Challenging Your Critical Inner Voice: An Introduction to Voice Therapy

Learning to work effectively with the “critical inner voice" is central to all areas of life: personal development, healthy relationships, self-esteem, and career success. This Web Conference will provide participants with an introduction to Voice Therapy, a technique that can enhance the therapist's ability to achieve positive treatment outcomes for their clients. Participants will discover ways to help their clients identify the destructive thoughts or voices that cause debilitating feelings of guilt and shame and interfere with all areas of life. They will learn how Voice Therapy techniques can be used to challenge and overcome these destructive inner thoughts and to more effectively cope with anxiety, depression, personal relationships and work. Participants can begin to develop new strategies to help their patients reassess their goals, understand and tolerate the anxiety of change, and identify achievable steps for positive and meaningful change in their lives.

Voice Therapy is a cognitive/affective/behavioral methodology that accesses clients’ core maladaptive beliefs in the presence of emotional arousal. It is called Voice Therapy because clients learn to verbalize their destructive thoughts or critical inner voices in the second person (as though another person were talking to them). Shifting to this second-person format brings to the surface the emotional content of this destructive way of thinking. Releasing the feelings associated with the critical inner voice helps clients to separate their own rational point of view from internalized hostile attitudes and identify their sources in painful childhood experiences, loss and trauma. This also leads to collaboration between the person in treatment and the therapist as they formulate suggestions for behavioral change.

Drawing on findings from research in attachment and interpersonal neurobiology, Dr. Firestone will describe the basic concepts of Separation Theory, in particular, the concept of the Fantasy Bond, on which the Voice Therapy techniques are based. The theory integrates psychodynamic and existential systems of thought in explaining how psychological defenses formed very early in life are reinforced as children develop an understanding of personal mortality.

This web conference is intermediate instructional level and designed to help clinicians:

1. Describe an innovative cognitive/affective/behavioral methodology that accesses a client’s core beliefs and can facilitate maximum therapeutic change;
2. Explain to clients the role critical inner voices play in destructive patterns in life;
3. Utilize exercises to help clients identify and challenge self critical thoughts;
4. Integrate Voice Therapy methods into their clinical practice.

If you have any questions about this web conference or would like more information, please contact us here.

Event Reviews from Members

"Lisa's presentation style was very clear and organized. She built on basic understandings like a pyramid to make our conceptual understanding very digestible. She answered questions with skill. This is as close to perfect as a presentation gets for me!" - Ann Pultz Kramer, MS

Continuing Education (CE) Information

1.5 CE credits will be provided by GoodTherapy.org for attending this web conference in its entirety.

GoodTherapy.org is also an Approved Education Provider by NAADAC, The Association for Addiction Professionals (provider #135463). Of the eight counselor skill groups ascribed to by NAADAC, this course is classified within counseling services.

GoodTherapy.org is an NBCC-Approved Continuing Education Provider (ACEPTM) and may offer NBCC-approved clock hours for events that meet NBCC requirements.

GoodTherapy.org is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. GoodTherapy.org maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

GoodTherapy.org, SW CPE is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #0395.

To receive CE credit hours for an archived event, you will need to complete a survey as well as a 12 or 15-question exam, verifying that you listened to or watched the event in its entirety. Archived CE events generally are considered "homestudy" by licensing boards.

Registration Information

Premium and Pro Membership with GoodTherapy includes access to this web conference at no additional cost, as well as other member benefits such as a profile listing in GoodTherapy's Therapist Directory. Not yet a member? Sign up for a Premium or Pro Membership, here.

Just want CE credits? Sign up for a monthly or annual CE Subscription with GoodTherapy to get unlimited access to our CE Program, including this event, other live CE web conferences, and hundreds of hours of homestudy courses.

Mental health professionals who are not members can access the homestudy recording for $15.50. Sign up here to purchase this CE course and earn a CE certificate.

If the event is canceled by GoodTherapy, registrants who purchased the event will be notified and the charge for the event will be refunded

If you have any questions or would like information regarding disability accommodations, please contact us.

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