Deconstructing Impact
In the previous essay, we addressed the three key elements on how you can structure your sessions. The reason we want to take care of how we structure our sessions is because we want to create an...
Category: Personalised Learning
Why Structure Your Sessions?
Note: This article was originally published in Substack on 7 Apr. 2023 I’ve listened to hundreds of hours of therapy sessions. When sessions lack impact, a handful of reasons are at play. But at...
Reduce negative variance and increase positive variance
How to reduce dropouts from psychotherapy and inviting therapists to bring everything to bear.
Can ChatGPT Replace Psychotherapy?
Before ChatGPT took the world by storm a few months ago in Nov 2022, there was ELIZA. Invented by a professor in MIT named Joseph Weizenbaum, Eliza was a simple computer program, a chatbot...
Thinking in Thirds Closing The Session (Part III of III)
How Do You Close a Session in a Meaningful Way? In the previous 2 parts on Thinking in Thirds, I’ve detailed about the process of Stage 1 of creating an invitational beginning and Stage 2...
Thinking in Thirds: Going Deeper (Part II of III)
In Part I of Thinking in Thirds, I talked about the rule of three in various domains like the performing arts, storytelling and music, and how segmenting the therapy hour into thirds can be structurally...
20. Less Like an Assessment Tool…(Therapy Tip of the Week #7)
In this week’s Therapy Tip of the Week #7 (TTW), we talk about how to use outcome monitoring tools, not as an assessment tool, but as a conversational tool. If you have missed the...
Thinking in Thirds (Part I of III)
The Rule of Three in Performing Arts, Photography and Music. One of the primary ways to think about how you structure your therapy hour is to think in three parts. In the performing arts,...
The Guise of Feedback
Not all feedback is created equal. Who specifically do you trust to give you feedback about your development? It’s important to distinguish between performance feedback and learning feedback. Feedback from clients are performance feedback, used to specifically tune...
# 19. How to Elicit Nuanced Feedback Therapy Tip of the Week #6
In Therapy Tip of the Week #6, we continue on the topic of improving working alliance. Here’s my recommendation, when seeking for feedback, avoid talking about… you! If you have missed the previous videos...
Structuring a Therapy Session to Create Impact
The First Training on Shaping the Arch of a Psychotherapy Session to Make It Come AliveIf you are on the move, listen to the Frontiers Radio audio version, or anywhere else you get your podcasts. “Every...
#17. Seek to be Disconfirmed (Therapy Tip of the Week #5)
Dissonance can be a powerful ingredient for learning. How do we challenge our intuition in order to listen to our client’s unspokens in order to foster a deeper connection with them? In this video,...
#16. The Devil is the Details Between Sessions (Therapy Tip of the Week #4)
In this week’s therapy tip of the week, we are going to talk about the subject that you as a psychotherapist would be more than familiar with–except that it’s not what you expect. ⏳...
#15. Embodied Cognition (Therapy Tip of the Week)
As psychotherapists, it’s easy to get lost in our heads. Our pet theories end up dominating and preventing us from being in touch with the person in front of us. In this Therapy Tip...
#14. Seasons Intelligence (Therapy Tip of the Week)
A client said that this idea of thinking in Seasons changed the experience of her struggles. She just came back from being away for several months due to her work. She was finding it hard...
#13. Therapy Tip of the Week: 5 Basic Needs
In this series on Therapy Tip of the Week, we’ll provide psychologists, counsellors and psychotherapists one practical tip at each episode.My idea of giving you this is not so much as to prescribe to...
Pay Careful Attention To a Highly Sensitive Person’s Inner Life
I’m not comfortable with labels. As a musician, I disliked the idea of categorising artists I listen to into genres. As a therapist, I’m rarely imposed a label or a DSM-V. We don’t like...
Why You Need a Guide to Go Deep
“It takes two to know one,” ~ Gregory Bateson Some years ago at a therapy workshop, we were asked to go into small groups and someone was to be the therapist and another to...
Looking Back at 2021
Reviewing the previous year in June seems less like a reflection and more like an income tax review. Even though this is 6 months delayed, I’m still going to do this. For those who...
Solving for Patterns
Most of the time, we are solving for specifics. In the natural sciences, however, nature does not solve for specifics, but it solves for patterns. Paraphrasing Agriculturist Wendell Berry (1981), Janine Benus described the process...
Take Note of These 4 Perennial Factors of Your Clients
I’m amazed it has taken me about 2 decades of writing case-notes to finally come up with this system for myself. I’ve been using this particular format to capture what I call “evergreen” information,...
Explain Your Ideas to An Expert—and to a Child.
Wired magazine has a video series where they get experts from various domains to explain complicated concepts—from blockchain to machine learning, music harmony to sleep—in 5 different levels: What’s really interesting is to listen...
The Difference Between What’s Right and What’s Right For You
There’s a big difference between what’s right and what’s right for you. This is why deliberate practice (DP) is not a cookie cutter approach, but it is highly individualised. Figuring out what’s right for...
How to Begin Using Obsidian to Become a Deep Learner
In this video, I’d walk you through 7 Tips on how to get started with using the Obsidian notetaking app. Time Stamps: Intro (00:00)Why as a Psychologist I take learning notes (00:18)5 Key Benefits...
The Nuts and Bolts of Becoming a Deep Learner Series
Note: This is a compilation of Frontier Friday, a weekly Substack published, originally released on 8 Jan. 2022 PART I Reflection: If learning = transfer, what are the top 3 things you’ve learned last year...
Parameters and Samples for Capturing Weekly Therapy Learnings
Since 2013, I’ve been capturing weekly short notes on what I’ve learned as a psychotherapist. I wished I’ve started earlier in career. In one of my first few posts on Frontiers, I talked about...
#11. The Edges and Leverages on Using Deliberate Practice Keynote Address
This is a keynote address given by Daryl Chow, Ph.D. for a virtual conference hosted by the University of New South Wales (UNSW). Cumulative evidence in psychotherapy suggests that we not only do not...
“I Don’t Mean To Be Mean But…”
How is it possible that when we are not our best “therapeutic” self can lead to a good outcome? In the last post, Develop Good Taste, I talked about the benefits of listening to...
Develop Good Taste
Before you can develop good abilities, you’ve got to develop good taste. If you want to develop as a musician, you’d want to develop an ear for music. You would then need to expose...
Obsession with Map Finding
We have an obsession with map finding. We think that if we search hard enough, we will correct the map that we have, and/or find the right map to rule them all. To see if this...
Recent Comments