CBT Training Program - Workshop Essential

Certificate in Essential Skills for CBT

The first two days will focus on assessment and formulation, the bedrock of effective CBT.  Without good formulation, CBT becomes just a bunch of techniques – often misapplied and lacking coherence.   A good formulation is about helping clients and therapist to really make sense of the presenting problems.  From good formulations flow effective interventions.  The first two days will systematically guide participants through the process of building a coherent formulation.

The next two days will focus on fundamental CBT intervention skills and processes once the formulation has been created.  We will practice CBT skills which are applied across a range of clients and settings – for instance, agenda setting, Socratic questioning, creating collaborative therapeutic relationships, identifying and testing negative automatic thoughts, creating behavioural experiments, setting homework.

The objectives for this workshop are that participants will:

1. Knowledge: Gain a good understanding of:
   1. basic CBT theory and principles,
   2. the purpose and process of formulation,
   3. the rationale for core CBT interventions and the knowledge to put these into practice
      
      
2. Skills: Gain a strong grounding in:
   1. CBT formulation skills (five-part model; maintenance cycles; developmental formulation)
   2. Basic intervention techniques in CBT (e.g. agenda setting, socialization, goal setting, identifying and testing negative automatic thoughts)
   3. Interpersonal skills for CBT (e.g. empathy, warmth, genuineness, collaborative relationship, curiosity, engendering hope)
      
      
3. Attitudes: Understand and have experimented with assuming key CBT attitudes. In particular attitudes of:
   1. Curiosity
   2. Collaboration
   3. Engaging willingness to experiment
   4. Warmth, empathy, and genuineness of interest and concern
   5. Acceptance and validation of feelings

Applicants will be encouraged to practice CBT skills on themselves post-workshop, as a means to further their confidence to try out their new skills and learned strategies in work contexts.

This workshop does not make you a ‘CBT Therapist’.  That requires a lot more training!  What it will do is enable you to ‘think in a CBT way’, use some of the skills in work contexts, lay the foundations if you want to become a CBT therapist later, and communicate more effectively with clients and CBT colleagues.

If you complete the Certificate in Evidence-Based CBT for Anxiety and Depression as well, get yourself some good supervision, find some relatively straightforward clients, you could be up and running as a novice therapist.

NB. As with other NRUDRH workshops, this workshop will be supported by pre-workshop reading and an exercise (2 hrs), and post-workshop reflective practice (1-2 hrs)

Acknowledgement

Part of this workshop is based on the successful Assessment and Formulation workshop developed by David Westbrook at Oxford Cognitive Therapy Centre.  We gratefully acknowledge David’s permission to use these materials.

Key references

Grant, A., Mills, J., Mulhern, R. & Short, N. (2004). Cognitive behavioural therapy in mental health care.  Sage, London.

Greenberger, D. & Padesky, C. (1995). Mind over mood.  Guilford, New York.

Sanders, D. and Wills, F. (2006): Cognitive therapy: An Introduction.  Sage, London.

Westbrook, D., Kennerley, H. & Kirk, J. (2007). An introduction to cognitive behaviour therapy: Skills and applications.  Sage, London.

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