Foundations: Working with Reactivity & Strong Affect
In Therapy

Friday, January 22, 2027
8:30am-1:00pm

This workshop is designed to assist participants with decreasing emotional intensity to a productive level in sessions. During the workshop, participants will explore common themes, situations, and experiences that may contribute to reactivity in family sessions, as well as strategies to decrease intensity. The workshop will emphasize the clinician’s self-regulation as one of the key tools to successfully decreasing intensity. Karpman’s drama triangle will be introduced and participants will have opportunities to use presentations to identify how to provide therapy in high intensity sessions.

Objectives:

As a result of participating in this workshop, therapists will be able to:

List three reasons why family members may react in therapy sessions
Identify two techniques to create emotional safety in therapy sessions.
Summarize Karpman’s drama triangle

This workshop counts toward required annual training hours in Family Based Mental Health Services but is not currently available for CE credit.

This is a beginner level course. The target audience is behavioral health professionals working within an Ecosystemic Family Therapy Model. This is a live synchronous distance learning activity conducted in real time, allowing for simultaneous participation of participants and instructors from different locations.

Frequently Asked Questions
Visit our FBMHS Policies & FAQs for additional information regarding the CFBT online learning center, accommodations for disabilities, reporting problems with the course, instructions for viewing webinars, etc.

Foundations: Boundaries and Triangles

Friday, February 5, 2027
8:30am-1:00pm

This workshop is designed to help participants identify, assess, and navigate common structural patterns in family therapy. Participants will explore the role of boundaries within ESFT, both as an area to be assessed and as a therapeutic tool. The workshop will focus on the role of boundaries in three common structural patterns: Triangulation, Enmeshment, and Disengagement. Case presentations, videotape analysis, and structural maps will be utilized to practice identifying and assessing boundaries and boundary violations. During the workshop, strategies for setting boundaries and the use of boundaries as a therapeutic tool will be discussed.

Objectives:

As a result of participating in this workshop, therapists will be able to:

Define boundaries as related to ESFT treatment
Contrast enmeshment and disengagement as they relate to boundaries.
List two strategies for working with enmeshment

This workshop counts toward required annual training hours in Family Based Mental Health Services but is not currently available for CE credit.

All-Site Supervision Forums

Each of these two 4.0-hour forums create an opportunity for all the supervisors currently in training at the Center for Family Based Training to 1) share current collective challenges they are facing as supervisors in FBMHS and 2) discuss creative strategies for addressing these challenges. Dr. Jones, the founder and director of CFBT facilitates the forums and is joined by other teaching faculty. One of the goals of the forums is to ensure everyone (supervisors and faculty) share a common understanding of the current context in which supervisors operate and deliver services. The forums are held at the beginning of the training year (September) and at the end (May).

This is a live synchronous distance learning activity conducted in real time, allowing for simultaneous participation of participants and instructors from different locations. The supervision forums count toward required annual supervision training hours in Family Based Mental Health Services. However, CE credit is not available.

Objectives:

As a result of participating in the forums, supervisors will:

Recognize common challenges in delivering FBMHS and supervising therapists
Identify strategies for effectively supporting therapists in training-related tasks

Forum 1: Guiding Therapists Through the Capstone Process

Facilitators: C. Wayne Jones, PhD and Adam Boguski, MDiv

Thursday, September 1, 2022
8:30am to 12:30pm
Location: All FBMHS Training Sites via Live Interactive Zoom

Forum 2: Building Effective Co-Therapy Teams

Facilitator: C. Wayne Jones, PhD

Friday, April 21, 2023
8:30am to 12:30pm
Location: All FBMHS Training Sites via Live Interactive Zoom

This is an intermediate level forum. The target audience is behavioral health supervisors working within an Ecosystemic Family Therapy Model. This is a live synchronous distance learning activity conducted in real time, allowing for simultaneous participation of participants and instructors from different locations.

Objectives:

Discuss recent findings about the effectiveness of FBMHS.
Discuss challenges currently facing supervisors in relation to staffing.
Discuss what colleagues are doing to address staffing challenges and maintain fidelity to the model.
Preview revised certification standards and processes.

