EP21 Workshop 17 - CBT for Personality Disorders - Judith Beck, PhD

This workshop deals with the challenges of treating clients with personality disorders, clients who, for example, fail to engage in treatment, miss sessions, feel hopeless and stuck, become angry in session, engage in self-harm, use substances, blame others, avoid homework, experience continual crises, and so on. Special attention will be paid to how to help clients get out of the "personality disorder mode" and into the "adaptive mode."

Through discussion and demonstration roleplays, we'll cover identifying clients' values and aspirations, creating positive experiences and helping clients draw positive conclusions about them, engaging clients in treatment, repairing ruptures in the therapeutic relationship, applying lessons learned from the therapeutic relationship to relationships outside of therapy, learning and using adaptive coping strategies, and developing positive (i.e., more realistic) beliefs about themselves, other people, their worlds, and the future.

Finally, we'll address the use of experiential strategies, including changing the meaning of traumatic childhood experiences, to change clients' beliefs at both the intellectual and emotional level of processing.

Learning Objectives

1. Specify difficulties in treating clients with personality disorders.
2. Engage clients with personality disorders in treatment.
3. Conceptualize the beliefs and coping strategies of clients with personality disorders.
4.