Teaching Wisdom: Best practices for decision-making to support your clients

Curt and Katie chat about decision-making best practices. We look at how we make decisions, what the decision-making process looks like, what can get in the way of effective decision-making, and how therapists can support their clients in making the best possible decisions.

This is a continuing education podcourse.

Transcripts for this episode will be available at mtsgpodcast.com!

In this podcast episode we talk about how therapists can support clients in decision-making

When therapists are asked “what do I do?!?” by their clients, we can often redirect our clients back and encourage them to make their own decisions. But what if we could provide them with best practices to support their decision-making process? This workshop is designed to help therapists learn more about how people typically make decisions, the cultural differences that can show up in the decision-making process, and best practices to support clients in making informed decisions.

How do we make decisions?

·      We don’t often choose what is in our best interest

·      Emotions, mood, bias impact how we make decisions

·      The DBT concept of Wise Mind, is a strong space to make decision

·      Individual differences, including age, generation, family structures

·      Cultural differences, including individualistic versus collectivist, tight or loose cultures (how many norms and how strictly they are enforced), cognitive style (wholistic versus analytic)

·      Intersectionality also plays a part in how these factors can impact decision-making

What does the decision-making process look like?

·      Does a decision need to be made?

·      Who/what makes this decision?

·      How is the decision?

·      How much time and energy are invested in the decision-making?

·      What are the alternatives?

·      What could happen if the decision is implemented?

·      What would happen if I make this decision?

·      What values are relevant?

·      What are the tradeoffs?

·      How acceptable is this decision to the people around me?

·      Implementation

What can get in the way of effective decision-making?

·      How someone has been parented

·      Mental health concerns like anxiety

·      Cognitive biases like confirmation bias, anchoring, and availability bias

·      Misalignment with values

·      Errors from Decisive by Dan and Chip Heath: narrow framing, confirmation bias, short-term emotions, overconfidence

·      Defensive decision-making when there is a lack of resources or safety

·      Low sleep impacts both at overall cognitive and metacognitive levels

What are best practices for decision-making?

·      Looking at opportunities for moral development when there are misalignments or conflicts between core values when making a decision

·      From Decisive: WRAP techniques to improve decision-making

Receive Continuing Education for this Episode of the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide

You can find this full course (including handouts and resources) here: https://learn.moderntherapistcommunity.com/pages/podcourse

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Voice Over by DW McCann https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW/

Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano https://groomsymusic.com/