Deliberate Practice in Emotion-Focused Therapy

Rhonda N. Goldman, PhD, is a professor at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology and president of Emotion-Focused Therapy, Chicago. She also conducts training workshops internationally throughout Europe, Asia, and North America. She has authored or edited multiple books, including Clinical Handbook of Emotion-Focused Therapy (2019), Case Formulation in Emotion-Focused Therapy (2015), and Emotion-Focused Couples Therapy (2008), the latter two having companion videos with the same titles. She received the 2011 Carmi Harari Early Career Award from APA Division 32 (Society of Humanistic Psychology). Dr. Goldman is a founding board member of the International Society for Emotion-Focused Therapy. Alexandre Vaz, PhD, is director of training at the Sentio Marriage and Family Therapy graduate program and Sentio Counseling Center. He has authored many books on deliberate practice and psychotherapy training and is coeditor of the book series The Essentials of Deliberate Practice (APA Books). Dr. Vaz has held multiple committee roles for the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration (SEPI) and the Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR). He is founder and host of “Psychotherapy Expert Talks,” an acclaimed interview series with distinguished psychotherapists and researchers. Tony Rousmaniere, PsyD, is program director of the Sentio Marriage and Family Therapy graduate program, and executive director of the Sentio Counseling Center. He has authored many books on deliberate practice and psychotherapy training and is coeditor of the book series The Essentials of Deliberate Practice(APA Books). In 2017, Dr. Rousmaniere published the widely cited article in The Atlantic Monthly, “What Your Therapist Doesn’t Know.” Dr. Rousmaniere supports the open-data movement and publishes clinical outcome data at drtonyr.com. He is president of Division 29 of APA.

Series Preface
Tony Rousmaniere and Alexandre Vaz
Acknowledgments

Part I. Overview and Instructions
Chapter 1. Introduction to and Overview of Deliberate Practice and Emotion-Focused Therapy
Chapter 2. Instructions for the Emotion-Focused Therapy Deliberate Practice Exercises

Part II. Deliberate Practice Exercises for Emotion-Focused Therapy Skills
Exercises for Beginner Emotion-Focused Therapy Skills
Exercise 1. Therapist Self-Awareness
Exercise 2. Empathic Understanding
Exercise 3. Empathic Affirmation and Validation
Exercise 4. Exploratory Questions
Exercises for Intermediate Emotion-Focused Therapy Skills
Exercise 5. Providing Treatment Rationale for Emotion-Focused Therapy
Exercise 6. Empathic Explorations
Exercise 7. Empathic Evocations
Exercise 8. Empathic Conjectures
Exercises for Advanced Emotion-Focused Therapy Skills
Exercise 9. Staying in Contact in the Face of Intense Affect
Exercise 10. Self-Disclosure
Exercise 11. Marker Recognition and Chair Work Task Setup
Exercise 12. Addressing Ruptures and Facilitating Repair
Comprehensive Exercises
Exercise 13. Annotated Emotion-Focused Therapy Practice Session Transcript
Exercise 14. Mock Emotion-Focused Therapy Sessions

Part III. Strategies for Enhancing the Deliberate Practice Exercises
Chapter 3. How to Get the Most Out of Deliberate Practice: Additional Guidance for Trainers and Trainees

Appendix A. Difficulty Assessments and Adjustments
Appendix B. Distinguishing Between Empathic Responses
Appendix C. Sample Emotion-Focused Therapy Syllabus With Embedded Deliberate Practice Exercises
References
Index
About the Authors