Empowering Clients with Zach Rosenthal, PhD

From the Clinic to the Real World: Empowering Clients Beyond the Therapeutic Session 

Across psychotherapies, our primary aim is to help clients improve their lives, usually through the process of talking within the context of a safe and supportive therapeutic relationship. We wish to help clients change their lives outside the clinic setting, yet our involvement with them tends to be constrained by conventions and contingencies inside the clinic setting. How do the skills and insights that emerge in therapeutic discussions translate into changes in the messiness of the real world? What alternatives do we as clinicians have to waiting and hoping for change in between therapy sessions? This workshop will expose the frequent disconnect between discourse and action, and will explore traditional and cutting edge strategies for expanding the power of therapeutic tools.

Zach (M. Zachary) Rosenthal, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Duke University Medical Center Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, is Director of both the E.M.B. Brout Sensory Processing and Emotion Regulation Program and the Duke Cognitive Behavioral Research and Treatment Program. He is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in CBT and DBT, who trains and supervises students in the Duke medical psychology internship program and provides professional trainings through a partnership with the North Carolina Evidence-Based Practices Center. He has published widely on emotional functioning and emotion regulation in borderline personality disorder, and is currently working on novel computer-based interventions for “treatment-resistant” populations.