If you’re a therapist who listens to podcasts for inspiration and to integrate what you’ve learned, this one is for you.

Over the past year on The Self Careapist Therapist Podcast, I got to sit down with experts in trauma, OCD, psychosis recovery, ACT, neurodivergence, grief, attachment, and relational systems. From there, with a little inspiration from TikTokI built an Advanced Study of Mental Health personal curriculum, a structured, clinically grounded workbook for therapists who want to deepen their clinical discernment, not just collect more techniques.

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Why a Personal Curriculum for Therapists?

The personal curriculum trend has been all over the internet lately, but most versions are about productivity or lifestyle design. This one is built for clinicians.

As therapists, we’re constantly being introduced to new models:

EMDR, DBT, ERP for OCD, ACT, recovery-oriented psychosis care, neurodivergent affirming approaches, attachment and emotionally focused therapy.

What’s usually missing is integration.

This curriculum helps you work through questions like:

When do I use behavioral precision versus expressive interventions? How do I conceptualize low motivation without pathologizing my client? How does nervous system capacity show up as compliance, shutdown, or resistance? How do trauma, grief, identity, and meaning intersect in the same person?

Instead of asking “what technique should I try,” this curriculum trains you to ask “which system is asking for support.”

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What’s Inside

The workbook is organized into five units drawn directly from expert conversations on The Self Careapist Podcast.

Unit 1: The Expressive and Developmental Lens

This unit looks at TraumaPlay, attachment theory, and developmental approaches, especially useful for clients who don’t respond well to traditional talk therapy. You’ll dig into co-regulation, expressive processing, attachment repair, and developmentally informed treatment.

Unit 2: Precision Behavioral Interventions

This section brings together DBT skills, ERP for OCD, ACT, recovery-oriented psychosis treatment, and a multifaceted model of motivation. Required reading includes:

You Are Not Your Trauma by Robyn Walser and Darrah Westrup, Living Well With Psychosis by Aaron Brinen, Self Directed DBT Skills by Kiki Fehling, and Recovery Oriented Cognitive Therapy by Aaron Beck.

One of the big reframes in this unit is around motivation. Low motivation isn’t a personality flaw. It can reflect skill deficits, trauma burden, identity disruption, nervous system overload, energy limitations in neurodivergent clients, or relational insecurity. When we understand that, we stop asking “why won’t they change” and start asking “what’s constraining movement right now.” That shift alone can do a lot for therapist burnout.

Unit 3: The Neurodivergent Lens

This section centers autonomy, energy accounting, and nervous system informed care. We get into camouflaging and masking, Pathological Demand Avoidance, capacity-based treatment planning, and moving away from compliance-based frameworks.

Unit 4: Specialized Grief and Trauma Systems

Drawing from advanced grief research and EMDR theory, this unit helps you differentiate trauma from prolonged grief, depression from loss-related shutdown, and understand retroactive relational loss. These distinctions matter because they’re often the difference between treatment that moves and treatment that stalls.

Unit 5: Relational Systems and Parent Support

This section weaves together Emotionally Focused Therapy, Gottman-informed approaches, attachment-based relational work, and parent co-regulation frameworks. The focus is on strengthening emotional bonds and helping caregivers and partners show up as therapeutic allies.

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Who This Is For

This curriculum was built for licensed therapists who want advanced clinical training, EMDR, ACT, DBT, or trauma-informed clinicians, therapists working with OCD, psychosis, neurodivergence, grief, or complex trauma, and clinicians who want richer case conceptualization without waiting for a formal training to come to them.

If you value continued learning, deep integration, and thoughtful practice, you’ll feel at home here.

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How to Use It

The curriculum is structured as a three-month study plan. For each unit, you’ll listen to selected podcast episodes, engage with the required reading, reflect using the structured notes sections, and integrate one clinical shift into your current caseload.

There’s no rushing through this. It’s about building clinical discernment over time.

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