Develop Your Own Gift of Therapy
We are more likely to be persuaded by our own ideas, if we capture them.
Tagged: learning
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...
#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,...
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...
#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...
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...
Wait…Why Measure?
Short answer: To be adaptive. Long answer: Watch this video p/s: This video is taken from one of the modules in our Deep Learner course. Deep Learner a field guide for psychotherapist, teaching you...
Peak Performance vs Typical Performance
Perhaps there is no bigger feat than taking on Mount Everest. The early pioneers like Sir Edmund Hilary have been recognised–and knighted–for conquering the highest peak in the world. [1] Peak performance is greatly...
The Tyranny of Metrics
For all this talk about the importance of measuring outcomes, we must resist the other side, the tyranny of metrics that can undermine the dignity of our human experience. A lack of appreciation and...
The Holy Grail of Learning
In more ways than one, therapists are bridge makers. Except that one of the greatest challenges is the process of bridging what we’ve learned into fruitfulness for our clients. Demis Hassabis, founder of the...
A Deep Learner Needs a Möbius Strip
When I first heard about a “möbius strip” from writer Parker Palmer, I thought it was a name for a German freeway or something. The Smithsonian magazine explains that “a Möbius strip can be...
#5. When Performing Impedes Learning
For a video version of this episode, see below: “I spent half of my life lost in an education system that pushed for results and performance… and failed.. Even when I Began to perform...
Focus on What’s Not Going to Change
Here is Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, on the importance of what’s not going to change: I very frequently get the question: ‘What’s going to change in the next 10 years?’ And that is...
Homeschooling?
A Smorgasbord of Tips to Keep Your Kids Engaged, Learning and Connected During Home Isolation. Note: This article is cross-posted on two of my blog sites, Frontiers of Psychotherapist Development and Full Circles. While FPD aims...
You Haven’t Taught Until They Have Learned
I love this phrase from the Hall of Fame basketball coach John Wooden. “You haven’t taught until they’ve learned.”[1] It’s tempting to focus on what we teach as clinical supervisors. Instead, we need to...
The Clock of Learning Across Disciplines (CLAD)
The Reimagining Education in Psychotherapy (REP) Series, Part 5. In the previous article (REP part 4), I made the case to be playful and tolerance for mediocrity as part of the learning journey. To...
Lego for Psychotherapists
Turns out that there there is a key difference between teaching kids how to play with legos, versus telling them what to build.
Measure Growth, Not Competence
The Reimagine Education in Psychotherapy (REP) Series, Part 3. I cannot fail. I failed way too many times in my primary, secondary, and even in tertiary education. It was challenging to not be succeeding...
Teach the 3 Types of Knowledge and Not Just 1
I propose that in order for us to reimagine education in psychotherapy (REP), these 3 types of knowledge—content, process, and conditional—can serve as a primary conceptual framework.
Competence in content knowledge can create a false confidence of ability. Meanwhile, analogous to a good music not necessarily needing music theory to make good music, it also begs the question if content knowledge needs to serve as a basis for process and conditional knowledge. Perhaps if schools treat these 3 domains ecologically, and not hierarchical; learners might experience the critical interplay early in their higher education.
Kindling the Flame
There are two different ways to think about how we educate psychotherapists. The first is a banking model. Traditionally, in a banking model, we teach the theory, research, fill it in the learner’s minds, attempting to download and fill the learner’s mind with knowledge, and about 4 years later, we then send them off for practicum and begin the real work.
The second way is a kindling model. In this approach, we flip the banking model on its head, and start with the action, igniting a deep interest while continuously fanning the flame, and then learn to synthesise, join the dots and form new conscious knowledge—after the fact.
4 Lessons from 20 Weeks of Very Bad Therapy
Ben and Carrie got me on their show for one of their episodes. (Listen to Episode 11, regarding the problem with an intake model. More about this in the book, The First Kiss). What they are doing is so underrated. I asked them in passing, “Wouldn’t it be super interesting to hear what you both learned after doing the first 20 episodes, so that we can learn too?”
I was surprised that they took up the invitation.
This is a guest post by Ben Fineman and Caroline Wiita.
“It’s All About the Process…”
We need to trust the process of therapy, but without clarity on the effect of therapy, you are likely to get lost in the weeds—lost in our theoretical explanations and pet solutions—especially when the client isn’t experiencing any real gain.
Explainaholic
Last week, I discussed why information does not typically lead to transformation. and how the over-emphasis on content knowledge. I alluded to our over-emphasis on content knowledge over relational knowledge. So why can’t we...
Information is Not Transformation
“If information is all we need, everyone would have become billionaires, with perfect 6-pack abs,” says writer and entrepreneur Derek Sivers. Information ≠transformation. We spend a lot of our time consuming information, in hopes...
The Music of Psychotherapy: Learning in a Wicked Environment
I often get a bewildered look when I tell people that the first place I visited in US was Kansas City. It was also the first time I met K. Anders Ericsson. In 2010,...
How Do You Go Faster on a Bicycle?
Pedal harder. Build you leg muscles and increase your stamina. Wrong. Watch cyclist Michael Guerra tap into the principles of aerodynamics in catching up on the race.
Here’s the Payoff
It all begins with an investment of faith. Organisations, supervisees, and practitioners whom I consult with know that, for the most part, they wouldn’t see immediate results. It’s a calculated gamble. I recently began...
Personal Learnings: Looking Back In Order To Move Forward (Part II of II)
“What is essential is invisible to the eye.” ~Fred Rogers In the last blog post, I wrote about the personal side of I’ve learned from the peaks and troughs of 2018. Today, I’d...
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