Training In CBT & Other Evidence-Based Psychological Therapies
Introduction
Over the past three decades, self-criticism has received increasing theoretical and empirical attention as a transdiagnostic cognitive-personality vulnerability factor that plays an important role in the etiology, course, and treatment of numerous psychological problems, including depression and anxiety. To improve evidence-based practice, it is critical to address person-centered explanatory questions (e.g., “Why do self-critical individuals keep having difficulties?”) that are essential to help achieve the two overarching therapy goals of reducing clients’ distress and bolstering their resilience. In cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT), therapists emphasize the present in gathering records summarizing patients’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors for many situations of daily life. Therapists then develop explanatory conceptualizations that synthesize theory and research with individual experience to understand: (a) the triggers that are in play when an individual's mood worsens, (b) the maintaining mechanisms that perpetuate their mood problems, and (c) the triggering and maintaining mechanisms that bolster positive mood.
The event will be equivalent to 2 hrs of CPD.
Content
This workshop will explicate integrative explanatory models that can help therapists and their clients make more sense of what commonly triggers and maintains negative affect and (lower) positive affect for self-critical individuals in their daily lives. First, I will present our coping processes model and findings that shed light on how stress appraisal (e.g., stressfulness, perceived control, perceived criticism, perceived social support) and coping processes (e.g., avoidant coping, self-blame, problem-focused coping) trigger daily increases in negative affect and decreases in positive affect for self-critics. I will also examine how maladaptive stress and coping tendencies maintain negative and lower positive mood for self-critical individuals. Second, I will present our emotion regulation processes model and findings that show how mindfulness, self-compassion, experiential avoidance, and rumination trigger and maintain daily negative affect and (lower) positive affect. Finally, I will describe two single-session explanatory feedback interventions (EFIs) that use individualized analyses of each individual’s daily coping and emotion regulation data to identify daily trigger patterns, maintenance tendencies, strengths, common triggers, and best targets for reducing negative mood and increasing positive mood across several stressors for each participant. Findings providing support for both coping and emotion regulation EFIs will be presented. This workshop will advance a richer and more detailed understanding of specific stress, coping, and emotion regulation processes to target in order to more effectively accomplish the two predominant therapy goals of decreasing self-critics’ distress and strengthening resilience.
Learning Objectives
You will learn:
• How coping processes trigger and maintain daily negative and positive mood for self-critics
• How emotion regulation processes trigger and maintain daily negative and positive mood
• How explanatory feedback interventions can be used in case conceptualization of self-criticism
Training Modalities
Didactic content, experiential components, polls, Q&A.
Key References
Dunkley, D. M. (2017). Perfectionism and daily stress, coping, and affect: Advancing multilevel explanatory conceptualizations. In J. Stoeber (Ed.), The Psychology of Perfectionism: Theory, Research, Applications (pp. 222-242). London: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315536255
Dunkley, D. M., Richard, A., Tobin, R., Saucier, A., Gossack, A., Zuroff, D. C., Moskowitz, D. S., Foley, J. E., & Russell, J. J. (2023). Empowering self-critical perfectionistic students: A waitlist controlled feasibility trial of an explanatory feedback intervention on daily coping processes. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 70, 584-594. doi:10.1037/cou0000691
Dunkley, D. M., Zuroff, D. C., & Blankstein, K. R. (2003). Self-critical perfectionism and daily affect: Dispositional and situational influences on stress and coping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 234-252. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.84.1.234
Kuyken, W., Padesky, C. A., & Dudley, R. (2009). Collaborative case conceptualization: Working effectively with clients in cognitive-behavioral therapy. New York: Guilford.
Richard, A., & Dunkley, D. M. (2024). Self-critical perfectionism and anxious and depressive symptoms over two years: Moderated mediation models of anxiety sensitivity and experiential avoidance. Behavior Therapy, 55, 974-989. doi:10.1016/j.beth.2024.02.001
Tobin, R., & Dunkley, D. M. (2021). Self-critical perfectionism and lower mindfulness and self-compassion predict anxious and depressive symptoms over two years. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 136, 1-12. doi:10.1016/j.brat.2020.103780
About the presenter
David Dunkley is a Senior Researcher with the Lady Davis Institute - Jewish General Hospital, and an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Associate Member of Psychology at McGill University. The primary goal of his research has been to examine the mechanisms through which perfectionism is a cognitive-personality vulnerability factor to depression and anxiety. His research examines stress, coping, and emotion regulation processes that might explain why personal standards (PS) and self-criticism (SC) dimensions of perfectionism are instigating and/or maintaining factors of depressive and anxious symptoms in nonclinical community adults and depressed patients. His recent research has tested a single-session explanatory feedback intervention, derived from the Perfectionism Coping Processes Model. The findings of his research have highlighted influential instigating and maintaining processes and contribute to identifying specific targets for prevention efforts and improvement of existing clinical interventions for SC perfectionistic individuals.
Who should attend
This webinar is most suitable for primary care practitioners, psychologists, nurse therapists, counsellors, psychiatrists, occupational therapists, and social workers delivering interventions for self-critical individuals presenting with depression and anxiety.