All Webinars

“Excellent presentation. Presenter was very knowledgeable and thorough. No improvements needed.”-Bruce G., Counselor, Illinois

The biology of reward has been well-studied and is linked to numerous mental health diagnoses. Researchers identified an anomaly in this reward cascade called Reward Deficiency Syndrome or RDS. This anomaly and its impact on psychotherapy are less evident in psychological literature, yet it provides useful knowledge in one of the most prevalent and challenging of all mental health disorders…addiction. This seminar will help you understand the cascade theory of reward and provide you with working knowledge of RDS. You will be able to talk about how RDS affects the brain, what research has found regarding the impact of RDS, as well as discuss a model of therapy that considers highly this biological aspect of mental illness. The focus of this seminar is biopsychological and psychopharmaocological in nature.

According to the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, approxi­mately 10% of US adults fill one or more antidepressant prescriptions each year, with many of these prescriptions coming from non-psychiatrists. They are some of the most widely prescribed medications of our generation. As more and more patients are prescribed antidepressants and other psychotropic medications, an increased need and responsibility is raised for non-prescribing therapists to be knowledgeable enough to work more effectively with patients and their prescribers in this arena. The follow­ing webinar is intended to be an introductory course that offers general, yet comprehensive information about psy­chopharmacology, including understanding neurobiological underpinnings of how medications work, commonly pre­scribed drug categories, how to work more effectively with patients, and how to work more effectively with prescrib­ers. Unique to this webinar will be the inclusion of how to maximize treatment outcomes and effectively use collab­orative care strategies.

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.

The treatment of individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is comprised of a range of therapies. In a sense, it takes a spectrum of treatments to treat a spectrum disorder. Anyone working with individuals on the autism spectrum benefits from understanding the standard range of treatments as well as the diagnostic issues involved. In addition, the individual on the autism spectrum exists within the context of their family, and it is useful to understand the common experiences of these families that are themselves, living on the spectrum. In other words, to be in family in which autism is present creates their own culture.

Many clients who enter individual or couple therapy have difficulty managing emotions. This workshop will focus on the processes involved in emotional dysregulation, drawing on current findings in the fields of neurobiology and emotional memory research. Students will learn about universal triggers as well as ways to explore personal triggers that lead to poorly managed emotional reactions.
 

These findings will be translated to clinical interventions through the theoretical lenses of mindfulness, object relations and narrative therapies. Case presentations will demonstrate ways to apply these insights in individuals and couple therapy to demonstrate how clients can be guided to subdue strong emotions and generate more thoughtful and appropriate responses.

The Psychodynamic webinar to be presented on November 1, 2025 will describe foundational skills that address three general processes: (1) Exploration and functional analysis of defenses including a cost-benefit analysis; (2) Guided discovery to uncover more adaptive ways to respond to anxiety-provoking situations that have triggered defenses in the past; and (3) Enacting adaptation by maintaining awareness of previously-used defensive strategies and incorporating more adaptive responses in real-life situations. The discussion groups offered on December 3 and 6 will give participants an opportunity to engage in deliberative practice using new skills and receiving feedback. This type of practice is designed to help psychotherapists increase their ability to explore and modify defenses with their own clients. Deliberative practice will provide an opportunity for practitioners to receive encouragement and guidance from peers and from webinar presenters.

The Psychodynamic webinar to be presented on November 1, 2025 will describe foundational skills that address three general processes: (1) Exploration and functional analysis of defenses including a cost-benefit analysis; (2) Guided discovery to uncover more adaptive ways to respond to anxiety-provoking situations that have triggered defenses in the past; and (3) Enacting adaptation by maintaining awareness of previously-used defensive strategies and incorporating more adaptive responses in real-life situations. The discussion groups offered on December 3 and 6 will give participants an opportunity to engage in deliberative practice using new skills and receiving feedback. This type of practice is designed to help psychotherapists increase their ability to explore and modify defenses with their own clients. Deliberative practice will provide an opportunity for practitioners to receive encouragement and guidance from peers and from webinar presenters.

Finding Your Why & Finding Your Way uses a simple, user-friendly approach to applying Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). In this webinar, Dr. DJ Moran will demonstrate how this new approach formulates the ACT model into the Mindful Action Plan (MAP), and how you can use the MAP to guide yourself  and your clients towards a meaningful lifestyle with values-based behavior change. If your clients feel stuck, directionless, or unmotivated, or may be seeking a new path in life—one that feels rewarding, inspiring, and purposeful. The question is, where do they begin? As a clinician, you’ve likely heard all about mindfulness—a powerfully effective tool for helping people find focus, balance, and a greater sense of purpose. But how does the client actually apply mindfulness to their life?
 

Finding Your Why & Finding Your Way is a step-by-step webinar that can help clinicians learn to help clients put mindfulness into action—every day. Using the Mindful Action Plan (MAP) approach—a fully customizable set of skills grounded in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)—you’ll work with the client to identify what they deeply care about, increase motivation, and start moving forward toward meaningful goals. Most importantly, clients can learn to make a commitment to create the positive change they desire. And you can learn this so well, you can apply it to yourself, as well.
 

Incorporating Acceptance and Commitment Therapy into your treatment approach will have a significant impact on your clinical effectiveness and the well-being of your clients. ACT is a  rich, integrative approach, and has been shown to be effective for many clinically-relevant concerns. Because ACT takes a different perspective on psychotherapy, some clinicians wonder how to blend the applications into their own therapy approach. Other clinicians who have embraced the ACT concepts still have questions about certain aspects of the therapy.
 

This webinar will explain ACT in a very clear, concise, user-friendly manner.

Premature termination is a significant problem in psychotherapy, with deleterious impacts on both clients and therapists. For example, research shows that clients who prematurely terminate show poorer treatment outcomes, are less likely to make lasting changes in their symptoms, and are more likely to over-utilize the health care system. Research also shows that when clients end treatment prematurely, their therapists often experience a sense of failure with the loss. Additionally, repeated dropout by clients can lead to experiences of demoralization and burnout in their providers. Current estimates indicate that approximately 1 in 5 clients will drop out of psychotherapy and/or counseling prematurely. Although these numbers may differ depending on the setting and client type, almost all therapists will experience premature termination at some point in their practice. 

The purpose of this workshop is provide strategies and approaches that therapists can use to reduce premature termination in their practice. This workshop will begin with a discussion of what premature termination is and why some clients choose to end treatment prematurely. It will then cover the latest research on the frequency of premature termination and client, therapist, treatment, and setting risk factors associated with its occurrence. In the second half of this workshop, eight evidence-based strategies for reducing premature termination will be presented. These strategies include: providing role induction, incorporating preferences into the treatment decision-making process, planning for appropriate termination, providing education about patterns of change in psychotherapy, strengthening hope, enhancing motivation for treatment, fostering the therapeutic alliance, and assessing and discussing treatment progress.

The Psychodynamic webinar to be presented on November 1, 2025 will describe three clinical hypotheses used in psychodynamic case conceptualization. First, the integrity of the intrapsychic system involves the way ego strength and ego functions support optimal psychological adaptation. Second, some clients are using defense mechanisms that were once adaptive but, as development has progressed, these defenses have lost their adaptive advantage. Third, some clients are experiencing intrapsychic conflicts between internal parts that need to be explored in order to resolve contradictory functions.

The discussion groups offered on November 12 and 15 will give participants an opportunity to talk about current clients using these concepts to understand psychodynamic processes better and to plan for treatment. Discussion groups will provide an opportunity for practitioners to receive feedback from peers and from webinar presenters.