20 Skills for Working with Emotions in Psychotherapy

Dates: November 5 & 6, 2026

Time: 11:00AM – 2:00PM (Eastern Standard Time) 

Format: Live Online Workshop

Do you ever wonder what to do when painful or distressing emotions show up in therapy? Do you sometimes feel unsure of how to help clients move beyond anxiety, sadness, anger, or feeling overwhelmed? 

Working with emotion competently has been shown to be one of the most important factors in providing effective therapy but it can be challenging to know how to help clients process difficult emotions. Many clients come to therapy struggling with anxiety, depression, hopelessness, emotional pain, relationship difficulties, or feeling stuck. While these issues are often what brings clients to therapy, they are frequently rooted in underlying painful emotions that need to be understood, expressed authentically, and worked through. 

This workshop will give you 20 practical, evidence-based skills to help you feel more confident working with emotion in session. You’ll learn how to recognize what’s happening emotionally moment-by-moment in-session, understand why clients get stuck, learn how to establish a collaborative focus on emotions, and use interventions that help clients process difficult emotions to create meaningful change. 

Drawing on research from psychotherapy, neuroscience, and emotion science, these skills can be integrated into a wide range of therapeutic approaches and applied to many different client concerns. 

Throughout the workshop, you’ll watch video recordings of real therapy sessions that demonstrate these skills in action, helping you translate theory into clinical practice. 

A recording of the workshop will be available to registrants for 60 days. 

Please note that it may take 15–20 business days for the recording to be sent.

Learning Objectives

In this workshop, participants will learn how to: 

• Recognize and assess productive and unproductive emotion states and different emotion types (adaptive/maladaptive, secondary/protective, instrumental), and learn ways to work with each one.
• Collaboratively identify clients’ core emotional issues.
• Use strategies to work with clients who are overwhelmed by their emotions: deliberate and automatic emotion regulation techniques
• Access, activate, and deepen emotions with clients who have trouble accessing and expressing their feelings.
• Apply Emotion Principles of Change (Utilize, Regulate, Transform) to help clients process their emotions productively.

CE Credits

Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association (CCPA)

• Pending Approval

Ontario Association of Mental Health Professionals (OAMHP)

• Pending Approval

Canadian Psychological Association (CPA)

• Pending Approval

Ontario Psychological Association (OPA)

• Pending Approval

Please note that live attendance is required in order to receive CE credits

 

Refund Policy

Cancelling 7 days or more prior to the start of a live one or two day workshop, or webinar series:

• Refund: Full refund will be processed, minus a $50 administrative fee

  or

• Transfer: Full payment can be transferred to another upcoming workshop or training that we provide. Please email our training and workshop team at training@cpeh.ca to request a transfer.

Cancelling after 7 days prior to the start of a live one or two day workshop, or webinar series:

• Refund: No refund
• Transfers: Full payment can be transferred to another upcoming workshop or training that we provide. Please email our training and workshop team at training@cpeh.ca to request a transfer.

Dr. Leslie Greenberg is the principal developer of Emotion Focused Therapy and is widely recognized for his distinguished professional contributions to applied research. He has devoted his career to research that specifies how working with emotion is at the heart of psychological change. Among his many accomplishments, Dr. Greenberg received the American Psychological Association (APA) Award for distinguished Research Career, the Carl Rogers Award of the APA Society for Humanistic psychology, the Canadian Council of Professional Psychology Program Award for Excellence in Professional Training, and the Canadian Psychological Association Professional Growth Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology as a Profession. He was also awarded the APA Award for Professional Contributions to Applied Research.