Keynote 21 - These Once Innovative Ideas Now Need to Be Radically Applied

Many CBT therapists, researchers and instructors today would describe themselves as client-centered, collaborative and strengths-based. Padesky argues that we can elevate our effectiveness by applying these practices radically instead of perfunctorily. For example, when we practice strengths-based CBT more radically it transforms everything: the issues we discuss, the goals we ask our clients to set, and the methods we use to encourage clients to use their strengths for life transformation. Client-centered collaboration, when radically applied, considers with genuine interest: Socratic dialogues that lead to unexpected places, client-generated conceptualizations that contradict accepted paradigms, and novel interventions that resonate with client cultures. Padesky has been modelling radically client-centered, radically collaborative and radically strengths-based CBT for nearly 50 years in her therapy, world-wide teaching, and video clinical demonstrations. Most of her therapy innovations resulted from her application of one or more of these three approaches. Many were considered radical at first. Examples of her innovations include: the 7-Column Thought Record (Padesky, 1983), Assertive Defense of the Self as a treatment for social anxiety (Padesky, 1997), Strengths-Based CBT: A 4-step model to build resilience (Padesky, & Mooney, 2012), collaborative case conceptualization (Padesky, 2020), her 4-Stage model of Socratic Dialogue (Padesky & Kennerley, 2023), Mind Over Mood (Greenberger & Padesky, 1995; 2016) and the 5-Part Model (Padesky & Mooney, 1990) which, when introduced in 1986 was the first CBT model to highlight the role of environment. Padesky illustrates how radically applying client-centered, collaborative, and strengths-based CBT can improve our effectiveness. Considering these approaches more radically also offers a rich tapestry of topics for untapped areas of research that can create opportunities for generations to come.