imaging patterns and treatments for each type.

Addiction

  • February 2022 Topic Tuesday – James presents about how way of working with addiction with couples – specifically discussing his theory of the Path of Many Gates.  Audio only version.
  • A Couples Approach to Addiction Recovery – John Gottman – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – A relational approach to addiction treatment is the missing component in most contemporary addiction treatment models based on concerns that working with the couple system too soon increases the risk for relapse. It turns out there isn’t empirical support for this default assumption. Conversely, long-standing, and well-established research has consistently supported couple and family approaches in treating addictive disorders, defining relationship stability as the greatest predictor of long-term sobriety and recovery.
  • The Hungry Ghost: A Biopsychosocial Perspective on Addiction – From Heroin to Alcoholism – Gabor Mate – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Based on the book In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction. For twelve years Dr. Maté was the staff physician at a clinic for drug-addicted people in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, where he worked with patients challenged by hard-core drug addiction, mental illness and HIV, including at Vancouver Supervised Injection Site. In his most recent bestselling book In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts, he shows that their addictions do not represent a discrete set of medical disorders; rather, they merely reflect the extreme end of a continuum of addiction, mostly hidden, that runs throughout our society. In The Realm Of Hungry Ghosts draws on cutting-edge science to illuminate where and how addictions originate and what they have in common.  Contrary to what is often claimed, the source of addictions is not to be found in genes, but in the early childhood environment where the neurobiology of the brain’s reward pathways develops and where the emotional patterns that lead to addiction are wired into the unconscious. Stress, both then and later in life, creates the predisposition for addictions, whether to drugs, alcohol, nicotine, or to behavioral addictions such as shopping or sex. Helping the addicted individual requires that we appreciate the function of the addiction in his or her life. More than a disease, the addiction is a response to a distressing life history and life situation. Once we recognize the roots of addiction and the lack it strives (in vain) to fill, we can develop a compassionate approach toward the addict, one that stands the best chance of restoring him or her to wholeness and health.
  • Addiction and Stress Therapeutic Impact – Jeffrey Zeig & Gabor Mate – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020

Adolescents & Young Adults 

Affairs

Anti-Racism

Anxiety 

  • From Feeling Good to Feeling Great – David Burns – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Dr. Burns first book, Feeling Good, introduced cognitive therapy to the world when it was first released in 1980. Various research studies indicate that 50% to 65% of readers seeking treatment for moderate to severe depression improve significantly or recover within four weeks on their own, without any medications or talk therapy, and no longer need treatment.  Dr. Burns’ new book, Feeling Great, is based on 40 years of research on how this cognitive therapy actually works, and more than 40,000 hours of therapy with depressed and anxious individuals, and includes powerful new tools to melt away therapeutic “resistance.” This opens the door to ultra-rapid treatment for the first time.
  • Anxiety Topical Panel – Harriet Lerner, Christine Padesky, & Eli Coleman – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Anxiety is one of the most common problems discussed in psychotherapy. Panelists will discuss it’s treatment from perspectives of evidence-based treatment models for anxiety disorders, a systems view of anxiety across the human population, and the impact of anxious attachments stemming from childhood on intimate relationships.

Atkinson/PET-C

Attachment

  • The Loneliest Heart – A Matter of Attachment – Judy Crane – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Psychiatry and by extension all mental health professions have not embraced the clinical use of neuroimaging, whether it is SPECT, PET, QEEG or functional MRI techniques. This leaves psychiatry as the only medical specialty that virtually never looks at the organ it treats, leading to misdiagnoses, ineffective treatment (outcomes are virtually no better than the 1950s), and persistent stigma. This lecture will focus on how neuroimaging enhances diagnoses, leads to more effective treatments, and shatters stigma. Based on a brain imaging database of more than 170,000 brain SPECT scans on patients from 155 countries, Dr. Amen has seen neuroimaging changes the discussion from mental health to brain health, which increases compliance, decreases stigma, and improves outcomes.
  • Theresa discusses attachment and her way of seeing how it plays out in relationships
  • Attachment Styles and What They Mean to You and Your Clients – Diane Poole Heller – Talk given at The Healing Power of Relationships Summit

Biopsychosocial

Boundaries

Brain/Brain Scans/PET

  • Brain Wars: How Not Looking at the Brain Hurts Patients and Professionals – Daniel Amen – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Psychiatry and by extension all mental health professions have not embraced the clinical use of neuroimaging, whether it is SPECT, PET, QEEG or functional MRI techniques. This leaves psychiatry as the only medical specialty that virtually never looks at the organ it treats, leading to misdiagnoses, ineffective treatment (outcomes are virtually no better than the 1950s), and persistent stigma. This lecture will focus on how neuroimaging enhances diagnoses, leads to more effective treatments, and shatters stigma.

