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How to Organize Complex Cases and Keep Therapy on Track
with Kathy Steele, MN, CS, APRN
On-Demand Course
Watch anytime, anywhere, with your 1 year access!
Course Description
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One of the greatest challenges in working with complex trauma disorders is to provide a step-wise, rational, and relatively steady treatment approach. Regardless of the modality used, several principles of treatment can help guide the therapist who may feel pulled in multiple directions. Organizing a case in a methodical way alerts the therapist to potential challenges in treatment, helps focus treatment approaches in chaotic situations, supports identification of specific treatment targets, and helps the therapist focus on process rather than content. Comorbidity, crises, defenses, intense transference and countertransference, developmental deficits, inner conflicts, and disorganized attachment style are only a few issues that contribute to difficulties in maintaining a stable therapy. We will explore specific ways to organize treatment that offer the therapist a meta-view of what the client needs, opening a path toward a rational treatment plan. We will explore how to assess specific prognostic factors and set collaborative therapeutic goals.
Learning Objectives
Participants will be able to:
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Explain at least five (5) treatment principles that help keep therapy on track.
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Identify rational approaches to a client with several mental health disorders (comorbidity).
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Identify at least five (5) indicators of prognosis and treatment trajectory that impact treatment planning.
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Explain how we can understand how clients organize their experiences internally.
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Apply a treatment plan for a client with a dissociative disorder, based on clinical assessment of dissociation, defenses, personality traits, and other prognostic factors.
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1 Year access: Your registration comes with 1 year of access to the recorded program and to any materials the presenter has made available. Once you finish the program's requirements, you can receive a certificate with CEs for home study learning. *Exception applies, see CE section
Course Schedule
105 minutes
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Introduction: Understanding a case beyond trauma
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What is involved in a thorough case conceptualization?
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Listening to the client’s narrative as a way of understanding how the client organizes
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What is the client like in the session, with implications for treatment?
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What transference and countertransference is present, and implications for treatment
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What relational patterns do we observe and experience?
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Assessment of emotions, mentalizing functions and other capacities
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Assessment of highest level of functioning
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What can previous treatments tell us about the client?
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The therapist’s experience as key to conceptualizing the client
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Q & A from the live presentation.
90 minutes
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Understanding the inner organization of the client: How does the client organize experience?
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Identifying defenses, inner conflicts and fantasies that may interfere with therapy
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What to look for in comorbid personality disorders: A meta-perspective
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Prognostic factors that guide treatment planning
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How to formulate a reasonable treatment plan with collaborative goals
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A rational perspective on working with dissociative parts to promote gradual integration
105 minutes
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How to formulate a reasonable treatment plan with collaborative goals
- A rational perspective on working with dissociative parts to promote gradual integration​
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Keeping Therapy on track
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​Using goals to track therapy
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Principles of treatment that keep therapy on track
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Q & A from the live presentation.
About Kathy Steele, MN, CS, APRN
Kathy Steele has been in private practice since 1985, and with Metropolitan Psychotherapy Associates in Atlanta, Georgia since 1988. She was Clinical Director of Metropolitan Counseling Services, a non- profit psychotherapy and training center until 2016. She is a Past President and Fellow of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD), and has also served two terms on the Board of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS). Kathy served on the International Task Force that developed treatment guidelines for Dissociative Disorders, and on the Joint International Task Force that has developed treatment guidelines for Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. She has received a number of awards for her work, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from ISSTD, an Emory University Distinguished Alumni Award, and the Cornelia B. Wilbur Award for Outstanding Clinical Contributions from ISSTD. Kathy has (co) authored numerous book chapters, peer reviewed journal articles, and three books with her colleagues.