Tolerating Uncertainty: A Practical Toolkit to Help Clients Deal with Doubt

This workshop provides a practical introduction to helping clients deal with uncertainty.

For many clients in therapy an inability to tolerate uncertainty can lead to severe distress and unhelpful behaviours designed to reduce uncertainty often at a cost. Understanding Intolerance of Uncertainty (IoU) should be a key part of any counsellor's toolkit.

But how can we help clients tolerate uncertainty better? What are the invidivual differences in profiles of tolerating uncertainty? What is the role of cognition and behaviours in helping clients cope with uncertainty? What are the links with Unhelpful Thinking Styles? What are the interpersonal dynamics which can maintain and aggravate Intolerance of Uncertainty?

And what about ourselves as therapists? Under what conditions are we less likely to be able to tolerate uncertainty? How can a greater level of tolerance of uncertainty help us become better therapists?

We will look at a range of approaches and offer a simple, practical approach which can be used by qualified therapists immediately. The workshop support materials will include worksheets for clients that can be used immediately.

Topics (indicative)

1. INTRODUCTION
2. Uncertainty - engaging with everyday life
3. Psychoeducation and Socialisation into Treatment - Beliefs about certainty and responsibility
4. TECHNIQUES
5. Challenging Intolerance of Uncertainty
6. Postponing Worry
7. Applying the The Intolerance of Uncertainty Model (IUM) of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and the role of to Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU), Positive Beliefs about Worry (PBW), Negative Problem Orientation (NPO), and Cognitive Avoidance (CA) [Dugas]
8. Individual Differences in IoU Profiles - The Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale
9. Identifying and Changing Maladaptive Strategies: Reassurance, List-making, overchecking, Non-delegation, Procrastination and Distraction
10. Experiments to Challenge Beliefs about Uncertainty
11. Accepting Uncertainty
12. Tolerance of Distress
13. REVIEW
14. Case Study
15. Intolerance of Uncertainty in Therapists
16. Recent Research
17. Summary and Next Steps

Benefits for Participants of this Workshop

• Be able to understand the dynamics of IoU better
• Be able to assess the profile of a client's IoU profile and negotiate a treatment plan
• Be able to apply 5 practical techniques to support clients and help clients learn to treat themselves
• Be able to review outcomes on tackling IoU
• Be able to apply key technques and ideas about IoU to yourself as a therapist

About the Trainer

Professor Patrick McGhee is a CBT therapist, psychologist and UK National Teaching Fellow. Educated at the universities of Glasgow and Oxford, he has completed CPD programmes at Harvard Business School and Ashridge. In 2017 he was a Visiting Fellow/Scholar at the universities of Cornell, Yale and MIT in the USA. He has taught, researched or practised in psychology and therapy for 30 years. His first post was a Research Fellow in Psychiatry and Psychology at St George's Hospital Medical School, University of London. He is the author of Thinking Psychologically (Palgrave) and co-editor of Accounting for Relationships (Methuen). He is an occasional columnist for the Guardian, the BBC and the Times Higher. He currently works in private practice in Greater Manchester. He has full accreditation from the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies.