In the U.S., there are nearly 2,000 divorces per day. Furthermore, regardless of the denomination, 24% of married people who are active members of a church report struggling in their marriages, yet these struggles are wide and varying. In this workshop, licensed...
Workshop Tracks
108 | Staying in the Furnace Without Getting Burned: Attending to Intense Emotional Conflict in Couples
This workshop will bring findings from recent research showing how psychologists, licensed mental health professionals, pastors, and marriage coaches can help couples redirect emotional intensity, such as anger, despair, and hopelessness, toward relational intimacy...
109 | Preparing to Blend: Effective Pre-stepfamily Counseling with Couples and Children
In blended families, the rules are different, but the majority of dating and engaged couples walk into their wedding with both eyes shut; a full 75% of couples forming blended families get no premarital counseling at all—and those that do usually receive the same...
110 | Developmentally Appropriate Treatment of Childhood Trauma: The Evidence-based Use of Play Therapy
Psychotherapy with traumatized children must be developmentally appropriate. To use “adult therapy” with children is not only ineffective but also dishonoring. It is imperative to consider the encompassing psychological and neurobiological effects of trauma on...
111 | Faith and Hope: Providing Pastoral Care and Counseling to Alleviate Stress and Anxiety
The Bible illustrates and addresses the nature of anxiety and the call to live godly lives of hope and faith. How, then, should Christians deal with stress and anxiety in their lives, and how can ministry leaders and coaches bring God’s healing word to the subject? In...
112 | Dealing with Spiritual Struggles in Psychotherapy: Empirical Evidence and Clinical Applications from a Christian Perspective
This workshop will cover dealing with spiritual struggles in psychotherapy, based on the Pargament and Exline (2022) book, Working with Spiritual Struggles in Psychotherapy: From Research to Practice (see also Tan, 2022c). The six major spiritual struggles that will...
113 | How to Create a Healthy Congregation: The Role of Emotional and Relational Intelligence in the Church Culture
If God’s purpose of church leaders is to help their people “become conformed to the Image of His Son,” then what might that look like? What does it mean to “grow in Christ” and become a “mature” Christian? What impact should sanctification have on the moods,...
114 | Creative Experiential Techniques: How to Bypass Defenses and Engage Emotions in Therapy
Human beings are developed and shaped experientially by lived experiences. At times, cognitive-behavioral therapy and other therapies cannot fully engage the emotions that were activated at the time the wound was experienced. Process-experiential counseling can bring...
115 | Identifying and Treating Moral Injury In the Setting of Severe Trauma
The focus of this workshop is to briefly review the research on religion and mental health, discuss why evidence-based treatments in Christian mental healthcare are important, examine the limitations of randomized clinical trials (RCTs) and challenges involved in...
116 | Beyond Chemical Imbalance: How to Talk with Faith-based Clients about Psychiatric Medications
Speaking about psychological struggles as chemical imbalances or as disorders of neurotransmitter systems is common in today’s culture, but this is a folk metaphor more than a scientific conclusion. Although individuals’ brains are involved when they struggle, mental...