Deliberate Practice in TEAM CBT

A free training from Sentio University, co-authored by Maor Katz, Mike Christensen, and Alexandre Vaz.

TEAM CBT, developed by Dr. David Burns, brings four discrete clinical processes (Testing, Empathy, Assessment of Resistance, and Methods) into a single, sequenced workflow. Each one is a separate skill set. Delivering accurate empathy under client distress, surfacing and melting outcome and process resistance, picking the right CBT method for a specific cognitive distortion, and measuring change after every session are all things that look simple when described and are surprisingly hard to do well under real session pressure. Deliberate practice closes the gap between knowing the protocol and executing it reliably. This webinar, led by Maor Katz and Mike Christensen of the Feeling Good Institute alongside series co-editor Alexandre Vaz, walks through the structured exercises that make the core TEAM CBT moves trainable.

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What you will learn

The webinar demonstrates core TEAM CBT skills broken down into rehearsable units:

  • Delivering the five secrets of effective communication under affect
  • Surfacing outcome resistance and melting it before applying methods
  • Surfacing process resistance and addressing it explicitly with the client
  • Selecting a CBT method matched to a specific cognitive distortion or schema
  • Using session-by-session symptom measurement to drive treatment decisions

Watch the webinar

Deliberate Practice for TEAM CBT, with Maor Katz, Mike Christensen, and Alexandre Vaz. Free to share.

This webinar accompanies the Springer book Deliberate Practice of TEAM-CBT by Maor Katz, Michael J. Christensen, Alexandre Vaz, and Tony Rousmaniere, part of the SpringerBriefs in Psychology series. The book contains the full set of exercises that the webinar above demonstrates. Buy on Amazon.

How to use this with peers or supervisors

The webinar is most useful when paired with structured practice afterward. We recommend a two-session model. In the first session, watch the recording with a peer or supervision group and pause at each demonstrated exercise to discuss how it would fit your current caseload. In the second session, run one of the exercises live. One person plays the therapist, one plays the client, and a third observes and offers structured feedback against a specific behavioral target, such as "deliver three of the five secrets within a two-minute empathy block" or "surface and name one outcome-resistance statement before introducing any method." Five to ten minutes of focused rehearsal followed by feedback tends to produce more growth than longer unstructured roleplay. Licensed clinicians who want to take this further can join Sentio's ongoing deliberate practice consultation group, which meets regularly and is open to clinicians worldwide.

Going deeper: Deliberate Practice Supervision

The webinar above demonstrates what deliberate practice looks like inside TEAM CBT. Doing deliberate practice supervision well is a separate skill, and one that is hard to acquire from didactic content alone. The method has to be practiced under feedback, the same way the clinical skill itself does. A single weekend workshop tends not to give supervisors enough repetitions to develop the experiential muscle they need. Sentio runs an intensive year-long clinical supervisor training built around this principle. For the longer rationale for that format, see Why One Weekend Supervisor Trainings Fall Short.

About the authors

Maor Katz, MD is a board-certified psychiatrist, Level 5 TEAM CBT Master Therapist and Trainer, and the director and founder of the Feeling Good Institute. He is an Adjunct Clinical Instructor at the Stanford Hospital and Clinics Department of Psychiatry and has received research awards from Stanford and the American Psychiatric Association.

Mike Christensen, MACP, RCC is a Level 5 TEAM CBT Master Therapist and Trainer and the Director of Professional Development at the Feeling Good Institute. He co-leads TEAM CBT certification training internationally and is a frequent co-therapist on the Feeling Good Podcast with David Burns.

Alexandre Vaz, PhD is the Chief Academic Officer of Sentio University and co-founder of the Deliberate Practice Institute. He is co-editor of The Essentials of Deliberate Practice book series (APA Books) and host of Psychotherapy Expert Talks.

Related Sentio resources

Frequently asked questions

What is deliberate practice in TEAM CBT? Deliberate practice in TEAM CBT is the structured, repetitive rehearsal of specific clinical skills under feedback, rather than experience accumulated through general caseload work. It isolates moves such as delivering the five secrets of effective communication, surfacing outcome and process resistance, and matching methods to specific cognitive distortions, and rehearses them in short repetitive cycles until they become reliable.

Who is this training for? The webinar and exercises are designed for licensed clinicians, supervisors, and graduate students who already have some exposure to TEAM CBT or to traditional CBT and want a concrete method for building experiential skill. Supervisors and faculty who teach TEAM CBT will find the exercises directly applicable to group supervision and certification preparation.

Do I need to be TEAM CBT certified to use these exercises? No. The exercises are designed to be useful at multiple training levels. Therapists earlier in their TEAM CBT learning tend to get the most value from rehearsing empathy and resistance work. More advanced clinicians, including those pursuing Level 4 and Level 5 certification through the Feeling Good Institute, can use the harder difficulty levels to keep their skills sharp.

Is the webinar really free? Yes. The webinar is free, unedited, and free to share with colleagues, students, and supervisees. Sentio University is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and releases its training resources openly. The companion book by Katz, Christensen, Vaz, and Rousmaniere is sold separately by Springer and contains the complete set of exercises.

How is this different from a standard TEAM CBT certification track? TEAM CBT certification through the Feeling Good Institute teaches the model, the protocol, and the sequenced workflow. Deliberate practice is a complement, not a replacement. It targets specific in-session skill bottlenecks with focused, behaviorally-defined rehearsal so the protocol you learned in certification training actually shows up in your live work faster.