Knowledge Project: CBT Skills for Distressing Physical Symptoms
Location
Virtual - Hybrid
Presenter(s)
Lara Desrosiers OT Reg. (Ont.)
This 8 week virtual learning experience will focus on improving your ability to identify & work with pain related beliefs and distress in your rehabilitation practice. An individual’s beliefs, thoughts, and emotions will influence their physiology, their experience of their symptoms and how they engage in their unique rehabilitation process. Your effectiveness as a practitioner is determined largely by your capacity to intentionally identify and address these factors. However, these are skills that are not taught in most traditional physical rehabilitation programs. Throughout this course you will have the opportunity to learn and practice techniques from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy that will improve your therapeutic relationship with your clients, improve your capacity to help them navigate the distress related to their symptoms, and enhance your impact. This course is open to all healthcare and wellness professionals interested in enhancing their psychologically-informed practice.
Course Features: 10 hours of Self Paced Content to introduce you to theory, key concepts and skills rooted in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. 2 X 5 hour Integration Workshops focused on Clarifying/Refining Learning, Application, Practice, and Clinical Reasoning. 2 Optional 90 minute support calls. Students are encouraged to bring questions and case studies to the Integration Workshops and these optional support calls in order to unpack obstacles and gain clarity. No new material will be introduced in these Optional Support Calls. Morning coffee emails with prompts to explore, reflect, and focus on the strategies introduced. Discussion boards to consolidate new ideas, explore nuance and application, and learn from peers and facilitators. A wealth of reference materials to dive into and explore during and after the course.
After completing this course, participants will be able to: Appreciate the psychological processes influencing recovery in physical rehabilitation settings. Help patients to identify the various components of their experience with distressing symptoms (physical sensations, emotions, thoughts, and behaviours). Use motivational interviewing techniques to engage clients in pain self-management strategies. Integrate CBT skills into clinical practice in order to: Help clients build skills to calm their bodies & nervous systems. Identify unhelpful thinking patterns. Introduce countering strategies to evaluate and shift distressing thoughts. Develop behavioural experiments & exposure hierarchies to challenge avoidant behaviours rooted in anxiety and interfering with recovery. Obtain a foundational understanding of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy principles & integrate skills to support psychological flexibility into clinical practice. Obtain a framework for conceptualizing the private experiences (thoughts, emotions, physical sensations) and behaviours of patients in order to help guide the selection of CBT/ACT strategies. Pivot & partner with clients when things don’t go to plan!