Brainspotting

Case Consultation 

CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy)

  • From Feeling Good to Feeling Great – David Burns – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Dr. Burns first book, Feeling Good, introduced cognitive therapy to the world when it was first released in 1980. Various research studies indicate that 50% to 65% of readers seeking treatment for moderate to severe depression improve significantly or recover within four weeks on their own, without any medications or talk therapy, and no longer need treatment.  Dr. Burns’ new book, Feeling Great, is based on 40 years of research on how this cognitive therapy actually works, and more than 40,000 hours of therapy with depressed and anxious individuals, and includes powerful new tools to melt away therapeutic “resistance.” This opens the door to ultra-rapid treatment for the first time.
  • Evolution and Status of Cognitive Behavior Therapy A Personal and Professional Journey – Donald Meichenbaum – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Having just celebrated his 80th birthday, 55th year of clinical practice, research and supervision, and 24th year as Research Director of the Melissa Institute for Violence Prevention. Don Meichenbaum will be discussing the “lessons learned”, including what “expert” psychotherapists do to achieve lasting changes and ways to spot HYPE in the field of psychotherapy. This will include a critique of the “state of the art” of both psychotherapy and cognitive behavior therapy.

Change

  • Processes of Change in Evidence-Based Psychotherapy – Steven Hayes & Donald Meichenbaum – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Conversation Hour
  • What Makes Lasting Change – Stephen Gilligan & Robert Dilts – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Conversation Hour – It is not that difficult to produce change within a session, but a far greater challenge to ensure that these changes are lasting. In this conversation, Robert Dilts and Stephen Gilligan will each identify the key dimensions of sustainable change, then open a conversation about how to generatively apply them.
  • How Change Happens: What the World’s Literature on the Mediators of Therapeutic Change Can Teach Us – Steven Hayes – Over the last four decades, evidence-based psychotherapy has been forced into a syndromal box. We have learned some useful things from the “protocols for syndromes” era, but most agree that the end result is inadequate and further progress has slowed to a crawl. Practitioners do not get what they need from research, treatment is difficult to individualize, and processes of change are poorly understood.

Children (Working With)

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Common Couple Issues

Communication & Conversations

  • Why We Can’t Communicate: What Does this Common Presenting Problem for Couples Really Symbolize – Ellyn Bader – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020
  • Communication and Subconscious Processes – Noam Chomsky – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – A linguist describes his view of interpersonal communication and explores subconscious processes.
  • Safe Conversations – From the Clinic to the Culture – Harville Hendrix & Helen LaKelly Hunt – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Safe Conversations is a social action initiative to take relational science from the clinic to the culture in order to help facilitate a transition from an individualistic to a relational civilization. Since talking is the most dangerous thing people do, and since listening is the most infrequent, and since difference is the source of polarization, this relational intervention helps people talk without criticizing, listen without judgment and connect beyond their differences. Delivered globally, this relational technology could create a safe world in which everyone is equal, diversity is celebrated and inclusiveness is total.
  • Conceptual Communication – Bessel Ven Der Kolk & Jeff Zeig – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Clients need to access adaptive concepts. which is a step on the path to adaptive identities. Communication is both informative an evocative. Facts are communicated informatively; concepts are elicited evocatively.
  • The HeART of Communication – Alanis Morissette – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020

Conflict

Couples Therapy – General

COVID-19

  • COVID-19 Impact Panel – Stephen Porges, Michael Yapko, Jeffrey Zeig – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – This panel will focus on the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact in the field of Psychotherapy. Panelists will address the pandemic’s effect on the psychotherapy community in relation to patient needs, therapy, and stress response. The impact on relationships, and psychological perspectives will be identified. Additional issues include how COVID-19 has affected patients in limitations/barriers/roadblocks/challenges in access to therapy.
  • Coronavirus Pandemic a Liminal Time of Danger and Opportunity – Jean Shinoda Bolen (Jungian) – I will be speaking extemporaneously about the meaning of “Liminal”, which is the time between  “What was” and “What next?” The outcome depends upon how we confront this crisis of uncertainty in our personal lives as well as the crisis that we humans have brought about for humanity and the planet: Not enough trees, too many people = global warming, eventual catastrophe.

Crisis 

Daniel Siegel/Mindsight

  • Working with a 3-P Framework of Consciousness in Psychotherapy – Daniel Siegel – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – This workshop will explore the findings from a 10,000-person survey of a mind-training practice, the Wheel of Awareness, and how they can inform an understanding of the mind, mental health, and the transformative power of harnessing consciousness in psychotherapy. Workshop participants are encouraged to practice the Wheel of Awareness before the event so that their own direct experience can be compared and contrasted to the findings of the survey and then applied to their own practice of psychotherapy.
  • MWe and the Integration of Identity: The Importance of Mind in Confronting the Pandemics of COVID-19, Social Injustice, and Climate Destruction – Daniel Siegel – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – This invited address will focus on the strange finding that the various disciplines comprising the broad field of mental health rarely offer their trainees a definition of what the mind is. We’ll explore a cross-disciplinary perspective on this question, offering a working definition of the mind and on what a healthy mind may actually be. The core process of linking differentiated parts of a system—be it the brain, an interpersonal relationship, or modern culture—can be called “integration” and be seen at the heart of well-being.

Dan Wile Intervention

Dating

Depression

Discernment

Dissociation

Documentation

Divorce/Separation

Efficacy/Effectiveness

  • Effective Psychotherapists: 8 Clinical Skills that Improve Client Outcomes – William Miller – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Counseling and psychotherapy are inseparable from the people who provide them. Drawing on six decades of therapeutic research, Dr. Miller will describe eight provider skills that influence client outcomes for better or worse, across a broad range of treatment methods.

Enneagram

Evil

  • My Journey From Evil to Heroism – Philip Zimbardo Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – This lecture traces his journey from childhood through the Stanford Prison Experiment on the theme of the banality of evil, then switches to focus on the banality of heroism in his new life’s mission of training people around the world be wise and effective heroes who stand up, speak out and take action in challenging situations in their lives, as part of the Heroic Imagination Project.

