CBT Skills for Distressing Physical Symptoms

Course overview

Elevate your healthcare practice in 6 months - immerse yourself in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, redefine pain management strategies, and amplify your impact with patients.

Format

Facilitator

Date

Prerequisites
No expertise or previous learning in the content area is required.

Duration

Price

Course Description

Course Objectives

Meet the Facilitator

Assessment & Certification

Target Audience

Course Schedule

Cancellation Policy

Course Features

Course Description

The goal of this course is for you to successfully learn and transfer evidence into your clinical practice. This sounds easy, but it takes intention and strategy to do it successfully. Most weekend courses do not achieve a material change in practice. The short time frame and the lack of opportunity to practice new skills and knowledge in a clinical setting do not facilitate consolidation. That’s why we’ve revisioned a weekend course to take place over several months with structured reflection, regular prompting, high frequency touch points, and a chance to, again and again, engage with the material and transfer it to your clinical practice while being supported by course facilitators and peers.

We guarantee that this course will enhance your practice.

This 6 month virtual learning experience will focus on improving your ability to identify & work with pain related beliefs and distress in your rehabilitation or psychotherapy practice. An individual’s beliefs, thoughts, and emotions will influence their physiology, their experience of their symptoms and how they engage in their unique recovery.Your effectiveness as a practitioner is determined largely by your capacity to intentionally identify and address these factors. However, these are skills that are not taught in most traditional physical rehabilitation programs.

Additionally, mental health professionals aren’t always taught how to support their clients with navigating beliefs and behaviours related to physical sensations like pain.Throughout this course you will have the opportunity to learn and practice techniques from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy that will improve your therapeutic relationship with your clients, improve your capacity to help them navigate the distress related to their symptoms, and enhance your impact.

This course is open to all healthcare and wellness professionals interested in enhancing their psychologically-informed practice.

Course Objectives

After completing this course, participants will be able to:

Appreciate the psychological processes influencing recovery in physical rehabilitation settings.

Help patients to identify the various components of their experience with distressing symptoms (physical sensations, emotions, thoughts, and behaviours).

Use motivational interviewing techniques to engage clients in pain self-management strategies

Integrate CBT skills into clinical practice in order to:

Help clients build skills to calm their bodies & nervous systems.
Identify unhelpful thinking patterns.
Introduce countering strategies to evaluate and shift distressing thoughts.
Develop behavioural experiments & exposure hierarchies to challenge avoidant behaviours rooted in anxiety and interfering with recovery.
Obtain a foundational understanding of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy principles & integrate skills to support psychological flexibility into clinical practice.

Obtain a framework for conceptualizing the private experiences (thoughts, emotions, physical sensations) and behaviours of patients in order to help guide the selection of CBT/ACT strategies

Pivot & partner with clients when things don’t go to plan!

Meet the Facilitator

Meet Lara Desrosiers BSc. Kin, MSc. OT Reg. (Ont)

This Knowledge Project will be Facilitated by AMP’s Director, Lara Desrosiers. Lara is an Occupational Therapist who has worked in community mental health settings since graduating from McMaster University in 2009. She has a passion for mental health and several years of experience addressing mental illness, trauma, and addiction using occupational therapy frameworks & psychotherapeutic technique.

Lara now operates a private practice, Pelvic Resilience in Ontario where she supports individuals struggling with persistent pain and pelvic health challenges to get back to living life. Lara enjoys supporting multidisciplinary audiences with building impactful psychologically-informed and trauma-informed practices.

Assessment & Certification

Participant learning will be assessed via interaction with the instructor and other course participants throughout the course (discussion boards, integration workshops) as well as through the submission of a final case study that illustrates how they have applied the skills in practice and outlines the impact.

At the conclusion of this event, AMP Healthcare Education will collect participant evaluations of the overall learning experience.

Participants will receive a course certificate upon completion.

AMP Healthcare Education is approved by the Canadian Psychological Association to offer continuing education for psychologists. AMP Healthcare Education maintains responsibility for the program. This course is approved for 25 CE credits for psychologists. Obtaining the full amount of CEs will require that participants attend all live components of this course, complete any self-paced learning included with the course, and submit a final case study.

6 month immersive learning experience From September 23rd to February 22nd, 2025.

Monday, September 23rd - Release of Self-Paced Content Part 1 & Discussion Board Opens
Saturday, September 28th - Kick Off Call 8AM - 9:00 AM PST (Welcome & Orientation)
Saturday, October 19th - 1st Integration Workshop (8 AM - 10:00 AM PST), Release of Self-Paced Content Part 2
Saturday, November 16th - 2nd Integration Workshop (8AM - 10:00 AM PST), Release of Self-Paced Content Part 3
Saturday, December 14th - 3rd Integration Workshop (8 AM - 10:00 AM PST), Release of Self-Paced Content Part 4
Saturday, January 25th - 4th & Final Integration Workshop (8 AM - 10:00 AM PST)
Wednesday February 5th - Case Study Submission Due
Saturday February 22nd - Graduation Call (8 AM - 9 AM PST)

Instructor's Monthly Office Hours - First Friday of every month from 9 AM - 10 AM PST for 1 year

While you are expected to complete the course with this 6 month immersive learning experience, you will have access to the self-paced
course modules for 1 year (until September 23rd, 2025).

Click here for the course calendar.

~15 hours of Self Paced Content divided into 4 parts to introduce you to theory, key concepts and skills rooted in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

4 X 2.0 hour Integration Workshops spaced a month apart focused on Clarifying/Refining Learning, Application, Practice, and Clinical Reasoning. Students are encouraged to bring questions and case studies to the Integration Workshops in order to unpack obstacles and gain clarity.

Discussion boards to consolidate new ideas, explore nuance and application, and learn from peers and facilitators.

A wealth of reference materials to dive into and explore during and after the course.

Access to the self-paced content and the instructor's monthly office hours for 1 year from the start of the course so that you have the support you need to translate learning into practice.

The CPA’s approval of an individual, group, or organization as a CE Sponsor or Provider is restricted to the activities described in the approved application or annual report form. The CPA’s approval does not extend to any other CE activity the Sponsor or Provider might offer. In granting its approval, the CPA assumes no legal or financial obligations to Sponsors, Providers, or to those individuals who might participate in a Sponsor or Provider’s CE activities or programs.

Further, responsibility for the content, provision, and delivery of any CE activity approved by the CPA remains that of the CE Sponsor or Provider. The CPA disclaims all legal liability associated with the content, provision, and delivery of the approved CE activity.

Meet the instructor