Overview
Working with emotion is essential to psychotherapy, and therapists commonly encounter challenging emotional processes in session. For example, many clients present with reactive symptoms that are often mistaken for the main problem: anxiety, depression, hopelessness, addiction, rage, distress, feeling overwhelmed, avoidance, or withdrawal.
These reactive symptoms often mask deeper emotional issues at the core of a client’s distress. To help clients move forward, therapists need skills to recognize, access, and work with the underlying emotional processes that drive those symptoms. Without these skills, even experienced therapists may feel stuck or unsure how to help.
This workshop offers 20 practical, evidence-based skills to address these and other common emotional issues. Drawing on evidence from neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and psychotherapy process research, these skills are designed to help you assess what is happening emotionally in session and intervene in ways that support movement and change. The approach is integrative and can be applied across modalities and client populations.
Video recordings of real therapy sessions will illustrate how emotional processes unfold in session and how specific interventions can help shift them. 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.Â
Objectives
In this workshop, you will learn how to:
- Recognize and assess productive and unproductive emotion states and different emotion types (adaptive/maladaptive, secondary/protective, instrumental) and learn how to work with them differentially
- Apply techniques to track and explore emotional processes in session
- Use collaborative case formulation to identify clients’ core emotional issues
- Work with clients who are overwhelmed by their emotions by using deliberate and automatic emotion regulation techniques
- Access, activate, and deepen emotions with clients who have trouble accessing and expressing their feelings
- Process emotions productively
- Change maladaptive emotions with adaptive emotions
CE Credits
Ontario Association of Mental Health Professionals (OAMP)
- Approved for 7 CEC
**Participation in this workshop allows OAMHP members to apply 7 CECs towards their required continuing education hours. OAMHP’s review of the general content of this workshop recognizes the learning objectives meet and support the criteria (1) for best known practice in continuing education and (2) for educational requirements for mental health professionals
Canadian Psychological Association (CPA)
- Approved for 7 CEC
**This workshop has been approved by the Canadian Psychological Association for continuing education
***The Centre for Psychology and Emotional Health is approved by the Canadian Psychological Association to offer continuing education for psychologists. The Centre for Psychology and Emotional Health maintains responsibility for the program.
Please note that live attendance is required in order to receive CE credits
Approval relates only to the ability to sponsor continuing education activities. It is not accreditation of the sponsor organization. Accreditation is reserved for formal educational training (graduate and internship) programmes and is administered through the Registrar for the Office of Accreditation. CPA has no legal or financial obligations to either approved sponsors or to those individuals registered for sponsors’ continuing education activities.
