Hello everyone! Long time reader, few time poster here.
Before I get started, I wanted to start with a disclaimer: About six months ago, while on internship and frustrated (see below), I decided to reach out to the owner of Psychotherapy.net, Victor Yalom (Irvin Yalom’s son), and inquire about whether he would offer me a discount off the monthly subscription price of his psychotherapy training video website in exchange for me writing an honest review about my experiences using it. I have no financial interests in the company, have no affiliation with it, and receive no financial incentives of any kind from it for referrals. The review below details my genuine experiences using the site.
Now, for some background: I am currently on internship and envision a clinically oriented career. I love doing therapy and work with children, teens, adults, and couples. In general, I’ve found that I can easily build rapport with most clients—so I am not so concerned with my ability to build a strong therapeutic alliance or “having clients come back”. However, I do often worry that I am not implementing evidenced-based practices correctly, or in a particularly fluid/competent manner.
What I find really frustrating about our field is that despite coming from a solid clinical PhD program, I don’t find that my grad school classes or reading of treatment manuals are that useful for helping me become a better therapist “in the room”. Sure, I took several classes on CBT, mindfulness, etc, but I still am not sure whether I am delivering these approaches correctly and/or effectively when I use them with clients. This is after six years of practicum experience—frustrating! I know therapy isn’t like stats where there is a “right” or “wrong ” way—but nonetheless, I worry about my competency and how much I am actually helping my clients.
Without question, I have found that having a good supervisor during my practicum experiences has been helpful in my conceptualization/intervention skills. But, it also frustrates me that each year in my training I have to hope/pray I get a competent supervisor, or else I feel a bit lost. In my doctoral program, we did get video supervision for the first two years of practicum, but honestly that was early on in my training when I was trying to gain foundational therapy skills and learn to be “comfortable” in the room--not refining my knowledge of different therapeutic techniques (e.g., CBT, MI, DBT, ACT, EFT, etc).
Unfortunately, this year my internship supervisor has not been the best, and I feel like I haven’t been growing in my therapy skills. It seems like psychology is one of the only medical professions that exists where we are expected to be skilled in something that we almost never get to see hands-on modeled in front of us (maybe with the exception of co-leading groups with a supervisor—which can be extremely useful). Imagine if surgical residents never got to have an attending physician next to them overseeing their work? On top of all this, I find that treatment manuals can be fairly dry, and while certainly helpful, I find it difficult to fluidly incorporate EBP techniques into actual “non-robotic” seeming clinical practice.
That was a long roundabout way of saying that I have been greatly hoping to improve my therapy skills this year. In the process of trying to do, I stumbled upon Psychotherapy.net, Victor Yalom’s site, which has hundreds of psychotherapy training videos.
Psychotherapy.Net Summary and Review:
Overall, I found the site fantastic and without question it has been useful for improving my therapy skills the past couple of months. The site itself has a massive amount of therapy videos (honestly, enough to last years if you watch one a week). Many of the videos were created by the actual intervention creators (e.g., Linehan, Hayes, Beck, Meichenbaum, Johnson, Yalom, etc) and show them conducting full length sessions with clients using DBT, ACT, EFT, CBT, MI, etc. Some of the sessions are with actual real clients, and others are with mock clients. I actually found both of value—although I admittedly grew tired at times of the sub-par acting.
One thing I really like about the site is that it organizes the videos by author, presenting problem, or therapy genre. This was really handy because—for example—if I knew I had a client with OCD coming in, I could go to the OCD archive and watch a training video the night before my session which featured some well-known CBT experts (e.g., Reid Wilson from UNC Chapel Hill) demonstrating how to do Exposure and Responsive Prevention (a technique I don’t have much experience with). I can’t express how useful this was to watch—as I sometimes will catch myself avoiding using certain techniques in session if I didn’t feel comfortable using them.