Experiential Exercises/Models

Family Therapy (General)

Feedback-Informed Treatment (FIT)

Gottman Therapy

Grief

Generative Psychotherapy 

  • Symptoms as Solutions: Welcoming and Integrating Disturbing Patterns as Integral to Sustainable Change – Stephen Gilligan – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – A central currency in the therapeutic exchange is negative experiences—depression, anxiety, trauma, addiction, etc. This practical and positive approach assumes that each core human experience has equivalent potential to be positive or negative, depending on the human relationship to it; and thus focuses on how problems may be transformed to resources by skillful human connection. This process operates at two levels: (1) Developing a generative state (in the therapist, client, and relationship field) and then (2) Using specific methods of transforming negative experiences and behaviors. Multiple techniques and examples for will be given, along with an exercise and demonstration.
  • Creative Transformation in Generative Psychotherapy – Stephen Gilligan & Jeff Zeig – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Clinical Demo – This demonstration will show how activating a client’s creative process is the key factor in generative psychotherapy. This process follows these steps:(1) Opening a creative safe space(2) Identifying a goal (A positive change or transforming a negative pattern)(3) Identifying and welcoming both obstacles and resources(4) Weaving and integrating the parts into a new “mosaic of self”(5) Orienting to future application of changes.  Therapy is successful when clients are able to experientially realize positive life changes. While the identification and transformation of symptoms is important in this regard, the activation of the client’s creative capacity to change is even more important. This paper outlines 6 steps in this therapeutic process: (1) opening a mindful field, (2) setting positive intentions, (3) developing and maintaining a creative state, (4) identifying a “storyboard” for achieving goals, (5) transforming negative experiences, and (6) everyday practices. Methods and case examples will be given to illuminate this core process.
  • What Makes Lasting Change – Stephen Gilligan & Robert Dilts – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Conversation Hour – It is not that difficult to produce change within a session, but a far greater challenge to ensure that these changes are lasting. In this conversation, Robert Dilts and Stephen Gilligan will each identify the key dimensions of sustainable change, then open a conversation about how to generatively apply them.

Gestalt Therapy

  • An Interview with Erving Polster – Erving Polster & Jeff Zeig – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Poetry and Presence: Each can lead to client change. This session explores the intersection of two experiential method,  gestalt practice and Ericksonian therapy. 

Goals (of therapy)

  • Topical Panel – The Goal of Therapy – Harville Hendrix, Helen LaKelly Hunt, Jack Kornfield, & Cloe Madanes – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – The process of contracting for change in the initial session will be described and discussed. Methods of targeting goals will be compared and contrasted.

Guilt

  • Five Strategies for Managing Guilt and Shame – Christine Padesky – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Guilt and shame can be challenging emotions to address in therapy. More than half of all clients report keeping secrets from their therapists, often linked to shameful emotions (Bauman & Hill, 2016). Padesky demonstrates in detail how to use five strategies from Mind Over Mood (Greenberger & Padesky, 2016) that help clients disclose, understand, and manage guilt and shame: rating of the seriousness of actions, use of a responsibility pie, devising reparations for hurting someone, breaking the silence surrounding shame, and use of a self-forgiveness worksheet. Structured exercises offer opportunities to practice several of these methods. This workshop allows time for questions and answers as well as discussion of how to handle clients who blame others rather than accepting their own role in interpersonal difficulties, why reparations are not indicated in survivor’s guilt, and other related topics.

Healing Power of Relationships Summit with Terry Real

Health

Homework – See Worksheets and Homework below

Hypnosis (Also includes Ericksonian Therapy)

  • Exploring Hypnosis and Therapeutic Dissociation: The Role of Detachment across Therapies as a Precursor to Meaningful Change – Michael Yapko – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – What makes it possible for someone to get so absorbed in subjective experience that they experience a significant reduction or even elimination of pain? How does encouraging someone to view their hurtful thoughts “as if clouds in the sky floating away from you” make it easier to dramatically reduce emotional reactivity to those thoughts?  Clinicians are often trained to be aware of the negative effects of dissociation (e.g., fugue states, psychogenic amnesia, etc.) through their clinical training, but some of the most vital elements of any good therapeutic intervention will feature dissociation. After all, every client has to detach from whatever it was he or she was doing, thinking or feeling that was hurtful in order to begin doing, thinking or feeling something else that is healthier and more adaptive. The field of clinical hypnosis has been studying the phenomenon of therapeutic dissociation intensively for over a century since it is the foundation for producing remarkable hypnotic phenomena. In this workshop, we will witness some of these impressive human capabilities and consider the merits of positive applications of dissociation as a catalyst for meaningful change across a wide array of therapeutic approaches.
  • Genius and Joy: The Extraordinary Life and Contributions of Ernest Lawrence Rossi – Kathryn Lane Ross & Richard Hill – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Come join us to hear Ernest Rossi speak about his most important lifetime breakthroughs followed by a question and answer session. Ernest, a genius in therapeutic hypnosis and dreams, was most proud of pioneering the new field of PsychoSocial Genomics with his wife, Kathryn, and colleagues from around the world. Ernest developed a depth of understanding of the sciences beyond the innovative work of Milton H. Erickson, MD. Ernest continued creating new therapeutic techniques as described in his many books including The Collected Works of Milton H. Erickson, MD (16 Volumes), Mind-Body Therapy with David Cheek, Hypnotic Realities, The Psychobiology of Mind-Body Healing, The Psychobiology of Gene Expression, The 20 Minute Break, The Symptom Path to Enlightenment, Creating Consciousness, The Breakout Heuristic, The Discourse with our Genes, Dreams, Consciousness, Spirit and his most recent book, The Practioners Guide to Mirroring Hands with Richard Hill.
  • Hypnosis and Experiential Learning – Michael Yapko & Steven Hayes – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Clinical Demo – The modern perspective of hypnosis considers the role of attention and absorption in catalyzing adaptive responses. Hypnosis provides a context for developing new associations on multiple levels that have therapeutic potential. In this clinical demonstration, a hypnosis session will be conducted to assist the client in evolving resources that may be helpful to facilitate personal growth.
  • It’s Time to Invite the “Crazy Cousin to the Family Picnic: Why Every Therapist Should Know Much More About Hypnosis They’re Already (Sort of) Doing – Michael Yapko – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – The field of hypnosis has moved to the forefront of objective research in striving to understand the many dimensions of subjective experience. High quality neuroscientific evidence for changes in the way the brain and mind interact offer compelling evidence that there is much more to hypnosis than meets the eye.
  • Evocation: The Foundation of Ericksonian Hypnosis and Therapy – Bill O’Hanlon

