31st Annual Psychotherapy & Faith Conference
“Shaken to the Core: Restoring Faith in Psychotherapy”
Friday, November 4, 2022 | 8:45 AM - 2:30 PM CT | Hybrid Event
at Institute for Spirituality and Health
with option to attend virtually via Zoom
4.5 CE hours available for physicians, psychologists, addictions professionals, social workers, licensed professional counselors, and licensed marriage and family therapists
Shaken to the Core: Restoring Faith in Psychotherapy
The importance of faith in a clinical setting of inherent uncertainties and the challenges of maintaining faith following adverse clinical events are addressed unevenly at best in the professional education of psychotherapists and counselors of all disciplines. Our contemporary plight brings the challenges of faith to the forefront, with the loss, grief, and stress of the pandemic; social-political strife and the erosion of trust in governments and governmental institutions; and the looming crises of climate change. These contemporary challenges compound the potential shattering of faith that brings many patients to psychotherapy: such betrayal in important relationships felt as desecrations that engender spiritual struggles. This Psychotherapy and Faith conference will turn the spotlight on elucidating patients’ AND therapists’ struggles with faith, based on the premise that therapists are best positioned to support and guide their patients when therapists have reckoned with their own challenges with trust, hope, and faith. Presenters from diverse religious and spiritual traditions and perspectives will bring their personal and clinical experience to bear on their ways of restoring faith in their own and their patients’ lives.
Objectives:
1) Participants will be able to describe “spiritual struggles” as a phenomenon that leads to anxiety, mood disorders, and substance misuse
2) Participants will be able to identify positive and negative consequences of constructing a relationship or belief as sacred (defined as Very Important)
3) Participants will be able to describe how developing a safe and intimate professional community can be a useful resource when a professional experiences adverse outcomes
Speakers:
Kerry Horell, PhD
Keynote: Julie Exline, PhD
Sallie Crotty, Author of Out of the Ashes: A Story of Recovery and Hope
Gina Belton, PhD
James Lomax, MD
Panelists:
Virgil Fry, DMin
Sean Fitzpatrick, PhD
Daryl Shorter, MD
Elizabeth Laney, PhD