Breaking Free from the Limits of Our Medical Treatment Model
Courtney Armstrong • 6/25/2020
If we spend too much time preoccupied with our clients’ symptoms, we’re likely to miss important clues to their hidden strengths. I’ve learned that turning a symptom into a client’s ally can transform the whole experience of therapy for both the therapist and client.
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A Master Clinician Shares Her Most Therapeutic Moment
Courtney Armstrong • 10/16/2019
Many people wonder how therapists manage to do the work they do. Of the thousands of meaningful sessions that take place in a therapist’s office, certain ones stand out. Here, therapist Courtney Armstrong shares the story of working with her most memorable client.
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...While Still Validating Their Pain
Courtney Armstrong • 5/15/2019
How do you help clients access resourceful states when they’re feeling hopeless and helpless? In this short video, trauma specialist Courtney Armstrong explains.
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How to Vitalize Your Therapeutic Style
Courtney Armstrong • 1/1/2019
By Courtney Armstrong - The more we learn about the emotional brain, the clearer it becomes: to have real therapeutic impact, we need to create experiences that help clients learn to relate to themselves and the world in entirely new ways.
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To Keep Clients Tuned In, Sometimes Our Work Has to Be Twice as Interesting as Their Problems
Courtney Armstrong • 8/28/2018
By Courtney Armstrong - The more we learn about the emotional brain, the clearer it becomes: to have real therapeutic impact, we need to create experiences that help clients learn to relate to themselves and the world in entirely new ways.
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A Master Clinician Shares Her Most Therapeutic Moment
Courtney Armstrong • 6/19/2018
By Courtney Armstrong - Many people wonder how therapists manage to do the work they do. Of the thousands of meaningful sessions that take place in a therapist’s office, certain ones stand out. In the following storytelling piece, Courtney Armstrong shares a memorable moment from her own work.
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Hidden Strengths Can Be the Key to Healing Trauma
Courtney Armstrong • 9/30/2016
By Courtney Armstrong - As therapists, we’re taught to be master detectives who methodically investigate our clients’ symptoms in search of a “culprit”—the source of their pain. But if we spend too much time preoccupied with symptoms, we’re likely to miss important clues to hidden strengths, which can transform the experience of psychotherapy.
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Why Good Therapy Means Tapping Into the Client's Emotional Brain
Courtney Armstrong • 1/5/2016
How many times have you surprised yourself by jumping at the scary part of a movie? You know the villain in the movie isn’t real, but your emotional brain ignores this logic and leaps into action. In essence, the emotional brain is our unconscious mind, and scientists estimate that it controls about 95 percent of what we do, think, and feel at any given moment. As therapists, we have to be a provocative guide, creating experiences that go beyond the intellect to reach a deeply human place, prompting clients to believe they can relate to themselves and the world in a new way.
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Why Creative Strategies are the Therapist's Best Tool
Courtney Armstrong • 6/17/2015
How many times have you surprised yourself by jumping at the scary part of a movie? It isn’t enough to be a kind, supportive guide on clients’ journeys. We have to be a provocative guide, creating experiences that trigger their curiosity and desire to know more. Human behavior and motivation are driven mostly by the emotional brain---the brain centers that mediate “primitive” emotions and instincts and respond to sensory-rich experiences, not intellectual insights.
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