Empowering Strategies for Extreme Forms of Aggression and Self-Injury: Recovery-Oriented Cognitive Therapy

In this course, Dr. Ellen Inverso (PsyD, Beck Institute faculty member, and co-developer of recovery-oriented cognitive therapy) explains that clients who have experienced trauma can be in either disconnected or adaptive mode, with the activation of different types of beliefs and through those, different response states. She poses the cognitive models for when people are feeling challenged or empowered and outlines the questions therapists can ask with each of four aspects of guided discovery. The stages of the adaptive mode are explained, and a comparison of aggression and self-injury shows similarities in terms of felt vulnerability, hypervigilance, and interpretation of events. The STEER steps are listed and Dr. Inverso shows you how to help a client develop the all-important recovery image. Case example “Eve” is discussed.