Intrusive Thoughts Treatment Workshop

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All members of the PESI, Inc. planning committee have provided disclosures of financial relationships with ineligible organizations and any relevant non-financial relationships prior to planning content for this activity. None of the committee members had relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies or other potentially biasing relationships to disclose to learners.  For speaker disclosures, please see the faculty biography.

Speaker

David A Clark, B.SC, MA, M.PHIL, PhD Related seminars and products

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Dr. David A. Clark, clinical psychologist, researcher, therapist and Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of New Brunswick, Canada received his formal training in behavior therapy and a PhD in 1984 at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, England. He then proceeded to postdoctoral research and clinical training under Dr. Aaron T. Beck at the Center for Cognitive Therapy, University of Pennsylvania. The author of 19 academic books and self-help workbooks on anxiety, depression and OCD, he has offered close to 100 training workshops globally on various facets of CBT. He has coauthored several books with Dr. Beck, the founder of cognitive therapy, including Cognitive Therapy of Anxiety Disorders: Science and Practice (Guilford, 2012) and The Anxiety & Worry Workbook: The Cognitive Behavioral Solution (2e, Guilford, 2023). Other publications include The Anxious Thoughts Workbook (2018, New Harbinger), The Negative Thoughts Workbook (New Harbinger, 2020), This is What Anxiety Looks Like (New Harbinger, 2024), and most recently Overcoming Paralyzing Doubt and Indecision (New Harbinger, 2026). He maintains a blog with Psychology Today called The Runaway Mind.

 

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: David Clark receives royalties as a published author. He receives a speaking honorarium from PESI, Inc. He has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: David Clark is a member of the International OCD Beliefs Working Group. He serves as an editorial board member for Canadian Psychologist and the Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders. David Clark is a peer reviewer for several publications, for a complete list contact PESI, Inc.

 

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Objectives

1. Identify the mental processes that turn some forms of unwanted mental intrusions into irresistible obsessions, depressive rumination, or worry.
2. Choose interventions that capitalize on the paradox of mental control to counter the uncontrollability of unwanted distressing intrusive thoughts, images, and impulses.
3. Modify CBT assessment and case formulation to guide the use of targeted treatment strategies for mental intrusions in OCD, depression, and anxiety.
4. Utilize cognitive interventions that defuse the faulty beliefs and appraisals causing the experience of unwanted and uncontrollable intrusions.
5. Use focused distraction and disengagement interventions for treatment of obsessions, worry, and rumination.
6. Develop relapse prevention and maintenance strategies that focus on a healthy acceptance of the inevitability of unwanted intrusive thinking.

Outline

The Brain’s Default Mode: Why Certain Thoughts Are So “Sticky”

• Meet the Brain’s Default Mode (BDM), it’s role in survival & creativity
• Intrusive thinking: positive, negative, or benign
• How to know when thoughts become uncontrollable, unwanted intrusions
• The cascade of negative thoughts: (obsessions, worry, rumination)
• The shortcomings of CBT when it comes to intrusions
• Risks and limitations
• Exercises: Contrast wanted and unwanted mental intrusions

Treatment Plans for Obsessions, Worry and Rumination: Making Room for Unwanted Intrusions

• Address the core issues: Self-regulation, control fears & dysfunctional beliefs
• The self-regulation model and genesis of unwanted intrusions
• Unwanted intrusions in the pathogenesis of worry, rumination, and obsessions
• How to highlight what’s important in case formulation
• Methods of assessment and individualized case formulation
• Methods of assessment and individualized case formulation
• Case conceptualization examples for obsessions, worry, and rumination

Targeted Interventions for Unwanted Distressing Intrusions

• Self-monitoring exercises that highlight the normality of mental intrusions
• Detoxification strategies: guided discovery, inductive questioning, inferential confusion, and more
• Mental control paradox exercises: the white bear experiment, cognitive restructuring, graded in vivo mental challenges and more
• Explore goals: acceptance and letting go

New Treatment Protocols for Worry, Rumination, and Obsessions

• 5-Step protocol for worry: awareness, differentiating, modifying, exposure, de-catastrophizing
• 4-Step protocol for obsessive thoughts: normalizing, challenging, working with, acting against through experiential exercises
• 4-Step protocol for rumination: self-monitoring, restructuring, shifting why to how, gratitude

Cautious Optimism in Treatment of Negative Repetitive Thought

• “Evidence-based” versus “evidence-informed” treatment strategies
• The importance of the therapeutic alliance, especially with “scary thoughts’
• What can go wrong and how to respond
• How to promote greater well-being and build on the BDM

Target Audience

• Counselors
• Social Workers
• Psychologists
• Psychotherapists
• Therapists
• Marriage & Family Therapists
• Addiction Counselors
• Case Managers
• Physicians
• Nurses
• Other Mental Health Professionals