I have watched a lot of the videos on the site so far, and will also admit that many are of varying quality. If it saves any of you some time, here are some of the videos that I found most helpful:
1. Steven Hayes—6 video set of ACT in Action
2. Arthur Freeman— Depression: A Cognitive Approach
3. Donald Meichenbaum—CBT for Mixed Anxiety and Depression; CBT for Anger
4. Rebecca Jorgensen—A complete treatment with Emotionally Focused Therapy
5. Sue Johnson—EFT Step by Step
6. Marsha Linehan—DBT with Suicidal Clients 1 + 2; and DBT Techniques for Emotional Dysregulation by Shelley McMain
7. Reid Wilson (amazing) — Accelerated Treatment for Anxiety Disorders; CBT for OCD; CBT for Panic Disorder; Exposure Therapy for Phobias
8. Devin Ashwood—Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention for Addictions 1 + 2
9. Jon Kabat-Zinn—Mindful Parenting
10. Bruce Masek— Cognitive-Behavioral Child Therapy
I will say that one drawback to the site is that some of the videos are a bit dated, and I found the newer videos to be more useful in general (e.g., some funny psychoanalytic stuff from the 90’s on there). Nonetheless, Yalom does a great job of selecting good videos for this site, and it is evident that he spent a long time carefully selecting which videos to include. In fact, a large portion of the videos on the site feature Yalom himself at the outset of the video interviewing the intervention developer (e.g., Linehan, Sue Johnson) about how their approach differs from other major models.
In summary, I strongly feel that my therapy skills have benefited from watching the training videos hosted on psychotherapy.net, and would definitely recommend checking out if your graduate program or internship/post-doc already has a membership (they offer site licenses, and apparently many programs already have them). If not, you might consider shooting your DCT a message inquiring about it. I had never heard about this resource from my program before.
The site also has monthly and unlimited subscriptions for individual use, which run around $40-45 a month. I was informed that Yalom would be running a special discount for SDN members for the next few weeks to get an additional $100 off the monthly/annual price (again, I have no financial involvement with this site—and get zero compensation or “kick backs” for referrals). The discount code is: 100offBN
If any of you on this forum have experience using the site, I would also be really curious to hear about your thoughts and experiences. Alternatively, if you have any other training video resources to share that have been helpful for you, please do post them! I would especially be interested in videos dedicated to treating PTSD, as I haven't found many good free videos demonstrating PE/CPT.
Congrats again to those of you who recently matched for internship/post-doc this past week (I matched to my number 1 ranked post-doc site yesterday, woohoo!). Happy training to all of you.
Before I get started, I wanted to start with a disclaimer: About six months ago, while on internship and frustrated (see below), I decided to reach out to the owner of Psychotherapy.net, Victor Yalom (Irvin Yalom’s son), and inquire about whether he would offer me a discount off the monthly subscription price of his psychotherapy training video website in exchange for me writing an honest review about my experiences using it. I have no financial interests in the company, have no affiliation with it, and receive no financial incentives of any kind from it for referrals. The review below details my genuine experiences using the site.
Now, for some background: I am currently on internship and envision a clinically oriented career. I love doing therapy and work with children, teens, adults, and couples. In general, I’ve found that I can easily build rapport with most clients—so I am not so concerned with my ability to build a strong therapeutic alliance or “having clients come back”. However, I do often worry that I am not implementing evidenced-based practices correctly, or in a particularly fluid/competent manner.
What I find really frustrating about our field is that despite coming from a solid clinical PhD program, I don’t find that my grad school classes or reading of treatment manuals are that useful for helping me become a better therapist “in the room”. Sure, I took several classes on CBT, mindfulness, etc, but I still am not sure whether I am delivering these approaches correctly and/or effectively when I use them with clients. This is after six years of practicum experience—frustrating! I know therapy isn’t like stats where there is a “right” or “wrong ” way—but nonetheless, I worry about my competency and how much I am actually helping my clients.
Without question, I have found that having a good supervisor during my practicum experiences has been helpful in my conceptualization/intervention skills. But, it also frustrates me that each year in my training I have to hope/pray I get a competent supervisor, or else I feel a bit lost. In my doctoral program, we did get video supervision for the first two years of practicum, but honestly that was early on in my training when I was trying to gain foundational therapy skills and learn to be “comfortable” in the room--not refining my knowledge of different therapeutic techniques (e.g., CBT, MI, DBT, ACT, EFT, etc).
