Practical Exercises for Mental Health Professionals

Jordan Bawks, MD, is a recent graduate of the University of Toronto Psychiatry Residency program, and now works as a general adult psychiatrist at Joseph Brant Hospital in Burlington, Ontario. He is an Assistant Clinical Professor (Adjunct) at McMaster University in the department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, with a special interest in psychotherapy education and therapeutic communication. He is a post-academic Candidate at the Toronto Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis. During his psychiatric residency he was a core member of the PsychEd Podcast (psychedpodcast.org) and received several teaching awards, including the Resident Psychiatric Educator Award with the Association for Academic Psychiatry. Shelley McMain, Ph.D., is the Head of the Borderline Personality Disorder Clinic and a Clinician Scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, Canada. She is the Director of the Psychotherapy, Humanities and Psychosocial Interventions Division and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto. She is the Past-President for the Society for Psychotherapy Research. She is currently the President of the transitional board of the World Federation of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy. Dr. McMain has published more than 85 articles and book chapters in respected scientific journals including the American Journal of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatic, Biological Psychiatry mainly on borderline personality disorder, dialectical behaviour therapy, emotion dysregulation, and predictors and mechanisms psychotherapy outcome. She has received several international awards for her psychotherapy research as well as various teaching awards. Dr. Sonley MD is a lecturer and fulltime clinician teacher at the University of Toronto. Tony Rousmaniere runs the psychotherapy training website www.dpfortherapists.com and provides workshops, webinars, and advanced clinical training and supervision to clinicians around the world. Dr. Rousmaniere is the author/co-editor of the forthcoming book series “The Essentials of Deliberate Practice” (APA Press) and four books on psychotherapy training: Deliberate Practice for Psychotherapists, The Cycle of Excellence: Using Deliberate Practice to Improve Supervision and Training, Mastering the Inner Skills of Psychotherapy: A Deliberate Practice Handbook, and Using Technology to Enhance Counseling Training and Supervision: A Practical Handbook. In 2017 he published the widely-cited article in The Atlantic Monthly, “What your therapist doesn’t know”. Dr. Rousmaniere supports the open-data movement and publishes his aggregated clinical outcome data, in de-identified form, on his website at www.drtonyr.com. Alexandre Vaz is Co-Editor of the American Psychological Association Press’s upcoming book series “The Essentials of Deliberate Practice”. He has presented numerous peer-review papers and held various committee roles for the Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR) and the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration (SEPI), and is part of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Clinical Psychology: In Session. Dr. Vaz is also founder and host of the Psychotherapy Expert Talks, an acclaimed interview series with distinguished therapists and researchers; and author on the 3rd edition of the Handbook of Psychotherapy Integration (2019, Oxford Press).

Part I. 1. Overview of this book 2. Instructions for the deliberate practice exercises Part II. Deliberate practice exercises Exercise #1: Empathic validation Exercise #2: Affirmation and building Exercise # 3: Goal setting Exercise #4: Promoting change talk Exercise #5: Working with problematic thoughts Exercise #6: Exploring emotional experience Exercise #7: Using behaviors to change emotion Exercise #8: Coaching emotionally dysregulated patients Exercise #9: Responding to suicidal ideation and behavior Exercise #10: Communicating personal limits Exercise #11: Repairing relationship ruptures Exercise #12: Clinician self-awareness Exercise #13: Mock sessions Part 3. Additional resources 3. Sample syllabus with embedded deliberate practice exercises 4. Taking the next step: Resources for further study