What It Is, How It Works, and Why and How to Teach It
Focusing on the importance of both verbal and nonverbal communication, this book equips practitioners and students with essential tools to enhance their understanding of clients. It offers strategies for unlearning biases and improving therapeutic effectiveness, featuring practical transcripts and dialogic tools to facilitate better interactions and insights.
Would you like to be a more skilled therapist? Would you like to help the 50 percent of patients who drop out of therapy before they receive its full benefits? Would you like to connect with hard-to-reach patients so you can form a healing therapeutic alliance? While other books teach theory, this book will help you develop the specific skills you need to be an effective therapist. You can practice the exercises with a partner or with audio recordings, just like learning a language. And videos will show you how. Each of the forty-two skill-building exercises teaches a specific technique so you can successfully address typical impasses in therapy. Where you got stuck in the past, you'll be able to move forward in the future. You will learn what to say so you can assess and regulate anxiety, help patients develop and keep an effective focus that leads to change, teach patients to see and let go of avoidance strategies, work with patients who deny that they need therapy, mobilize patients' will to work toward a positive goal, support patients so they can shift from denial to facing reality, and identify early signs of dropout so you can prevent it. When you improve your relational skills, you will be better equipped to help anxious patients.
Focusing on the therapeutic relationship, this book emphasizes the importance of creating a safe environment for patients struggling with fear and anxiety. It offers systematic steps for therapists to assess and address patients' needs, illustrated with real-session vignettes. These examples guide therapists in responding to patients' moment-to-moment experiences, helping them regulate anxiety, challenge misperceptions, and confront their fears. Ultimately, the book aims to facilitate effective change and foster secure attachments for healing.
"In The Lies We Tell Ourselves, psychotherapist Jon Frederickson reveals the ways we fool ourselves and how to get unstuck. Through dozens of stories and examples, he demonstrates that the apparent cause of our problems is almost never the real cause. In addition, he reveals what we really fear and how to face it. In the spirit of Stephen Grosz and Irving Yalom, Frederickson shows how to recognize the lies we tell ourselves and face the truths we have avoided--and stop saying yes when we really mean no."--Amazon.com.
First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.