Unfortunately, this year my internship supervisor has not been the best, and I feel like I haven’t been growing in my therapy skills. It seems like psychology is one of the only medical professions that exists where we are expected to be skilled in something that we almost never get to see hands-on modeled in front of us (maybe with the exception of co-leading groups with a supervisor—which can be extremely useful). Imagine if surgical residents never got to have an attending physician next to them overseeing their work? On top of all this, I find that treatment manuals can be fairly dry, and while certainly helpful, I find it difficult to fluidly incorporate EBP techniques into actual “non-robotic” seeming clinical practice.
That was a long roundabout way of saying that I have been greatly hoping to improve my therapy skills this year. In the process of trying to do, I stumbled upon Psychotherapy.net, Victor Yalom’s site, which has hundreds of psychotherapy training videos.
Psychotherapy.Net Summary and Review:
Overall, I found the site fantastic and without question it has been useful for improving my therapy skills the past couple of months. The site itself has a massive amount of therapy videos (honestly, enough to last years if you watch one a week). Many of the videos were created by the actual intervention creators (e.g., Linehan, Hayes, Beck, Meichenbaum, Johnson, Yalom, etc) and show them conducting full length sessions with clients using DBT, ACT, EFT, CBT, MI, etc. Some of the sessions are with actual real clients, and others are with mock clients. I actually found both of value—although I admittedly grew tired at times of the sub-par acting.
One thing I really like about the site is that it organizes the videos by author, presenting problem, or therapy genre. This was really handy because—for example—if I knew I had a client with OCD coming in, I could go to the OCD archive and watch a training video the night before my session which featured some well-known CBT experts (e.g., Reid Wilson from UNC Chapel Hill) demonstrating how to do Exposure and Responsive Prevention (a technique I don’t have much experience with). I can’t express how useful this was to watch—as I sometimes will catch myself avoiding using certain techniques in session if I didn’t feel comfortable using them.
I have watched a lot of the videos on the site so far, and will also admit that many are of varying quality. If it saves any of you some time, here are some of the videos that I found most helpful:
1. Steven Hayes—6 video set of ACT in Action
2. Arthur Freeman— Depression: A Cognitive Approach
3. Donald Meichenbaum—CBT for Mixed Anxiety and Depression; CBT for Anger
4. Rebecca Jorgensen—A complete treatment with Emotionally Focused Therapy
5. Sue Johnson—EFT Step by Step
6. Marsha Linehan—DBT with Suicidal Clients 1 + 2; and DBT Techniques for Emotional Dysregulation by Shelley McMain
7. Reid Wilson (amazing) — Accelerated Treatment for Anxiety Disorders; CBT for OCD; CBT for Panic Disorder; Exposure Therapy for Phobias
8. Devin Ashwood—Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention for Addictions 1 + 2
9. Jon Kabat-Zinn—Mindful Parenting
10. Bruce Masek— Cognitive-Behavioral Child Therapy
I will say that one drawback to the site is that some of the videos are a bit dated, and I found the newer videos to be more useful in general (e.g., some funny psychoanalytic stuff from the 90’s on there). Nonetheless, Yalom does a great job of selecting good videos for this site, and it is evident that he spent a long time carefully selecting which videos to include. In fact, a large portion of the videos on the site feature Yalom himself at the outset of the video interviewing the intervention developer (e.g., Linehan, Sue Johnson) about how their approach differs from other major models.
In summary, I strongly feel that my therapy skills have benefited from watching the training videos hosted on psychotherapy.net, and would definitely recommend checking out if your graduate program or internship/post-doc already has a membership (they offer site licenses, and apparently many programs already have them). If not, you might consider shooting your DCT a message inquiring about it. I had never heard about this resource from my program before.
The site also has monthly and unlimited subscriptions for individual use, which run around $40-45 a month. I was informed that Yalom would be running a special discount for SDN members for the next few weeks to get an additional $100 off the monthly/annual price (again, I have no financial involvement with this site—and get zero compensation or “kick backs” for referrals). The discount code is: 100offBN
If any of you on this forum have experience using the site, I would also be really curious to hear about your thoughts and experiences. Alternatively, if you have any other training video resources to share that have been helpful for you, please do post them! I would especially be interested in videos dedicated to treating PTSD, as I haven't found many good free videos demonstrating PE/CPT.
Congrats again to those of you who recently matched for internship/post-doc this past week (I matched to my number 1 ranked post-doc site yesterday, woohoo!). Happy training to all of you.
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