Mindfulness is being touted lately as the cure for everything that ails us as human beings. How can a simple set of practices possibly help with so many psychological disorders? This presentation will examine the common factors in psychological difficulties, and explore how mindfulness practices can help us with two of the most common: anxiety and depression. 

Learning Objectives:

1. Identify the common elements in anxiety, depression, and other psychological disorders.

2. Describe the use of “stepping into fear” and related mindfulness practices to work with anxiety.

3. Describe the use of mindfulness to enhance and enliven moment-to-moment experience, thereby challenging depressive postures. 

What if our therapeutic goals of improving self-esteem, developing a stable and coherent sense of self, and expressing our authentic feelings all turn out to be misguided? What if they inadvertently feed the cultural enthusiasm for celebrity and success that makes so many of us miserable? This presentation will examine how mindfulness practices can be harnessed in psychotherapy to reexamine our conventional sense of self, leading both us and our clients toward greater well-being, wisdom, and compassion.

Learning Objectives:

1. Describe how seeking good self-esteem leads to psychological distress.
2. Identify tools to help clients act more skillfully and freely by becoming less concerned with narcissistic concerns.
3. Describe how mindfulness practices help clients to integrate disavowed or split-off aspects of our experience.

The 21st Century has brought innovations that require therapists to consider confidentiality, record keeping, and boundary controversies especially in this time of online therapy during the COVID epidemic. This workshop will address personal versus professional website issues, reputation protection (Yelp), teletherapy and working across state lines in a pandemic, specific informed consent for telehealth, and updates on proper internet record keeping. Literature updates, expert opinion, and relevant ethics codes will be discussed.

Part 1:

• Definitions and terminology for telepsychology
• What does the APA say about working across state lines?
• Psychotherapists as “essential” workers?
• Providing teletherapy across state lines
• Working across state lines in the time of COVID

Part 2:

• Third-party rule
• Handling social media
• Social media policy
• Including Texts and emails in patient records
• Ethical issues related to patient-therapist online searches
• Barriers to telepsychology
• Statistics and prevalence of internet users
• Research on the use of the internet by psychotherapists
• Confidentiality issues
• Recommendations for therapists who use the internet
• How to protect your patients
• How to protect your practice
• Reputation protection:
• Legal and ethical issues
• Yelp other online issues

 LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1. Identify ethical issues related to when psychotherapists can practice across state lines.
2. Review an informed consent form for online therapy.
3. Understand the importance of the “Third-party rule” in the age of technology.

Learning Objectives:

1. Explain the need to develop the common denominators among therapies for the major psychological disorders.

2. Identify the new developments in neuroscience that are applicable to psychotherapy.

3. Explain how these new developments can be explained to clients as part of therapy.