Course overview

CBT Skills for Distressing Physical Symptoms

Dive deep into Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), revolutionize your pain management practice and significantly enhance your patient outcomes. This immersive online course is designed to equip healthcare professionals with cutting-edge skills and knowledge to provide true psychologically-informed care that gets to the real root of issues your most challenging patients face. Whether you're looking to refine your therapeutic approaches or integrate new strategies into your practice, this course will empower you to elevate your expertise and effectiveness!

Format

Virtual

Facilitator

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

Date

Sign up anytime.
Gain access for 12 months
Learn at your pace!

Prerequisites

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

12 Months

Price (inc. tax)

$697 (tax included)

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 at your pace over several months with structured reflection, regular prompting, 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 12 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:

  1. Help clients build skills to calm their bodies & nervous systems.
  2. Identify unhelpful thinking patterns.
  3. Introduce countering strategies to evaluate and shift distressing thoughts.
  4. Develop behavioural experiments & exposure hierarchies to challenge avoidant behaviours rooted in anxiety and interfering with recovery.
  5. 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, office hours).

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 of the self-paced modules.

Target Audience


This course is designed for Occupational Therapists, Physiotherapists, Psychologists, Psychotherapists as well as other rehabilitation and mental health providers looking to gain evidence and skills for applying psychotherapeutic skill (CBT and ACT informed approaches) to supporting individuals struggling with pain and other distressing physical symptoms.

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

Workshop Schedule

12 month immersive learning experience that you can complete at your pace. Includes:

  • ~13 hours of required viewing broken up into bite sized, digestible lessons.
  • Reflections, prompts & missions throughout to help you integrate and apply what you are learning.
  • A myriad of practice resources to download and keep for your use personally and clinically
  • ~3 hours of bonus optional viewing
  • Access to our Discussion Board for a year to share experiences, ask questions, and get support from the instructor and your peers!
  • Access to the instructor's optional monthly office hours to get the live support you need with putting these skills into practice!
  • Can't attend office hours live? Watch the replay! Ask your questions or share your case studies on the Discussion Board. The Instructor will respond to the questions coming through during live office hours.
  • Office Hour replays will be uploaded to the course environment and available for 1 month.

Office hours take place on the first Friday of every month from 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM EST (some exceptions for holidays).

Click the button below for a suggested schedule to help you make the most of your learning!

Cancellation Policy

30 Day Guarantee! We are certain that the course content will exceed your expectations. However, if the course is not what you expected, get in touch within 30 days of purchase and we will be happy to issue a refund less a 10% cancellation fee. Refunds will not be provided after 30 days following your purchase. 

Course Features

  • ~13 hours of Self Paced Content divided into digestible chunks to introduce you to theory, key concepts and skills rooted in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.
  • A variety of case examples to help you understand the application.
  • ~3 hours of optional viewing to dive deeper into the topics that most interest you.
  • Prompts, reflections, and missions to help you apply the skills that you are using.
  • A plethora of downloadable worksheets to keep and use both personally and clinically.
  • 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.
  • Option to view Office Hour replays if you can't make them live.
  • A suggested schedule to help you make the most of your learning and dive deep into the content in a sustainable way!

Testimonials

What our learners say

Lara was just outstanding and so knowledgeable! Taking this course was a game-changer for my practice. I am having much more productive conversation with client's and have gotten so much better at communicating what pain is and how it is affected by our thoughts and emotions. In just six months, I feel more confident than ever using CBT for pain and so much more equipped to make a real difference in my patients' lives, especially in those facing chronic pain. This course is a must for any OT looking to elevate their practice. Thanks Lara!
Cayla B. Registered OT
"This course truly exceeded my expectations in every way. Lara was awesome and CBT really enhanced my chronic pain skills. The practical hands-on training allowed me to immediately apply what I learned with my clients, and the results have been phenomenal. I really liked the videos, case studies and live sessions - this really supported my learning and help me get these tools into my practice. The  step-wise approach over many months is exactly what I needed to actually learn how to do this in my practice and get help when I got stuck.
Josh S. Registered OT

Lara Desrosiers
Occupational Therapist (Ontario)

DIRECTOR/OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY EDUCATOR
Lara has worked in community mental health and addictions programs since 2009 working with clients individually and facilitating group programming. She 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 teaching multidisciplinary audiences how to build impactful psychologically-informed and trauma-informed practices.