COURSE – PROCESS-BASED THERAPY: Foundations and Practical Application

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), known as the “second wave” within the field, has demonstrated robust effectiveness through the application of specific protocols for various disorders, in accordance with the diagnostic classifications of the DSM and ICD. However, the proliferation of standardized treatments, high clinical comorbidity, frequent diagnostic changes, and the persistence of residual symptoms or relapses after treatment have generated significant debate within Evidence-Based Psychology.

These challenges led the scientific and professional community to question the idea that mental health problems could be addressed solely through fixed diagnostic categories and uniform protocols. In response, the study of broader, more transversal processes of change began to gain greater relevance.

In this context, Evidence-Based Therapies are undergoing a transition toward a transdiagnostic paradigm, focused on identifying cognitive, emotional, and behavioral processes shared by multiple disorders that contribute to both their origin and maintenance. This shift represents a move from nomothetic approaches—based on signs and symptoms—toward more idiographic perspectives that consider the uniqueness and context of each individual.

Process-Based Therapy (PBT) is establishing itself as an innovative therapeutic metamodel that seeks to identify and modify the psychological processes underlying distress, going beyond traditional diagnoses. This approach surpasses interventions focused on protocols for specific disorders, integrating resources from the "second wave" of CBT and "third wave" therapies—such as ACT, FAP, DBT, and RO-DBT—to develop flexible and personalized interventions.

Its objective is to address the particular mechanisms that affect each person, promoting deeper, more lasting and contextualized changes.

TBP thus constitutes a contemporary proposal that invites the adoption of more adaptive treatment models that are sensitive to the transdiagnostic complexity that characterizes current clinical practice.

• Review the foundations, objectives, and core therapeutic strategies of the “second and third wave” of evidence-based cognitive-behavioral therapy.
• To know and learn the fundamentals of Process-Based Therapy (PBT) as the superior and integrative metamodel of current cognitive-behavioral-contextual psychotherapy.
• Learning about the Extended Evolutionary Metamodel – MMEE and Complex Causal Network: a new way of conceptualizing and treating clients.
• Understanding the critical transdiagnostic psychological processes in the vulnerability and maintenance of major mental and personality disorders: rumination, worry, thought suppression, emotional dysregulation, avoidance, overcontrol, somatic hypervigilance, among others.
• Learn and practice the various core technical procedures of TBP, from cognitive-behavioral, radical behavioral and contextual traditions, in order to train specific technical skills, such as: cognitive restructuring or re-evaluation, cognitive defusion, emotional regulation, psychoeducation, functional analysis, use of metaphors, mindfulness, detached mindfulness, training in changing attentional focus, stop rumination, exposure, exposure and response prevention, prolonged exposure, among others.

• To provide practical training on how to intervene and adapt TBP in the various current clinical disciplines.
• Acquire technical and process-based conceptualization skills.

• The activity will take place over 8 (eight) meetings, with an online synchronous modality using Google Meet.
• From April 7 to May 26.
• Frequency: weekly.
• Day and time: Tuesdays from 18 to 8:30 p.m.

A required minimum of 80% attendance and the approval of a final theoretical questionnaire to obtain the certificate.

Dr. Guadalupe Rosales

Graduates in Psychology and final-year students.

• General public: two installments of $80.000
• UM Public: two installments of $70.000

Complete the following form to begin the registration process. https://forms.gle/eDWLCL6EXLmXXqzk6