All Webinars

Individuals experiencing psychosis can present with debilitating symptoms that negatively impact their quality of life and daily functioning. Despite the mounting evidence for the effectiveness of non-pharmacological treatments for psychosis, many clinicians report feeling ill-equipped to provide such treatment. This webinar will provide you with a foundational understanding of psychological treatments for psychosis, with an emphasis on cognitive-behavioral approaches. You will be introduced to the most cutting-edge treatments for thispopulation and the key mechanisms that make these treatments effective. Finally, strategies for addressing common challenges in treating psychosis will also be discussed. Attendees should leave the webinar with an understanding of the current evidence base for the treatment of psychosis and best outlets for further study.

The mere thoughts of sleep can cause many individuals to dread the idea of going to bed due to the fear of experiencing nightmares. Millions of Americans yearn for a good night’s sleep, but feel they have limited options to relieve the stress of nightmares, doom, gloom, and rumination. Distressed sleep is often seen across a variety of age groups, cultures, and demographic populations. The good thing is that there is hope for restful sleep.
 

Despite what many may think resolutions to insomnia and nightmare challenges are not found within the purchase of a new mattress, the sounds of waterfalls in the background, or aromatherapy. Imagery Rehearsal Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy have proven to be useful in helping individuals improve poor quality sleep…even in the absence of over-the-counter medications and/or prescribed medications.
 

Webinar participants will learn how to keenly listen to their clients’ sleep struggles related to PTSD symptomology to in-turn help them effectively modify their daily habits and develop more positive sleep experiences. Important topics such as trauma re-experiencing, imagery, re-scripting, biological factors, stimulus control and sleep restriction will be discussed in great detail to help clinicians develop treatment interventions that reduce the intensity and frequency of trauma-based nightmares.
 

The current webinar led by Dr. Lillian Gibson will provide mental health professionals best practices to assess and treat trauma-based nightmares. Participants will learn how to apply treatment specific takes that can be made when effective approaches to improve sleep are not utilized.

In the field of counseling/psychotherapy, there are few topics that are more pervasively misunderstood than the nature of emotions and their significance to human health. Even the founders of many influential approaches (i.e., Aaron Beck, Albert Ellis) believed that emotions are best controlled - rather than deeply experienced, reflected upon (processed), and communicated; fields such as affective neuroscience have demonstrated that this is simply false. Just as thoughts can be accurate/adaptive or inaccurate/maladaptive, emotions can be “on target” or “off-base”; they can also be primary or secondary (the latter is often an emotional defense of the primary emotion). Moreover, all human beings—and especially therapy clients—use defenses to avoid experiencing and dealing with their emotions. Most therapists are not taught basic knowledge of emotions and defenses. Rather, they are often taught to simply “follow the client’s feelings.” However, many feelings are actually defenses against the underlying (primary, true) feeling (i.e., sadness covering anger). If a therapist does not recognize which emotions are primary and which are defensive/secondary emotions, then one may be encouraging a client to heighten their defenses, which is almost always anti-therapeutic. Clients who defend against their emotions lose the important information that emotions can provide. This webinar will teach you how to bypass your clients’ defenses and to work directly with their emotions, because emotions are fundamental sources of information and knowledge about one’s self and the world around them.