Attuning to Emotional Processes 2023-2024

8:30am to 1:00pm

During interaction with one another and with the therapists, family members often experience frequent fluctuations in their comfort level. There is often significant anxiety. To be most effective, it is critical that therapists attune to and track these fluctuations in family member emotional states. When family members feel therapists are in sync with them, the alliance becomes stronger, and they become more open to trying to connect and relate differently in sessions. When therapists notice family member emotional states, they are better able to foster positive interactions between family members and reduce blame and judgment. The main goal of these workshops is to help therapists understand the concepts of anxiety, negative emotional states, and emotional regulation, and how they show themselves in family relationships. In cases presented for case consultation, Dr. Pollack draws on her training in Emotionally Focused therapy and attachment theory to help therapists look beneath family member behavioral presentations, identify underlying emotional states, and help family members to practice connecting more authentically. Therapists will be asked to reflect on their own emotions and reactions toward family members. Guidance is provided on how this personal awareness can be used to move the therapy forward.

Training Topics for 2023-2024
Incorporating DBT Skills when Working with Emotion Dysregulation
Friday, October 20, 2024
Thursday, January 4, 2024
Friday, February 2, 2024

Recognizing and Managing Therapist Proclivities for Induction
Friday, January 19, 2024
Thursday, February 1, 2024
Thursday, February 15, 2024

Applications of Trauma-Informed Care
Friday, February 16, 2024
Thursday, March 14, 2024
Thursday, May 9, 2024

As a result of participating in these clinicals, therapists will be able to:

Formulate a systemic, contextual explanation of the problems and use it to guide sessions.
Expand the family’s experience of the possible by setting up and facilitating pattern-transforming enactments.
Attune to family members for fluctuations in anxiety levels during family interactions that signal a need for more support.
Attune to fluctuations in one’s own emotions in sessions and how this shapes interactions with family members
Identify emotion-based strategies for establishing an empathic connection between caregivers and their children

This clinical series counts toward required annual training hours in Family Based Mental Health Services, but is not currently available for CE credit.

Agenda
8:30am-11:00am: Objectives 1-3
11:00am-11:15am: Break
11:15am-1:00pm: Objectives 4-5

This is an intermediate level course. The target audience is behavioral health professionals working within an Ecosystemic Family Therapy Model. This is a live synchronous distance learning activity conducted in real time, allowing for simultaneous participation of participants and instructors from different locations.

Systemic Intervention 2023-2024

8:30am to 1:00pm

In cases presented for consultation in these clinicals, the central focus is on seeing process in family interactions. Based on review of videotapes of family therapy sessions, participants are given the opportunity to recognize patterns, create systemic hypotheses and consider how best to intervene. Attention is given to recognizing common family patterns such as complementarity, triangulation, conflict-detouring, etc. Focus is also given to larger system impacts on the family. Systems theory is explained and systemic interventions, such as enactments and reframing, are demonstrated. Therapists are encouraged to take an active, facilitative role in sessions, seizing upon opportunities to help family members interact in more functional patterns with one another.

Training Topics for 2023-2024
Thinking from the Outside In
Thursday, October 5, 2023
Friday, October 6, 2023
Thursday, November 2, 2023

Assessing from the Outside In
Friday, January 5, 2024
Thursday, January 18, 2024
Thursday, February 1, 2024

Facilitating Change from the Outside In
Thursday, March 14, 2024
Thursday, April 11, 2024
Thursday, May 9, 2024

As a result of participating in these clinicals, therapists will be able to:

Formulate a systemic, contextual explanation of the problems and share it with the family.
Expand the family’s experience of the possible by setting up and facilitating pattern-transforming enactments.
Adopt and maintain a stance of respectful curiosity and supportive challenge.
Identify and map family and larger system relational patterns that maintain the presenting problems.
Locate latent family strengths and resources that can be mobilized to effect positive change.

This clinical series counts toward required annual training hours in Family Based Mental Health Services, but is not currently available for CE credit.

Agenda
8:30am-11:00am: Objectives 1-3
11:00am-11:15am: Break
11:15am-1:00pm: Objectives 4-5