Presented by: Nick Grey (SLaM/KCL), Debbie Cullen & Victoria Bream Oldfield (SLaM)
Many people with chronic anxiety disorders may only make limited progress even when receiving evidence-based treatments. People typically will meet criteria for multiple disorders, have had many difficult previous life experiences, including in childhood, and have ongoing adverse life circumstances. In treatment there are often problems of emotional engagement, overcoming avoidance, and dealing with wider systemic and cultural issues. In these circumstances therapists need to be able to provide ‘flexibility within fidelity’ in provision of evidence-based treatments. This workshop will help guide you in providing such treatments. This will include enhances emotional engagement, working with families and systems, working with images, and the increased importance of trauma-informed therapy.
Learning Objectives
1. To be able to formulate complex anxiety disorders with people.
2. To know how to tackle comorbidity, including when to be disorder-specific and when to consider transdiagnostic approaches.
3. To be able to move from talking to doing in therapy, integrating behavioural experiments and exposure.
4. To be able to flex models and treatment while remaining faithful to the evidence base.
5. To be able to identify and work on therapist blocks to providing effective treatment.
Key references
Butler, G., Fennell, M. and Hackmann, A. (2008). Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Anxiety Disorders: Mastering Clinical Challenges. Guilford Press.
Whittington, A. & Grey, N. (2014). How to be a more effective CBT therapist: mastering metacompetence in clinical practice. Wiley.