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Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Social Anxiety (vSA)

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Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Social Anxiety

CBT Clinical Demonstration with Christine A. Padesky, PhD.

Full Color MP4 video. Run Time 54 minutes.

Protocol & rationale. Practice “Assertive Defense of Self." Set up behavioral experiments.

Dr. Christine Padesky presents her treatment rationale and demonstrates the CBT approach she developed in the 1990’s to treat social anxiety called “Assertive Defense of the Self.”

A young woman (Pooh) describes how she avoids certain social events and activities because she fears criticism from others. In the opening minutes of this DVD program, Pooh identifies her anxious thoughts and gives a brief history of her fears.

Via role play practice that Padesky debriefs using Socratic dialogue, Pooh begins to build her "Assertive Defense of the Self" repertoire and skills. Over the course of this single session Pooh gains confidence that she can cope with criticism.

Padesky emphasizes coping with criticism rather than testing out the belief that people are critical. This is because successful CBT protocols help people directly face their fears. If fear of criticism is central to social anxiety then it makes sense that learning to face and cope with criticism should be central to treatment.

Once Pooh gains confidence she can defend herself against criticism, she works with Padesky to devise a behavioral experiment to test her skills in the real world. She devises a challenging experiment that she hopes will elicit criticism from others. This experiment is based on the "Assertive Defense" philosophy that people with social anxiety should court criticism until their fears subside. Viewers will hear how Pooh and Padesky develop the experiment and how Pooh learns to view herself as “lucky” if she received criticism.

Make sure you watch until the very end. The end credits of the program include a photo of Pooh carrying out her behavioral experiment that she emailed to Dr. Padesky several weeks after this session was filmed.

Time Codes
(use these time codes to quickly locate the sections)
00:00 - Permissions & Use Advisement
00:54 - Fear of Criticism
08:15 - Relevant History
13:00 - Treatment Rationale
17:07 - Assertive Defense Setup
23:30 - Practice Assertive Defense
28:36 - Debrief Experiments
37:07 - Seek Criticism
44:00 - Practice “Gentle” Defense
46:50 - Summary & Assignment
53:19 - End Credits (make sure you watch until the end)

PDF HANDOUT FOR SKU: vsa
A few weeks after the interview session, Pooh and Dr. Padesky exchanged several emails in which she reported on her behavioral experiment. This program includes a pdf document of Pooh’s Behavioral Experiement: Practicing Assertive Defense of the Self.

Our MP3 audio workshop on Social Anxiety includes more follow-up information on these experiments! (SKU sanx). Available from Digital Padesky - audio section.

Product SKU: vSA

© Copyright 2008 Christine A. Padesky, PhD / www.padesky.com. All rights reserved.
You will get the following files:
  • PDF (86KB)
  • MP4 (557MB)

Customer Reviews

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Ellen Tobey Klass, PhD

1 year ago

I love "Assertive Defense of the Self"

I'm so glad you asked for my review. I'm an experienced CBTer and have taken workshops and consulted with Dr. Padesky.

Things I loved: Seeing a seamless, interactive, and validating approach to in-session behavior rehearsal -- as opposed to the didacticism one often sees (and lapses into). Very notable also, Dr. Padesky's skillfully eliciting the client's naturally-occurring positive viewpoints/self-statements -- great for the client being able to use these and also great in the context of much negativity.

I also loved how Dr. Padesky worked with the "client" - respectful, positive. At times, I could see Dr. Padesky pausing when the client said something not "CBT-correct", such as perhaps a negative self-statement used as reinforcement. In the pause, I thought I saw Dr. Padesky figuring out how to respond to move the comment back to assertive defense of the self without conveying the client had done it wrong. And Dr. P did come up with things that did this. Plus, warmth and humor.

I'm using what I learned with a client who has a very difficult problem. We've been able to move much closer to in vivo practice, identify key issues, and find ways through some of them.

I'm so happy that I went to the source (this video), rather than keeping on relying on what others had told me about assertive defense of the self as a treatment strategy.

Andrej Petrusa (spec.)

1 year ago

Program review

I am an advanced cognitive therapist with a private practice. Through listening and watching the programs I was able to recognize the techniques and approaches I have been using so far. Some new interesting ideas contained in the program I'm going to use in the future. I was impressed by Dr Padesky's huge knowledge and I liked her well balanced, controlled systematic approach connected to warm empathic listening and understanding of the client.

Tom King

1 year ago

Assertive Defense of Self

This is a very useful demonstration (with a conference volunteer) -- the production quality, sound etc. is high, and Dr. Padesky conducts the interview in a manner that is easy to track and follow the steps of CBT. It may have been useful to hear the feedback of the volunteer, and Dr. Padesky's comments on the session. [discovered photo in end credits and the pdf of Pooh’s Behavioral Experiment] Well worth it!