Certified APT™- Training Program

The Certified APT™-Training Program consists of the following components:

  • Certified APT™-Webinars
  • Certified APT™-Workshops
  • Certified APT™-Workshop Series
  • Certified APT™-Master Class
  • Certified APT™-Core Training
  • Certified APT™-Consultations

Certified APT™- Webinars

Webinars are offered on a monthly basis to give seasoned APT clinicians and those who are new to the model the opportunity to stay up-to-date with the fundamentals of Affect Phobia Therapy. They are free of charge and posted here.

List of Webinars (in chronological order)

  • Malan’s Two Triangles with Kristin Osborn 10/24/16
  • How to Formulate a Core Psychodynamic Conflict with Kristin Osborn 11/28/16
  • Live Demonstration on How to Formulate a Core Conflict with Kristin Osborn and Laura Wennekes 12/12/16
  • How to Compassionately Help Your Client Increase their Awareness of their Defenses 1/9/17
  • How to Compassionately Help Your Client Increase their Awareness of their Defenses and Let them Go 3/6/17
  • Interactive Demonstration on Defense Restructuring with Kristin Osborn and Maneet Bhatia 4/10/17

Certified APT™- Workshops

Beginner and advanced workshops, covering the fundamentals of the model or focusing on specific aspects of it. They are held all over the world and are one to five days long.

List of Workshops (in alphabetical order)

  • Advanced APT
  • APT & Psychodynamic Formulation Made Easy and Practical
  • APT & Self Compassion: Our Road to Healing
  • APT, Trauma & Cinema: Learn how cultivating a strong therapeutic alliance helps your client face uncomfortable and painful feelings related to their trauma through the use of cinema
  • A Road Map to Closeness: How to cultivate closeness within the therapeutic relationship
  • Beyond Anger Management: Engaging the Angry Client
  • Clinician Heal Thyself: How to become more aware of your emotions so you can take care of yourself and those you treat
  • Emotion in Psychotherapy: Learn the basics of APT
  • Facing Trauma: Finding competence and confidence when working with trauma and its defenses
  • Facing Your Fears: Maintaining therapeutic closeness when you’re feeling overwhelmed by the intensity of your client’s emotions
  • Introduction to APT
  • How to Work Compassionately with Emotions using APT
  • Life After Self Attack: Learn how to work with compassion, closeness and emotions to help your client get there
  • Listen with Your Eyes: See your clients clearly enough to offer timely and effective therapeutic interventions
  • Motion within Emotion: Learn how to treat your clients using APT
  • Play in Psychotherapy: How bring Jaak Panksepp’s work alive ‘in session’
  • Open Your Heart in the Face of Depression and Depression:: Using APT to empower your clients to leave their symptoms behind
  • Turning Inward: Learn how to use your internal awareness when working with a resistant client
  • When Therapy Stalls:Rediscovering the joy in psychotherapy

Certified APT™- Workshop Series

Short Description

We offer a series of workshops that focus on the therapeutic alliance, paying particular attention to the heart and mind of the therapist. You can sign up for one workshop or all four and begin the process of caring for the most important therapeutic tool, yourself! Learn how increasing your emotional aptitude influences the therapeutic alliance. Neuroscience, attachment and psychotherapy research indicate that the therapeutic alliance is at the heart of treatment. In these four workshops, you’ll learn how and why cultivating your own capacity for self-compassion, self-care and emotional experiencing helps you resonate more fully with your clients so they can experience change.

Building Bridges Between Clients and Clinicians-Four Part Certified APT™-Workshop Series

Workshop #1: Facing Your Fear: Learn how to maintain therapeutic closeness when you feel overwhelmed by the intensity of your client’s emotions

It can be anxiety provoking to be working with a patient who is experiencing intense emotions like rage, sexual attraction, terror, sorrow or longing for love. Learn how to cultivate compassion for yourself in those moments and to work with your own emotions so that you can mindfully apply interventions and make therapeutic decisions while maintaining a bond with your patient.

Workshop #2: A Road Map to Closeness:: Learn how to cultivate closeness within the therapeutic relationship

It can be hard to help your client experience closeness when you struggle with it yourself. Learn a step-by-step approach on how to cultivate an honest and close relationship with your client without inadvertently encouraging compliance, dependency or a therapeutic rupture. You’ll learn how to assess your client’s capacity for closeness and how to intervene where they are at, rather then where you want them to be.

Workshop #3: Listen with Your Eyes: Learn how to see your clients clearly so you can offer timely and effective therapeutic interventions

Your ability to see what is happening ‘in the moment’ is crucial to the timing of interventions when you work with emotions. Improve your observation and assessment skills by using ATOS, a tool originally designed for research. Learn how to identify true emotions and work more effectively with them by assessing their intensity, function and the knowing how to tell the difference between emotional experiencing and expression.

Workshop #4: When Therapy Stalls: How to rediscover the joy in psychotherapy

With some clients we feel like we’re going nowhere and each session seems like a repeat of the last. When therapy stalls, it’s almost like a roadblock, where nothing can get through. At times like this, focusing on closeness, positive feelings, compassion and play can change everything. Learn how to get to know your client-not their symptoms and you’ll cultivate openness, safety and trust that will facilitate the therapeutic process.

Certified APT™- Master Class

Short Description

Certified APT™-MasterClass is at least three day learning experience for mental health clinicians interested in learning the theory and techniques of APT. Training includes theoretical and clinical instruction with video segments of psychotherapy sessions and experiential exercises with role-playing and therapy demonstrations. In this workshop, you will learn to master the triangles that illuminate work in APT, AEDP, ISTDP and more. Upon completion, participants are eligible to enroll in a Certified APT™-Core Training which is certified by the International Experiential Dynamic Therapy Association (IEDTA).

Overall Learning Objectives

In the first day of training, trainees learn how to assess and treat an ‘Affect Phobia’ as described in Treating Affect Phobia: A Manual (McCullough, et all, 2003). Trainees are also introduced to Malan’s Two Triangles (Malan, 1979) and learn how to identify maladaptive defenses, inhibitory affects and adaptive affects so they can begin the process of core conflict formulation. On the second day of training, trainees are introduced to the importance of creating a working therapeutic alliance, Self Restructuring and Self/Other Restructuring. On the third day of training, trainees focus on Defense Restructuring, Anxiety Regulation and Affect Experiencing.

Training Overview

Learning Objectives

  • Identifying Affect Phobias
  • Identifying inhibitory affect, maladaptive defenses and adaptive affect
  • Learning how to distinguish between adaptive and maladaptive affect
  • Creating a core conflict formulation
  • Creating a working therapeutic alliance
  • Regulating anxiety
  • Restructuring defenses
  • Increasing motivation
  • Helping your client experience affect exposures (grief, sadness, anger, rage, positive feelings of the self)
  • Helping your client increase their sense of self
  • Helping your client to cultivate self-compassion
  • Helping your client increase their ability to create healthy relationships

Learning Methods

  • Video segments of psychotherapy sessions
  • Interactive exercises
  • Keynote presentations
  • APT-Forms

Literature

  • Donovan, J., Osborn, K., & Rice,S. (2016) Paraverbal Communication in Psychotherapy: Beyond the Words, New York: Rowman & Littlefied
  • McCullough, L., Kuhn, N., Andrews, S., Kaplan, A., Wolf, J., & Lanza Hurley, C. (2004). Treating Affect Phobia: A Manual for Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy. New York: The Guilford Press..
  • Panksepp (1998) Affective Neuroscience. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
  • Valiant, George (1993) The Wisdom of the Ego, Cambridge, First Harvard Cambridge Press.

Film

Video segments from psychotherapy sessions

Applicant Requirements

Applicants are required to be enrolled in or a graduate of an accredited graduate mental health program.

Certified APT™- Core Training

Year 1: Learn the theory and practice of APT

Module 1: Overview of 3 year Certified APT™-Core Training
Module 2: Working the Triangles
Module 3: Increasing Awareness in the Face of Anxiety
Module 4: Facing the Shadow

Year 2: Learn how to cultivate an effective therapeutic alliance

Module 5: Breaking Through to Feeling
Module 6: Clinician Heal Thyself
Module 7: Facing Your Fears
Module 8: Riding the Wave

Year 3: Learn how to support and sustain your therapeutic stance

Module 9: Intergenerational Trauma
Module 10: A Roadmap to Closeness
Module 11: When Things Go Off the Rails
Module 12: Complex Cases

Short Description

Certified APT™-Core Training is an experiential, intensive, hands-on, group learning experience for mental health clinicians. Trainees meet 4 weekends a year, for three years, to learn how to utilize the theory and techniques of APT. Trainees will develop a deeper understanding of their own emotional conflicts and how they are activated in their clinical work. They will also create their own deliberate practice plan to guide their training process.

Each training weekend includes presenting video segments of psychotherapy sessions, research, exploring case studies, role-playing exercises, and setting goals for professional development. Trainees receive 50% theoretical and clinical instruction and 50% consultation. Upon completion, participants are eligible to become a Certified APT™-Therapist and receive a Certified IEDTA-Core Training Certificate of Completion.

Overall Learning Objectives

Trainees learn how to assess and treat emotional conflicts as described in Treating Affect Phobia: A Manual (McCullough, et all, 2003). In the process of their training, trainees develop the ability to work with Malan’s Two Triangles (Malan, 1979), and master the fine art of assessment: differentiating between adaptive and maladaptive feelings and creating a working core conflict formulation. Trainees also learn how to help clients with anxiety regulation, restructuring defenses and affect exposures.

As foundational objectives are mastered, more advanced elements of the model are introduced. Particular emphasis is placed on the importance of practice, the ability to accept and use constructive feedback, and the ability to identify and work with internal feelings, as well as, the ability to make a thorough assessment, create treatment plans, and prepare for termination.

Research is an integral part of this program and students are trained to use the Achievement of Therapeutic Objectives Scale (ATOS) and the Achievement of Therapeutic Objectives Scale-Therapist (ATOS-Therapist) to code ten-minute segments of psychotherapy sessions.

TRAINING OVERVIEW

Learning Objectives

  • How to assess what feelings your client has access to or not
  • How to understand family/system patterns and their relationship with avoided feelings
  • How to identify each pole of the Triangle of Conflict and Triangle of Person
  • How to assess your own emotional conflicts
  • How to collaborate with your client and create a working core conflict formulation using the Triangle of Conflict and Triangle of Person
  • Learn both the timing and application of therapeutic interventions
  • How to identify type, intensity and level of anxiety
  • How to know when to increase, explore or regulate anxiety
  • How to help your clients see their defenses, understand where they originate from and recognize their cost and benefits
  • Learn how to help your client increase their motivation to let go of their defenses
  • Learn how to cultivate a strong working alliance with your client
  • Learn how to help your client cultivate self-compassion, self-awareness and commitment to self-care
  • Learn how to help your client experience and integrate their previously avoided feelings (grief, sadness, anger, rage, positive feelings of the self, intimacy)
  • Learn how to help your client increase their overall sense of self
  • Learn how to help your client increase their awareness and understanding of others
  • Learn how to help your client be able to ‘give and receive’ within a healthy relationship
  • Learn how to help your client create their own ‘deliberate practice’ plan
  • Learn how to create your own ‘deliberate practice’ plan
  • Learn how to code video segments of psychotherapy by using scales like ATOS and ATOS-Therapist

Learning Methods

  • Video segments of psychotherapy sessions
  • Interactive exercises
  • Keynote presentation
  • IEDTA Membership
  • Certified APT™-Webinars
  • Certified APT™-Master Class
  • Certified APT™-Consultation
  • Certified APT™-Deliberate Practice Form
  • Certified APT™-Forms
  • Certified APT™–Research Scales

Literature

Donovan, J., Osborn, K., & Rice,S. (2016) Paraverbal Communication in Psychotherapy: Beyond the Words, New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
McCullough, L., Kuhn, N., Andrews, S., Kaplan, A., Wolf, J., & Lanza Hurley, C. (2004). Treating Affect Phobia: A Manual for Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy. New York: The Guilford Press.
Panksepp (1998) Affective Neuroscience. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
McCullough Vaillant, L. (1997). Changing Character: Short-Term Anxiety Regulating Psychotherapy for Restructuring Defences, Affects and Attachment. New York: Basic Books.
Perry, B & Szalavitz,M (2006) The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist Notebook: What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Loving and Healing, Basic Books, New York, NY
Rousmanier,T. (2017) Deliberate Practice for Psychotherapists. A Guide to Improving Clinical Effectiveness. Routledge, NY
Thoma, N & McKay, D (2014) Working with Emotion in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy: Techniques for Clinical Practice, Guilford Press, New York, New York
Valiant, George (1993) The Wisdom of the Ego, Cambridge, First Harvard Cambridge Press.

Film

Video segments from psychotherapy sessions

Applicant Requirements

Applicants are required to provide a curriculum vitae (résumé) detailing their work as a therapist, and a statement of interest demonstrating their motivation for working with APT. If accepted into the core training, they are required to bring a copy of their license (or proof of registration or accreditation as a therapist, or relevant equivalent, for those practicing countries outside the US) and malpractice insurance, or proof of enrollment in an accredited university, as well as the name and contact information of their site supervisor. All participants will be required to sign an annual contract that includes payment for the year.

Certified APT™- Consultations

Consultations are strongly recommended for all clinicians interested in learning how to develop their skills in Affect Phobia Therapy and is a requirement for becoming a Certified APT™-Therapist.

Certified APT™-Research Training

Research training is offered on a weekly basis to give beginning and seasoned clinicians an opportunity to review video-segments of psychotherapy session and practice coding with Certified APT™-Research Scales

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