Identity 

  • MWe and the Integration of Identity: The Importance of Mind in Confronting the Pandemics of COVID-19, Social Injustice, and Climate Destruction – Daniel Siegel – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – This invited address will focus on the strange finding that the various disciplines comprising the broad field of mental health rarely offer their trainees a definition of what the mind is. We’ll explore a cross-disciplinary perspective on this question, offering a working definition of the mind and on what a healthy mind may actually be. The core process of linking differentiated parts of a system—be it the brain, an interpersonal relationship, or modern culture—can be called “integration” and be seen at the heart of well-being.

Imago

  • Safe Conversations – From the Clinic to the Culture – Harville Hendrix & Helen LaKelly Hunt – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Safe Conversations is a social action initiative to take relational science from the clinic to the culture in order to help facilitate a transition from an individualistic to a relational civilization. Since talking is the most dangerous thing people do, and since listening is the most infrequent, and since difference is the source of polarization, this relational intervention helps people talk without criticizing, listen without judgment and connect beyond their differences. Delivered globally, this relational technology could create a safe world in which everyone is equal, diversity is celebrated and inclusiveness is total.
  • Doing Imago Therapy in the Space Between – Harville Hendrix & Helen LaKelly Hunt – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Since life is lived in the Space-Between and remembered in Space-Within, thus giving birth to subjectivity, therapeutic intervention should be directed to the Space-Between in order to effect change in the Space-Within. This radical shift from subjectivity to the interactive space calls for a radical revision of therapeutic interventions. This speech will describe the problem and discuss the impact of relational interventions.

Individuals – Working with Individuals

  • Theresa explains interventions to use with individuals:

Intakes/Initial Interview

  • The Initial Interview – Topical Panel – Ellyn Bader, Otto Kernberg, & Scott Miller – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020

Introductions

Listening/Hearing/Music

Love Languages

Medication 

  • We’ve Had Antidepressants for Over 30 Years Now: So How’s that Working Out for Us? – Michael Yapko & Erving Polster – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is the most common mood disorder on earth and earlier this year was ranked as the number one cause of suffering and disability worldwide by the World Health Organization (WHO). Depression is a complex, multi-faceted disorder and many different theories have been formulated to describe its etiology and course. In this joint presentation, Drs. Polster and Yapko will compare and contrast their viewpoints about depression, the liberal use antidepressant medications, and why good psychotherapy is more important than ever.

Memory 

  • The Fiction of Memory – Elizabeth Loftus & Michael Yapko – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – For several decades, Elizabeth Loftus has been manufacturing memories in unsuspecting minds. Sometimes this involves changing details of events that someone actually experienced. Other times it involves planting entire memories event events that never happened—“rich false memories.” People can be led to believe that they did things that would have been rather implausible. They can be led to falsely believe that they had experiences that would have been emotional or traumatic had they actually happened. False memories, like true ones, also have consequences for people, affecting later thoughts, intentions, and behaviors. Can we tell true memories from false ones? In several studies, these created false memories in the minds of people, were then compared to true memories.. Once planted, the false memories look very much like true memories—in terms of behavioral characteristics, emotionality and neural signatures. If false memories can be so readily planted in the mind, do we need to think about “regulating” this mind technology? And what do these pseudomemories say about the nature of memory itself?

Mental Illness

  • The End of Mental Illness – Daniel Amen – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Based on the world’s largest functional brain imaging database, Dr. Amen will give you a completely new way to think about and treat issues such as anxiety, depression, bipolar disorders, ADHD, addictions, OCD, PTSD, schizophrenia and even personality disorders. It is based on the unique Amen Clinics 4 Circles BRIGHT MINDS program, which shows you that in order to have a healthy mind you must first have a healthy brain.

