CE credits available for this Two-Day Event: 7.5
Saturday, 24 June 2023 - 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. UTC/GMT +3 (Eastern European Summer Time)
Sunday, 25 June 2023 - 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m UTC/GMT +3 (Eastern European Summer Time)
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Workshop Description:
Self-criticism is a transdiagnostic process at the heart of many mental health problems (Schanche 2013), including social anxiety (Gautreau, et al. 2015), depression, eating disorders (Porter, Zelkowitz and Cole 2018, Williams and Levinson 2022, Zelkowitz and Cole 2019), binge eating, body image concerns (Noordenbos, Aliakbari and R. 2014), hoarding (Chou 2018), self-harm, emotional dysregulation (Zelkowitz and Cole 2019), perfectionism, and suicide probability (O'Neill, et al. 2021). Criticism from others is also a common experience for people who experience marginalization and discrimination because of their gender and sexual orientation (Chen, et al. 2022), and minority status. The life-time experience of criticism from others often results in heightened self-stigma, self-criticism, and experiences of shame that drive mental health problems and need to be explicitly addressed within therapy.
Clinicians are also at risk of heightened self-criticism due to the ambiguous nature of our work, the high standards we set for ourselves and our urgency and desire to help others. Clinicians in training and early career clinicians are particularly vulnerable to heightened self-criticism due to frequent evaluations and uncertainty (Richardson, Trusty and George 2018). Ongoing self-criticism can contribute to professional burnout, stress, mental and physical health problems in professionals, and can result in experienced practitioners leaving the profession.
Both clinician and client can benefit from having a range of strategies to alleviate the impact of self-critical thoughts and generate new, more helpful ways of responding to self-critical thoughts. Furthermore, clinicians in supervisory or training roles are in a position where they can cultivate a more compassionate response to self criticism in the next generation of clinicians. To be effective, these strategies need to accommodate individual differences in information-processing, personal identity, minority status and personal preferences of the individual sitting in front of them, and for themselves. Not everyone is able to visualize or use imagery in exercises, sustain longer mindfulness activities in session, or implement daily mindfulness practices, yet would benefit from developing deeper skills in self-compassion.
This experiential workshop will explore the phenomenology of self criticism through a CBS lens for both clinician, supervisor, and client. Participants will be presented with a thorough conceptualization of self-criticism as an inherent element of language structure and learning that sits within a cultural, social and minority stress context, and contributes to mental health problems and self-stigma. Participants will explore different experiences of self-criticism and the close relationship this can have with shame and avoidance. The function of self-criticism as being both helpful and unhelpful self-criticism will be considered in the context of many people’s reluctance to let go of self-critical patterns.
Across each session, participants will explore different strategies to address the process of self-criticism, drawing from compassion-focused therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy and other behavioral and emotional-regulation approaches to develop a ‘tool-kit’ of options when working with diverse people and communities. In doing so, participants will develop a greater ability to navigate their own self-criticism and offer themselves compassion as a professional.