UNE’s School of Social Work provides you not only with the advocacy and community building skills necessary to the field, but also prepares you with advanced clinical skills essential to eventually becoming a licensed clinical social worker. As a licensed clinical social worker, you can practice psychotherapy and other therapeutic modalities similar to licensed counselors, psychologists and other mental health professionals. With advanced clinical courses in areas like Psychosocial Assessment, CBT, Trauma, Narrative Therapy, Trauma, and Spiritual Dimensions of Social Work Practice, UNE will support your unique interests and set you on a path of meaningful employment, social advocacy and lifelong learning.
Today’s blog post shares about a particular MSW elective course called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: A Strengths-Based Perspective. Keep reading to learn more about how this course is applying a social work lens to CBT and providing students with unique opportunities to engage with this therapy modality!
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is often considered the gold standard in psychotherapy because of its clear research support. CBT focuses on helping individuals identify and explore the ways emotions and thoughts can affect their actions or behaviors. Once individuals are able to notice these patterns, they can begin learning how to change their behaviors and develop new coping strategies.
The challenge for social workers has been finding ways to learn CBT that are strengths-based, trauma-informed, and supportive of client self-efficacy and self-determination. This elective course, Strengths-Based CBT, aims to apply a social work lens to this therapy modality.
Students taking this course will:
• Experience CBT from a client perspective by personally completing assigned CBT exercises
• Gain Group Therapy skills by participating in weekly CBT groups to debrief exercises
• Learn CBT Individual, Couples, and Family skills and techniques
• Practice CBT skills and techniques in simulated role-plays
• Learn how to structure CBT therapy sessions over a 12-15-week treatment period
Associate Clinical Professor Craig Owens shared about his inspiration for this course:
“An oyster creates a pearl out of a grain of sand. The grain of sand irritates the oyster. In response, the oyster creates a smooth, protective coating that covers the sand and provides relief. This protective coating is a beautiful pearl. For an oyster, an irritant becomes the seed for something new and beautiful.” ~ Greenberger and Padesky, Mind Over Mood, Second Edition, 2016
The moment I read the above quote by Greenberger and Padesky I knew that they, and I, held shared values of human resiliency and the potential inside all of us for healing and post traumatic growth. Their beautiful metaphor of creating a pearl from an intrusive and irritating grain of sand is similar to how I imagine we as human beings heal and create something beautiful and new from what were once painful intrusions in our own lives. Hope and possibility have long guided me on my life journey and in my professional counseling career. This same inspiration is what fuels all of the clinical training courses I develop and is deeply infused in the 2023 rebirth of CBT: A Strengths-Based Perspective.
Join us March 9th 12-1:30pm for a virtual info session featuring social work and therapy. All events listed HERE
Stay tuned for more UNE MSW Elective Spotlights on the blog over the next few months!