Mentoring

Microaggressions

Mind/Body Connection 

  • When the Body Says No – Mind/Body Unity and the Stress-Disease Connection – Gabor Mate – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Based on the book When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress (U.S. subtitle: Understanding the Stress-Disease Connection)Stress is ubiquitous these days — it plays a role in the workplace, in the home, and virtually everywhere that people interact. It can take a heavy toll unless it is recognized and managed effectively and insightfully.  Western medicine, in theory and practice, tends to treat mind and body as separate entities. This separation, which has always gone against ancient human wisdom, has now been demonstrated by modern science to be not only artificial, but false. The brain and body systems that process emotions are intimately connected with the hormonal apparatus, the nervous system, and in particular the immune system. Emotional stress, especially of the hidden kind that people are not aware of, undermines immunity, disrupts the body’s physiological milieu and can prepare the ground for disease.  There is strong evidence to suggest that in nearly all chronic conditions, from cancer, ALS, or multiple sclerosis to autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease or Alzheimer’s, hidden stress is a major predisposing factor. In an important sense, disease in an individual can be seen as the “endpoint” of a multi-generational emotional process. If properly understood, these conditions can provide important openings for compassion and self-awareness, which in turn are major tools in recovery and healing.  Dr. Maté’s presentation includes research findings, compelling and poignant anecdotes from his own extensive experience in family practice and palliative care, and illuminating biographies of famous people such as athlete Lance Armstrong, the late comedienne Gilda Radner, or famed baseball legend Lou Gehrig. The presentation is based on When The Body Says No, a bestselling book that has been translated into more than ten languages on five continents.

Motivational Interviewing

  • Motivational Interviewing – William Miller – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – A brief experiential introduction to the clinical method of motivational interviewing.

Multiculturalism, Culture-Centered Psychotherapy

  • Culture-Centered Psychotherapy – Patricia Maria Arredondo – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Contemporary minority professionals, with college degrees, positions in higher education, private practitioners, and other workspaces, often encounter dilemmas about their lack of advancement or self-efficacy. The within-group diversity among these women requires a cultural competency mindset, one that engages clients from a strength versus deficit or stereotyped-based perspective. In this workshop, participants will engage in activities to foster social identity examination as a bridge to recognizing the Latina social identities paradigm. Dilemmas that emerge because of the Maria Paradox messages, sexualized societal attitudes about Latinas, and “presumed incompetence” will be examined. Participants will leave with a guide for empowering professionals through solution-oriented culture-centered psychotherapy practices.
  • Therapeutic Oppression or Liberation: The Case for Multicultural Counseling & Therapy (MCT) – Derald Sue – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Traditional Western European therapy operates from hidden assumptions: (a) disorders reside in individuals, (b) disorders are departures from conventional (statistical) norms, (c) psychological principles derived from the dominant group are universally applicable, and (d) therapy consists of a series of strategies and techniques detached from the cultural context. When imposed upon clients of color, however, they potentially produce therapeutic harm. Rather than free and liberate, they may oppress and silence culturally diverse clients. MCT scholars and practitioners operate from different assumptions: (a) mental disorders are often sociopolitical constructions, (b) all treatments and behaviors cannot be isolated from their cultural contexts, (c) the individual is not necessarily the psychosocial unit of operation, and (d) cultural universality must be balanced with cultural specificity. When seen from this perspective, MCT represents true “healing” and liberation.
  • Integrating Dimensions of Cultural and Social Identities in the Psychotherapeutic Process – Patricia Maria Arredondo & Stephen Gilligan – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Cultural factors are present in all therapeutic relationships. Engaging the totality of individual clients by addressing their intersecting identities can promote self-affirmation and clarity about internalized oppression. The cultural competency paradigm and the Dimensions of Personal Identity model will serve as the primary reference points.
  • Topical Panel – Multicultural Issues – Patricia Maria Arredondo, Robert Dilts, & Derald Sue – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – All therapists require an understanding of multicultural issues to be effective. Theoretical research findings will be discussed.

Narcissism

Narrative Therapy

  • A Constructive Narrative Treatment Approach – Donald Meichenbaum – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Following a brief presentation of the “state of the art” concerning psychotherapy and an enumeration of the Core Tasks of Psychotherapy, the clinical demonstration (with a volunteer patient/audience member) will focus on ways to conduct Cognitive behavior therapy from a Constructive Narrative strengths-based perspective.

OCD

  • Quick, Irreversible Cures for OCD, Panic Disorder, Social Anxiety, and Phobias – David Burns – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Dr. Burns will illustrate the ultra-rapid treatment of four cases of incapacitating and intractable anxiety disorders, including a woman with ten years of failed therapy for extreme depression and panic attacks, a woman with twenty years of failed psychoanalysis for the fear of elevators and hallways, a man with more than a decade of incapacitating social anxiety / fear of sweating in public, and a woman with more than twenty years of OCD / germ phobia (the same disorder that haunted the late billionaire, Howard Hughes.) These patients all recovered in a single therapy session, and the actual recovery for each required less than ten minutes. Brief video clips illustrating the dramatic recoveries of two of them will be included. Dr. Burns will explain why therapy so often fails, and will emphasize the absolute need for tremendous patient / therapist trust as well as therapist / patient courage.
  • OCD Optimal Treatment – PESI Seminar – Audio Only

Panic Disorder

Personality Disorders (General)

