Since defenses cause the presenting problems and symptoms our patients suffer from, interrupting defenses is a way we show our compassion. Defenses, which were once the patient’s friend, now function as the enemy. In this webinar, Susan and Jon will show how to interrupt defenses compassionately and help the patient form a healing alliance.

Often therapies get stuck because the therapist is trying to do one thing when the patient is trying to do another. There is a misalliance because the therapist and patient don’t have an agreement on what they should focus on in therapy and why they should focus on it. Very often, patients are not engaging in the therapeutic task because the therapist has never taken care to explain the therapeutic task or shown how the task is designed to achieve the patient’s goals. In this webinar Patricia will show you how to help the patient understand his problems, and from that understanding, how to develop an agreement on what the two of you should try to do in therapy. In particular, Patricia will show you how to get consensus on the therapeutic task by linking it to the patient’s goals.

Although immersions, core groups, and individual supervision are key for developing therapist competence, enhancing self-supervision can accelerate your learning. After all, you review more of your sessions than a supervisor ever will! This webinar will show you how to optimize your self-supervision, address common obstacles, and detect your own defenses that obstruct self-supervision.

Referred to as "the great deceiver", pathological mourning can be disguised as a somatic symptom, psychiatric syndrome, or even a personality disorder. When, for a variety of reasons, a patient has not able to grieve a significant loss, they can become symptomatic instead. The process of detecting and then activating a pathological mourning state, in order to shift to one of acute grieving that can result in acceptance and peace, will be the focus of this webinar.

Ever had that experience of addressing a patient’s defenses and it doesn’t do any good? Have you ever sat with a patient who tries to convince you why her defenses are helpful? If so, you have been confronting symptoms of superego pathology, the result of a special class of defenses whereby the patient enacts a past relationship. Unless you understand superego pathology and know how to address it, you won’t be able to access the patient’s unconscious feelings. In this webinar Jon will help you understand the origin, structure, and enactment of these defenses. And he will show you how to address the spectrum of superego pathology.

Aren’t defenses the patient’s friends?” some ask. No. Defenses which were the patient’s friends in childhood become the patient’s enemies in adulthood. Why? Defenses create the patient’s symptoms and presenting problems. Defenses actually hurt patients. So interrupting defenses is actually a form of compassion; it’s how the therapist stops the patient from hurting herself in session. In this webinar, Susan will show you how to help the patient see and turn against defenses that hurt herself. And Susan will show you how to help the patient have greater compassion for herself so that she can protect herself against mechanisms which have been causing her suffering. If you want to learn a new way to show your compassion for patients, come to this webinar.

ISTDP is really a family of treatments, each tailored to specific strengths and weaknesses of the patient. We can’t do the same thing with all patients. In this webinar, Allan will teach how to identify fragile patients and how to tailor your treatment to their specific problems of anxiety regulation and use of regressive defenses. You will learn how to assess signs of fragility, how to tailor your treatment to the patient’s capacity, and how to identify and address regressive defenses the patient uses. Allan’s teaching is based on years of experience and research with hospitalized patients. You will learn very specific skills and techniques that will enhance anyone’s practice.

Highly resistant patients often have very poor outcomes in therapy. Why? They enact past relationships in the therapy rather than openly collaborate with the therapist. They often have low motivation for treatment and have failed at numerous treatments. This webinar will help you identify the transference resistance which cripples the therapy. In addition, Jon will help you identify four components of the transference resistance so that you can offer more precisely targeted non-interpretive interventions. So if you want to become more skilled at working with passive, uninvolved, defiant, or oppositional patients, don’t miss this chance to learn more effective interventions.