Late last year, I began a project I'd been putting off for a long while: culling my professional books. I had thousands. They filled the shelves in both my office and home. To be sure, I did not collect for the sake of collecting. Each had been important to me ...
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Deliberate practice is hot.  More workshops and trainings are being offered on the topic than ever before.  In the last year, a veritable slew of books has also appeared, with many being tied to a specific therapeutic modality.  Given that the topic was introduced to the field a mere 15 ...
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"Why don't more therapists do FIT?" a grad student asked me during a recent consultation.  Seated nearby in the room were department managers, supervisors, and many experienced practitioners. "Well," I said, queuing up my usual, diplomatic answer, "Feedback informed treatment is a relatively new idea, and the number of therapists doing ...
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It's one of my favorite lines from one of my all time favorite films.  Civilian Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) accompanies a troop of "colonial marines" to LV-426.  Contact with the people living and working on the distant exomoon has been lost.  A formidable life form is suspected.  The Alien.  Ripley is on board ...
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Ever see the film, Sliding Doors? It's an older movie with a familiar plot.  Life can change in an instant -- in this case, depending on whether or not lead character, Helen (played by Gwyneth Paltrow), catches a train.   Both possibilities are explored, the results being dramatically different. Now, consider ...
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The last two years have been difficult.  Whether through illness, death of loved ones, job loss, economic insecurity, or social isolation, few have escaped the consequences of the worldwide pandemic. While government and media attention has been focused on physical health, rates of anxiety and depression have soared ().  Younger ...
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The idea that improvement in a given skill or performance domain depends on practice is hardly new.  Indeed, references to enhancing a person’s abilities through focused concentration and effort date back more than two millennia (). Though the term, deliberate practice, includes the word, “practice,” it is altogether different.  The ...
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Therapists want to improve.   In the largest, most comprehensive survey conducted to date, 86% of clinicians reported being “highly motivated” to transcend their current level of performance (). No wonder the arrival of deliberate practice on the professional scene has attracted so much interest.   Always hungry for guidance and direction ...
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Type the words, "Old habits ..." into Google, and the search engine quickly adds, "die hard" and "are hard to break."  When I did it just now, these were followed by two song titles -- one by Hank Williams Jr., the other by Mick Jagger -- both dealing with letting go ...
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Being a mental health professional is a lot like being a parent. Please read that last statement carefully before drawing any conclusions! I did not say mental health services are similar to parenting.  Rather, despite their best efforts, therapists, like parents, routinely feel they fall short of their hopes and ...
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Deliberate Practice is hot.  Judging from the rising number of research studies, workshops, and social media posts, it hard to believe the term did not appear in the psychotherapy literature until . The interest is understandable.  Among the various approaches to professional development -- supervision, continuing education, personal therapy -- the ...
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"We don't do 'treatment,' can we use FIT?" It's a question that comes up with increasing frequency as use of the Outcome and Session Rating Scales in the helping professions spreads around the globe and across diverse service settings. When I answer an unequivocal, "yes," the asker often responds as ...
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When it comes to professional development, we therapists are remarkably consistent in opinion about what matters.  Regardless of experience level, theoretical preference, professional discipline, or gender identity, large, longitudinal studies show "learning from clients" is considered the most important and influential contributor (, ).  Said another way, we believe clinical ...
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Amateurs have goals.  Experts have a system. Bold statements to be sure, both supported by research on deliberate practice -- the one activity documented to improve clinicians' therapeutic effectiveness. Much is made in the self-improvement and therapy literature about the importance of setting goals.  Unless you've been hiding under a ...
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I have a guilty confession to make.  I really like Kitchen Nightmares.  Even though the show finished its run six L O N G years ago, I still watch it in re-runs.  The concept was simple.  Send one of the world's best known chefs to save a failing restaurant. Each week a ...
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Criticizing umpires is as much a part of watching baseball as eating hotdogs and wearing team jerseys on game day.  The insults are legion, whole websites are dedicated to cataloging them: "Open your eyes!" "Wake up, you are missing a great game!" "Your glasses fogged up?" "Have you tried eating ...
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