Webinar: Building the Ability to Experience Emotions without Avoiding: Using Informal Exposure in Stage 1 DBT
Presenter: Melanie Harned, PhD, ABPP Date/Time: Monday, October 17th at 9:00- 10:30am PT/12:00-1:30pm ET Cost: $55 (live webinar, includes 1.5 CE credits), $45 (webinar recording only, no CEs)

Description: For many clients in DBT, a core problem that fuels their suffering is extreme emotional avoidance. Clients are often terrified to experience their emotions because they fear that doing so will lead to dysregulated behavior, intolerable pain, and rejection by others. Efforts to avoid the experience of emotion contribute to many of the problems addressed in DBT such as life-threatening and other self-destructive behaviors, emotion dysregulation, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In this webinar, strategies for building clients’ willingness and ability to experience rather than avoid emotions during Stage 1 DBT will be reviewed. Emphasis will be placed on the use of informal exposure to break the habit of emotional avoidance and facilitate new learning about emotional experiencing. A step-by-step approach to conducting informal exposure during DBT sessions in a way that optimizes its effectiveness will be presented. Finally, strategies for evaluating clients’ ability to experience intense emotions without escaping, an important indicator of readiness for Stage 2 PTSD treatment, will be discussed.

*Note: CE credits are only available to people who attend the live webinar. No CEs are available for watching the webinar recording.

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