PET/CT/Brain Scans

  • Learn to Read Brain Scans: 50 Cases in 60 Minutes – Daniel Amen – Based on the world’s largest database of brain SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) scans, Dr. Amen will teach attendees about brain SPECT imaging and then show 50 cases in 60 minutes, including cases of depression, anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia, traumatic brain injury, addiction, and dementia.
  • Topical Panel – Family and Couples Therapy – Harriet Lerner, John Gottman, Michele Weiner-Davis – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020

Phobias

PIT (Post Induction Therapy by Pia Mellody)

  • PIT Training Series with Callie for Fellows :
  • December 2021 Tuesday Topics – Erica, Emily, Callie, & Gregg discuss how they integrate the PIT Model into their work.  
  • PIT Training 1 with Callie – June 2022
  • Attaining Balance – audio by Pia Mellody – Pia discusses how to find balance in your life.  
  • Boundaries – audio by Pia Mellody – The original talk on the nature of boundaries including their purpose, composition and how they function.  
  • Boundaries as Spiritual Practice – Pia Mellody Audio – Pia explores the concept of boundaries in daily spiritual life in this audio. Functional internal and external boundaries are the basis for spiritual life and essential parts of recovery.
  • Co-Addicted Relationships – audio by Pia Mellody – The Journey from Addiction to Recovery in Relationships. Pia describes the internal dynamics in addictive relationships, how codependence sets up these dynamics and how to have healthy relationships.
  • Codependence Recovery Spirituality and Self-Care – audio by Pia Mellody – Spirituality – What is it? Pia discusses child abuse and its relationship to spiritual growth and development.
  • Codependency and Parenting – audio by Pia Mellody – This audio explores the issue of parenting. Pia discusses healthy vs. unhealthy parenting. She also discusses how to heal and re-parent the inner wounded child and how to effectively parent our own children no matter what their ages.
  • Introduction to PIT – July 20, 2021 – David introduces the PIT model and how to use it in couples therapy. Audio Only Version
  • Love Addiction and Love Avoidance – Pia Mellody Audio – Pia outlines the debilitating toxic patterns played out by love addicts and the unresponsive love avoidants to whom they are painfully and repeatedly drawn. She presents a realistic positive process for recovery.
  • Mapping Your Recovery – Pia Mellody Audio – Pia addresses recovery in a way that makes it possible to see where you are in this process. Covers the stages of recovery as well as recovery from the standpoint of five concurrent processes.
  • Nature of the Inner Child – Audio by Pia Mellody – Pia’s concept of the Inner Child is that it is the part of the self that got injured by relational wounding and now needs healing through the re-parenting process. On this audio she discusses the wounded child, the adapted adult child and the functional adult.
  • Permission to Be Precious – audio by Pia Mellody – The Permission To Be Precious audio facilitates the beginning of the recovery process. Pia builds her therapy model from this base of knowledge that has successfully launched thousands on the road to recovery. This series is the cornerstone and is appropriate for both clients and therapists needing to embrace this dynamic recovery model. Pia describes in detail the nature of codependence, how it manifests in our adult lives and how to recover. Permission To Be Precious is designed for Therapists and recovering Adult Children of alcoholic and/or dysfunctional family systems. 
  • Power and Intimacy in Relationships – Pia Mellody audio discusses healthy and unhealthy relationships and provides an example of how boundaries are used to create true intimacy and power sharing.
  • Relationships and Recovery – provides information explaining how important relationships are affected by recovery and how to negotiate problem areas that are provoked by the recovery process.
  • Roots of Codependence – Pia Mellody Audio – Pia takes a look at how codependence develops and why. This is an excellent lecture to give a clearer understanding of this disease. Recommended for all.
  • Shame – Pia Mellody audio discusses the emotion Shame and its relationship to the disease of codependence and recovery.
  • Spirituality and Sexuality – Pia Mellody Audio discusses spirituality as well as sexuality are both relationship issues. Spirituality is about experiencing moments in a relationship with a power greater than self that imbues an individual with a sense of self love. Sexuality is about experiencing one’s sexual/sensual self and can, of course, be done in conjunction with another person. 
  • Value Power and Abundance – audio by Pia Mellody – In this audio Pia discusses: How relational trauma in childhood creates the core issues, how the core issues are related to our internal experiences of value, power, and abundance, and how core recovery establishes a sense of balance and makes it possible for us to be relational.  

Psychotherapy – General (Won’t Fit Under Anything Else)

PTSD (Post Traumatic Disorders)

Polyvagal Theory

  • The Emergence of a Polyvagal-Informed Therapy: How Vocal Music and Voice Contribute to Healing following Trauma – Stephen Porges – Evolution of Psychotherapy – This presentation will focus on how Polyvagal Theory provides a plausible model to explain how and why intonation of voice and vocal music can support mental and physical health and enhance function during compromised states associated with illness, chronic stress, and trauma. The workshop will elaborate on the principles incorporated in the Safe and Sound Protocol™ and the lessons learned through preliminary clinical trials, current research, and feedback from clinicians applying the protocol to various clinical disorders including individuals with severe trauma histories. The Safe and Sound Protocol™ is a listening intervention, based on the Polyvagal Theory, designed to promote social engagement behaviors in individuals with problems in state regulation, social interaction, and communication. The Safe and Sound Protocol™ is targeted at improving auditory processing and reducing hypersensitivity to sounds by “exercising” the neural regulation of the middle ear muscles and improving the regulation of autonomic state via the Social Engagement System.
  • Tuesday Topics Polyvagal Introduction by Camrie & Bre

