Traditional Workshop 3 - Existential Concerns and Cognitive-behavioural Procedures: Managing Death, Isolation, Identity, Freedom and the Search for Meaning

Clients enter therapy with a range of problems of living. They don't speak in diagnostic terms, but instead focus on the everyday difficulties that confront them. These difficulties may include isolation, loneliness, anxiety and sadness, guilt and regret, and problems making decisions (i.e. indecisiveness) in a world that offers seemingly endless choice. In contrast, the cognitive-behaviour therapist is trained in the language of conditioning and extinction, avoidance and safety behaviours, behavioural activation and attentional biases. This workshop explores the ideas of the existentialist philosophers as a bridge between the suffering client and technically trained clinician. The workshop seeks to place CBT in the broader context of the most popular philosophic tradition of the 19th and 20th centuries. The existentialists argued that each of us must confront the 'Big 5' issues of death, isolation, identity, freedom and meaning and find solutions to these problems. The workshop explores these themes and their relevance to a range of conditions including (but not limited to) OCD, panic disorder, illness anxiety disorder, phobic disorders, major depression and substance use problems. The workshop highlights the limitations of some current CBT interventions in failing to address underlying existential concerns.

Outline
1. Introduction to existential issues in mental health
2. Death awareness and it’s role in mental health
a. Assessment
b. Treatment
3. Existential isolation (EI)
a. Differentiating EI from loneliness
b. Assessment
c. Treatment
4. Identity
a. Assessment
b. Treatment
5. Freedom
a. Assessing for maximising and indecisiveness
b. The management of guilt and regret
c. Treatment
6. Meaning
a. Search for meaning vs found meaning
b. Treatment