Deliberate Practice For Psychotherapists

This text explores how psychotherapists can use deliberate practice to improve their clinical effectiveness. By sourcing through decades of research on how experts in diverse fields achieve skill mastery, the author proposes it is possible for any therapist to dramatically improve their effectiveness. However, achieving expertise isn’t easy. To improve, therapists must focus on clinical challenges and reconsider century-old methods of clinical training from the ground up. This volume presents a step-by-step program to engage readers in deliberate practice to improve clinical effectiveness across the therapists’ entire career span, from beginning training for graduate students to continuing education for licensed and advanced clinicians.

How do the good become great? Practice! From musicians and executives to physicians and drivers, aspiring professionals rely on deliberate practice to attain expertise. Recently, researchers have explored how psychotherapists can use the same processes to enhance the effectiveness of psychotherapy supervision for career-long professional development. Based on this empirical research, this edited volume brings together leading supervisors and researchers to explore a model for supervision based on behavioral rehearsal with continuous corrective feedback. Demonstrating how this model complements and enhances a traditional, theory-based approach, the authors explore practical methods that readers can use to improve the effectiveness of their own psychotherapy training and supervision. This book is the 2018 Winner of the American Psychological Association Supervision & Training Section's Outstanding Publication of the Year Award.

Do you ever find that you are less effective with clients who are provocative, angry, shut down, or emotionally labile? Would you like to be more effective helping clients with challenging problems, including trauma, addictions, and comorbid conditions? Clients can arouse strong emotional reactions in therapists, often termed experiential avoidance or countertransference. Therapists must build their psychological capacity to stay self-aware, attuned, and clinically flexible while having strong reactions. This manual provides clear and practical deliberate practice exercises to help you master these inner skills so you can be a more effective therapist and enjoy your work more. It features a training plan that ƒ‚‚[ƒ‚‚€ƒ‚‚[Is based on the principles of deliberate practice ƒ‚‚[ƒ‚‚€ƒ‚‚[Works with all major models of psychotherapy ƒ‚‚[ƒ‚‚€ƒ‚‚[Aids all levels of therapist development ƒ‚‚[ƒ‚‚€ƒ‚‚[Helps therapists be more effective with their most challenging clients ƒ‚‚[ƒ‚‚€ƒ‚‚[Protects the boundaries and privacy of trainees

Foreword / K. Anders Ericsson -- Preface: Better results are within reach -- What therapists will say, won't say, and can't say -- What do we really know about psychotherapy, after all? -- Learning from the experts on expertise -- What is (and is not) deliberate practice? -- Baseline matters -- How to find your baseline -- Making sense of your baseline -- Mining your data for better results -- How average leads to better results -- How being bad can make you better -- What matters most for better results -- A study in deliberate practice -- "Yeah, but what am I supposed to do?" -- Designing a system of deliberate practice.

What is it that makes some therapists so much more effective than others, even when they are delivering the same evidence-based treatment? This instructive book identifies specific interpersonal skills and attitudes--often overlooked in clinical training--that facilitate better client outcomes across a broad range of treatment methods and contexts. Reviewing 70 years of psychotherapy research, the preeminent authors show that empathy, acceptance, warmth, focus, and other characteristics of effective therapists are both measurable and teachable. Richly illustrated with annotated sample dialogues, the book gives practitioners and students a blueprint for learning, practicing, and self-monitoring these crucial clinical skills.

This book presents deliberate practice exercises in which students and trainees rehearse fundamental emotion-focused therapy skills until they become natural and automatic.

This book presents deliberate practice exercises in which students and trainees rehearse fundamental cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) skills until they become natural and automatic.

Introduction : Pressure in the therapeutic relationship -- The Science of performance under pressure -- The Science of the therapist under pressure -- From emotion to rupture -- From emotion to repair -- The Way to Therapist Training -- The Way to therapist Self-care -- Conclusion : In the pressure cooker.