Positive Psychology 

  • Agency and Positive Psychology – Martin Seligman – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Join the father of Positive Psychology in this session as we explore the world history of Agency and its relation to the past, present, and future of Positive Psychology, Positive Education, and Positive Psychotherapy. Highlighted concepts will include PERMA, Causal Intervention, Well-being, Future Mindedness, Learned Optimism, and Learned Helplessness, among others. How are the Age of Progress and Positive Psychology related? What possibilities could arise from effectively using Positive Psychology in overcoming personal and global challenges? Attendees will be able to define, understand, and potentially implement Positive Psychology in their professional setting.
  • The Past, Present, and Future of Positive Psychology – Martin Seligman – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020

Race, Racism & Relationships

 

Relationships (General)

Resilience 

  • The Neurobiological and Psycho-Social Sequelae of Trauma & Resilience – Donald Meichenbaum – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – In the aftermath of experiencing traumatic and victimizing experiences, most individuals are impacted, but some 75% go onto evidence resilience, and in some instances Post Traumatic Growth. If the “body keeps score”, then what distinguishes the 75% resilient group from the 25% who develop PTSD and related disorders? This debate will address this question and the treatment implications for psychotherapeutic interventions.

Resistance

  • Working with Resistance as “Generative Complementarities – Robert Dilts – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – A core premise of Generative Change work is that “everything contains the potential of its opposite/complement.” The more we increase one side of a complement the more we increase the potential of its opposite/complement. When we seek to bring more of something into the world (light), we simultaneously invite its opposite (shadow). In fact, we often want to bring more of something (light) because we know its opposite (darkness). Having only one side of a complement creates imbalance.

Resources

Risk

Self Esteem

Sex Therapy

Sex Addiction/Compulsive Sexuality/Compulsive Sexual Behavior

  • Impulsive/Compulsive Sexual Behavior – A Sex Positive and Integrated Model of Treatment – Eli Coleman – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Clinicians will oftentimes encounter individuals with impulsive and/or compulsive sexual behavior. This workshop will describe the complexity of understanding this behavior, taxonomic and clinical considerations. This presentation will also review the current controversies regarding this phenomenon as a clinical entity. The presenter will provide an overview of his own assessment and treatment model utilizing a sex positive and integrated approach with case illustrations and discussion.

Sexual Pain

Shame

  • Five Strategies for Managing Guilt and Shame – Christine Padesky – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Guilt and shame can be challenging emotions to address in therapy. More than half of all clients report keeping secrets from their therapists, often linked to shameful emotions (Bauman & Hill, 2016). Padesky demonstrates in detail how to use five strategies from Mind Over Mood (Greenberger & Padesky, 2016) that help clients disclose, understand, and manage guilt and shame: rating of the seriousness of actions, use of a responsibility pie, devising reparations for hurting someone, breaking the silence surrounding shame, and use of a self-forgiveness worksheet. Structured exercises offer opportunities to practice several of these methods. This workshop allows time for questions and answers as well as discussion of how to handle clients who blame others rather than accepting their own role in interpersonal difficulties, why reparations are not indicated in survivor’s guilt, and other related topics.
  • The Secret Life of Shame – Transforming Buried Pain into Clinical Treasure – Harriet Lerner – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – This speech will identify hidden sources of shame, with clinical and theoretical implications for helping our clients find self-regard, voice, and relational courage in the face of shame.

Social Anxiety

Social Issues

Solution Focused, Brief Psychotherapy, & Symptom Based

  • The Solution-Oriented Approach to Change: Brief Therapy Method to Finding Answers within Clients – Bill O’Hanlon – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – The Solution-Oriented Approach is a new approach to change that involves evoking solutions, resources and strengths from people rather than providing diagnoses, expert opinions and analysis. This not only makes the change process more rapid, but bypasses much resistance and cross-cultural intrusions and misunderstandings.
  • Symptoms as Solutions: Welcoming and Integrating Disturbing Patterns as Integral to Sustainable Change – Stephen Gilligan – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – A central currency in the therapeutic exchange is negative experiences—depression, anxiety, trauma, addiction, etc. This practical and positive approach assumes that each core human experience has equivalent potential to be positive or negative, depending on the human relationship to it; and thus focuses on how problems may be transformed to resources by skillful human connection. This process operates at two levels: (1) Developing a generative state (in the therapist, client, and relationship field) and then (2) Using specific methods of transforming negative experiences and behaviors. Multiple techniques and examples for will be given, along with an exercise and demonstration.
  • Transforming Symptoms into Resources – Robert Dilts – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Our relationship with our symptoms has a major influence on the way in which they become expressed. Helping clients to develop the capacity to mindfully reflect on symptoms and explore their potential positive functions or secondary gains can bring about both insight and transformation. This demonstration will present a method show the ability to “hold” symptoms from a state of curiosity and explore their “positive intention” using the generative change approach of engaging multiple intelligences.
  • Integrating the Yale Brief Intervention into Your Clinical Practice – Michael Pantalon – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – See Yale Brief Intervention for full description of this talk

