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Find educational articles and resources for deliberate practice, interpersonal skill building, and Skillsetter software usage.

How Dr. Jesse Owen Helped Shape Skillsetter

For a guy who was just awarded $2 million, Dr. Jesse Owen is remarkably down-to-earth. He’s speaking on the phone from his home in Denver, Colorado, about the weather, the hikes he’s done this summer, and what it was like growing up in Indiana. It’s the type of conversation you’d enjoy with a neighbour, but in this case unique phrases such as “confirmation bias” and “cognitive complexity” are being used liberally. Also, your neighbour would probably be more interested in talking about the multi-million dollar grant they were given versus the unseasonably warm temperatures.

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What Is Cultural Humility and How to Foster It?

What three adjectives come to mind when you hear the words “Trump supporter”? This question is part of a lesson plan Dr. Jesse Owen teaches around the concept of cultural humility, and he says that most therapists-in-training have a reaction when asked. “It’s really interesting because the reactions can be strong and in a lot of cases negative,” he says. “But let’s take a deeper look. Is everyone who supports Trump a racist, for example? Where do those beliefs come from? And if you’re a psychotherapist, what would you do if you were sitting across from a client and they told you they were a Trump supporter?”

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Why Bruce Wampold Co-founded Skillsetter

Dr. Bruce Wampold is one of the foremost counselling and psychotherapy researchers in the world and he predicts a big shake-up in the industry’s education. This is Why. “It’s like giving feedback to a basketball player by saying, ‘You had a pretty good game,’ but that’s it. Nothing specific. That’s not the way you learn.”

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What Can Therapists Learn From Concert Pianists?

Picture for a moment a young musician who wishes to become a concert pianist. She attends the Royal Conservatory of Music for four years and then goes on to earn a Masters degree in music. With her multiple years of training, she believes she can wow audiences around the world, but there’s only one problem: she stops practicing. After defending her Master’s thesis, she no longer trains outside of her performances and, as a result, her song selection stagnates, her skills languish, and invitations to play venues cease.

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3 Ways To Improve Psychotherapy Services

Writer Kristen Moran spoke with award-winning psychotherapist Bruce Wampold at his home in Madison, Wisconsin, to learn about why the field of psychotherapy needs to make changes in terms of the training of its practitioners and how best to go about instigating those changes. Below is the interview.

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Who Are Effective Therapists?

Psychotherapy is remarkably effective but we should not be too complacent about this conclusion. Psychotherapy results in a better outcome than would otherwise be the case in about one out of three clients, which compared to many medical treatments is actually very good. But we can do better, of course. Some therapists achieve better outcomes than others—that is, some therapists consistently help clients, while others do not. This raises a truly important question: What are the characteristics and actions of effective therapists?

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Why Therapists Don’t Improve, And How They Could

How time flies. I have been researching, practicing and supervising psychotherapy for over 35 years. When I began graduate school Hans Eysenck’s claims that psychotherapy was not effective, and likely harmful, was widely disseminated and believed. To say the least, it was not an optimistic time to be in training to become a psychologist.

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How Do We Become Better Therapists? Psychotherapy Debate with Bruce Wampold and Peter Fonagy

“How do we become better therapists?” That was one of the main questions being asked during the debate between Peter Fonagy and Dr. Bruce Wampold at the Nordic Conference for Mental Health, which is held every year in Stavanger, Norway. The two psychotherapists were invited to discuss four themes related to the current state of psychotherapy research and where we may head in the future. Some of the topics discussed included...

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