CBT Training Program - Workshop Map

Maps for Therapist Growth: Gearing Ourselves - and our Supervisees – Up to the Next Level

This workshop is for intermediate to advanced therapists. Says James Bennett-Levy: ‘Over the last few years, I have developed a series of ‘maps’ to help therapists and supervisors understand how therapists develop CBT skills, and to identify more accurately what’s going wrong when difficulties arise in therapy. I realised that although CBT has always acknowledged the importance of the therapeutic relationship, it has had few tools for analysing it. Similarly, supervisors sometimes talk about ‘reflective practice’ but there is almost no writing on the subject in CBT. So I started developing maps to fill the gap”.

The value of this workshop lies in absorbing these maps. They provide new perspectives from which to reflect on one’s own practice and that of supervisees. In particular, they focus on areas of CBT which have been relatively undeveloped in the literature: therapist interpersonal skills and reflective practice; and point the way to address problems in clinical practice.

The maps will be introduced in the pre-workshop readings and exercises. The workshop itself will serve to embed the maps through self-experiential exercises so that participants can start to analyse where things may be going wrong. Post-workshop experience will see the maps put into action in real life therapeutic contexts, and integrated into clinical practice.

By the end of the workshop and post-workshop activities, participants can expect to be able to:

1. Identify differences between different elements of therapist interpersonal skill
2. Apply a new framework for analysing therapeutic relationship difficulties of supervisees or of your own
3. Apply a supervision model for analysing and changing therapist behaviours when relationship difficulties arise
4. Understand the components of reflective practice
5. Have increased motivation to engage in reflection, and a richer reflective practice

References

Bennett-Levy, J., Thwaites, R., Chaddock, A. & Davis, M. (2009) Reflective practice in cognitive behavioural therapy: The engine of lifelong learning. In Dallos, R., & Stedmon, J. (Eds): Reflection in Counselling and Psychotherapy (pp.115-135). Open University Press, Maidenhead.

Bennett-Levy, J. & Thwaites, R. (2007) Self and self-reflection in the therapeutic relationship: A conceptual map and practical strategies for the training, supervision and self-supervision of interpersonal skills. In Gilbert, P., Leahy, R. (Eds) The therapeutic relationship in the cognitive behavioural therapies (p. 255-281). Routledge, London, UK.

Thwaites, R., & Bennett-Levy, J. (2007) Conceptualizing empathy in cognitive therapy: Making the implicit explicit. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy 35: 591-612.

Bennett-Levy, J. (2006) Therapist skills: A cognitive model of their acquisition and refinement. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy 34: 57-78.

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