Somatic Experiencing/Peter Levine

  • It Won’t Hurt Forever – The Ordinary Miracle of Healing – Peter Levine – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – While trauma is a fact of life, it does not have to be a life sentence. Somatic Experiencing® (SE™) is a body-oriented approach to the healing of trauma and other stress related disorders. SE offers a framework to assess where a person is “stuck” in the fight, flight or freeze responses and provides clinical tools to resolve these fixated physiological states.  In this experiential and didactic workshop, Dr Peter A Levine, a pioneer in stress and trauma for over 50 years and author of the best-selling book Waking the Tiger, Healing Trauma: the Innate Capacity to Heal from Overwhelming Experiences, will work with students in a supportive group setting. Participants in this short-program will learn SE theory and practices to facilitate nervous system regulation and awareness of bodily sensations that bring clients out of a trauma state and into a more embodied and regulated sense of self.  This workshop is open both to professionals and non-professionals. Please bring a note pad and pen with you. The Ordinary Miracle of Healing is a short-program and not to be a substitute for the 8 module professional SE training.
  • Somatic Experiencing Demonstration with Discussant Evoking the Wisdom of the Living Sensing Body in an Unspoken Voice – Peter Levine & Stephen Porges – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – The trauma responses of fight, flight, freeze, and collapse are a set of defensive bodily reactions that we initially mobilize in order to protect ourselves from threat, and then later, against feelings of helplessness, pain, and other troubling emotions. If this trapped energy is not released these responses can become frozen, leaving us acting out and/or depressed and unable to be fully present in the here and now, often feeling unsure of why we feel this way. Fixed in the defensive trauma response, the shame, defeat, and humiliation associated with the original event replays itself over and over again in the body; detached from history but intruding into the present.  Together, Dr Levine and Dr Porges will explore the application and implications of body-oriented psychotherapy and recent findings in the neurosciences, on how the brain and body deals with emotional information, while also providing an understanding of effective therapeutic action.  This workshop is geared for psychotherapists of all types, as well as for physicians, nurses, physiotherapists, bodyworkers, educators, and those wishing to learn more about their own trauma responses and healing.

Stan Tatkin

Strategic 

  • Strategic Methods – Jeff Zeig – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – The strategic presentation of a therapeutic concept enhances the effect. This is true no matter what school of therapy is being practiced. Consists of lecture, demonstration, and small group practice.

Suicide and Suicidal Behavior

  • The Treatment of Depressed-Suicidal Patients and Those Experiencing Prolonged & Complicated Grief Disorders -Donald Meichenbaum – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Given the high incidence of deaths resulting from the pandemic, the workshop will consider both the assessment and treatment of individuals who experience Prolong and Complicated Grief and accompanying depression and possible suicidal behavior. Specific coping strategies and therapeutic interventions that employ a strengths-based Constructive Narrative approach will be presented.

Therapeutic Relationship

  • Enchantment The Secret Ally of Psychotherapy – Erving Polster & David Burns – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Dr. Polster will address the inherent enchantment of therapeutic connectedness and its accompanying openness to enabling personal experiences.

Training Psychotherapists

  • A Bolder Model: How Should We Be Training the Next Generation of Psychotherapists – Bill Miller & Scott Miller – There seems to be something wrong with our clinical training approach. One of the most replicated findings in psychotherapy research is that therapists, unlike surgeons, usually don’t improve with practice: their treatment outcomes after 30 years are about the same on average as when they started. This Great Conversation will focus on how we might use a science-based approach to train the next generation of psychotherapists so that they do get better with practice.
  • Training Psychotherapists Topical Panel – Scott Miller, Stephen Gilligan, & Cloe Madanes – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020

Trans/Gender Identity

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Transference & Countertransference

Trauma (Couples)

Trauma (Individual)

  • The Neurobiological and Psycho-Social Sequelae of Trauma & Resilience – Donald Meichenbaum – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – In the aftermath of experiencing traumatic and victimizing experiences, most individuals are impacted, but some 75% go onto evidence resilience, and in some instances Post Traumatic Growth. If the “body keeps score”, then what distinguishes the 75% resilient group from the 25% who develop PTSD and related disorders? This debate will address this question and the treatment implications for psychotherapeutic interventions.

Weight Loss

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Work & Couples

  • Couples and Work – Ellyn Bader – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Increasingly more and more couples are working together or working virtually in the same space. It is estimated that in the United States 43% of small businesses are family-run and 53% of managers share day-to-day management with a spouse. Working together tends to kill romance and take over a couples life.

Worksheets & Homework

Yale Brief Intervention

  • Integrating the Yale Brief Intervention into Your Clinical Practice – Michael Pantalon – Evolution of Psychotherapy 2020 – Ultra-brief interventions have in the past been criticized, devalued and misunderstood. Yet, they are an evidence-based approach to addressing a range of substance use issues – from high-risk use to severe substance use disorders. Moreover, they are quite efficient and can be used by non-specialists. Brief interventions use a variety of unexpected and off-the-beaten path strategies, as well as adaptations of more standard therapies, such as motivational interviewing. However, they mainly leverage the power of the moment by encouraging individuals to think radically differently about the next steps of change. Fortunately, our field has come around to appreciate the impact brief intervention can have when there is a time-limited opportunity to help an individual with their substance use, or when “traditional” solutions have failed. In this highly interactive session, Dr. Pantalon will demonstrate and model the Brief Negotiation Interview (BNI), aka the Yale Brief Intervention, a robustly evidence-based brief intervention, as well as promote an easy and gradual approach to integrating it into your practice, whether you are an addiction expert or a non-addiction specialist who has discovered a substance use issue in one of your therapy clients.

Yalom (Irv)

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