At Talking Therapies UK, we are passionate about equipping professionals with the knowledge, confidence, and compassion to support mental health across diverse settings. With decades of combined experience in clinical practice, public health leadership, and service transformation, our training programmes are rooted in evidence-based approaches and real-world application.
We specialise in delivering high-impact, trauma-informed mental health training tailored to the needs of health, education, social care, and voluntary sector teams. From safeguarding and suicide prevention to emotional resilience and therapeutic communication, our courses are designed to empower practitioners at every level—whether you’re frontline staff, a strategic commissioner, or part of a multi-agency partnership.
Our facilitators bring many years clinical expertise , and a deep understanding of the social determinants of mental health. We prioritise co-production, reflective practice, and inclusive learning environments that foster curiosity, empathy, and professional growth.
Whether you’re looking to upskill your workforce, embed mental health into your organisational culture, or meet statutory training requirements, we offer flexible delivery formats including in-person workshops, webinars, and bespoke consultancy.
Together, we can build psychologically safe, responsive systems that promote wellbeing, reduce inequalities, and improve outcomes for individuals, families, and communities. Let’s shape the future of mental health—one conversation, one training, one transformation at a time..
Comorbidity, rupture, schema-level work and the judgement calls protocols cannot make for you.
Protocols are written for the client who attends with one problem, engages with homework and improves on schedule. Experienced practitioners know how rare that client is. This course is CBT at supervision level: the judgement calls that no manual can make for you, taught for clinicians who already practise the modality and now meet its limits.
The first module works where the protocol runs out. You will study comorbidity and the transdiagnostic processes, rumination, perfectionism, intolerance of uncertainty, that cut across diagnoses and explain why sequential single-disorder treatment so often stalls. You will work with rupture and repair as clinical material, and with therapy-interfering behaviour as something to be formulated rather than endured. The second module goes deeper still: schema-informed CBT and belief-level change for difficulties that survive symptom-level work, and an unflinching reading of what the outcome evidence does and does not actually establish.
This is demanding material, taught in eighteen extended written lessons with key points, practice tasks pitched at case-formulation level, and a study tutor for the questions supervision would ask. Fourteen hours of CPD, around a year of access, a final assessment, and a personalised certificate on passing.
▶ See inside the digital classroom1 minute 36 seconds · how a course is laid out, how each lesson is taught, and how the tutor helps
Before you start
This is an Advanced course in the CBT pathway. It assumes that you already work with the approach at Practitioner level and want complexity, process and supervision-level thinking rather than the method itself, which is what CBT in Practice teaches. What it adds is complex presentations, comorbidity, ruptures and impasses, the research and process literature, and the judgement needed to supervise or lead the work; it revisits the foundations only as far as it needs to before building on them, so it does not repeat the course below.
A caution. Taking an Advanced course without the foundational understanding will make it harder to follow and to complete, and you will get less from it. If you are new to this approach, begin at Foundation; if you hold the foundations but have not yet used the approach with clients, begin with CBT in Practice. Choose the level that matches your existing experience and knowledge.
The CBT pathway. The standard route through cognitive behavioural therapy: the cognitive model and its methods at Foundation, the disorder-specific models and the craft of formulation-driven treatment at Practitioner, and complexity, comorbidity and process at Advanced.
14 study hours14 CPD hours certified12 months of accessAI tutor in every lessonCertificate on completion (pass mark 70%)
What you will be able to do
✓Formulate complex, comorbid and long-standing difficulties where standard protocols fit poorly
✓Work at the level of conditional rules and core beliefs, using continua, historical review and behavioural experiments
✓Recognise and repair ruptures in the therapeutic relationship within a CBT frame
✓Adapt CBT process and pacing for relational trauma, perfectionism and self-criticism
✓Integrate imagery techniques and attention to process alongside protocol content
✓Critically evaluate the CBT evidence base and its limits, and reason clearly about when to depart from protocol
What you will study
Module 1: Transdiagnostic Foundations and Flexible Case Formulation
This module covers transdiagnostic processes, therapeutic ruptures, flexible stances, and modular treatment planning for complex presentations when standard protocols fall short.
Comorbidity and transdiagnostic processesOptions: sequential protocols, transdiagnostic work, bespoke formulation
Rupture, repair and therapy-interfering behaviourWithdrawal ruptures masquerade as compliance; both rupture types predict poor outcome unless repaired
Transdiagnostic case formulation and modular treatment planning for complex presentationsTransdiagnostic formulation identifies shared maintaining processes across comorbidities.
The Therapist as a Co-Researcher: Managing Uncertainty and the Flexible StanceThe transition from protocol-driven technician to scientist-practitioner is one of the most conceptually demanding shifts in advanced CBT practice, yet it remai…
Process‑Based CBT: A Transdiagnostic, Flexible Approach When Standard Protocols Have Been ExhaustedProcess‑Based CBT focuses on change processes rather than diagnostic categories.
Module 2: Advanced Risk Management and Outcome Monitoring
This module explores measurement-based care, safety management for self-harm, schema-informed belief work, and effective termination strategies in complex CBT.
Measurement‑Based Care and Systematic Outcome Monitoring in Complex CBTMeasurement‑based care provides an empirical decision framework for modular sequencing in complex CBT.
Working with High-Risk and Self-Harm Behaviours in Complex CBT: Safety, Functionality and Collaborative Risk ManagementThe Integrated Motivational-Volitional (IMV) model frames self-harm and suicidality as functional acts within a client’s broader cognitive-affective system, rather than mere symptoms to be suppressed.
The Art of the Exit: Termination and Relapse Prevention in Complex CBTTermination in complex CBT is a therapeutic intervention that requires managing ambivalence, abandonment anxiety, and the fear of relapse, rather than simply ending sessions.
Managing Personality Disorder Features and Interpersonal Dysfunction in Complex CBTIdentify personality disorder features through a dual‑level functional analysis that captures both symptom‑level and relational functions.
Belief-level and schema-informed workMove down a level when situational work keeps returning to the same place
Module 3: Schema Modes and Memory Reconsolidation in Practice
This module examines schema mode sequencing, memory reconsolidation mechanisms, and the treatment of chronic self-criticism and shame in long-standing cases.
What the evidence does and does not sayEffects against active controls are more modest than against waiting lists
The Detached Protector Mode and the Limits of Cognitive FusionThe therapeutic encounter in advanced cognitive‑behavioural practice is increasingly recognised as a dynamic negotiation between the client’s internal defensive…
Integrating Schema Mode Sequencing and the Healthy Adult in Advanced CBTIn the evolution of cognitive‑behavioural therapy (CBT) towards greater depth, the concept of schema modes has become a pivotal bridge between traditional belie…
Memory Reconsolidation as a Mechanism for Belief-Level Change in Schema‑Informed CBTMemory reconsolidation provides a biologically plausible mechanism to modify core beliefs and schema modes.
Working with Early Maladaptive Schemas in Long-Standing Complex Cases: A Schema-Informed CBT Approach to Chronic Self-Criticism and ShameSchema-informed CBT must distinguish between schema content and schema process, with chronic self-criticism often reflecting a Punitive Parent mode that is emotionally and neurobiologically encoded.
