OUR FIRST FALL 2026 CE PROGRAMS ARE OPEN FOR REGISTRATION: ENROLL TODAY!
OUR FIRST FALL 2026 CE PROGRAMS ARE OPEN FOR REGISTRATION: ENROLL TODAY!
ACE Foundation Programs
Clients with complex and comorbid presentations often experience significant emotional, relational, and functional impairment that can challenge traditional diagnostic and treatment frameworks. This training introduces relational anxiety as an integrative framework for understanding how clinically significant symptoms and behaviors may develop as protective adaptations to relational and developmental experiences. Drawing from attachment theory, trauma research, affect regulation, and relational models of psychotherapy, participants will examine how experiences of trauma, attachment disruption, chronic anxiety, invalidation, rejection, and non-belonging can shape expectations of self and others and contribute to patterns of hypervigilance, dysregulation, withdrawal, mistrust, and other complex clinical presentations.
A non-pathological lens does not minimize symptom severity or eliminate the need for diagnosis, risk assessment, or protective intervention. Rather, it asks clinicians to consider the meaning and function of symptoms alongside their diagnostic significance. Participants will explore how validation, attunement, and functional formulation can support more accurate assessment and preserve therapeutic alliance even when acute psychiatric risk, mandated reporting, hospitalization, or other protective action must be addressed.
Through case-based application, participants will learn to integrate and adapt interventions responsively to clients’ emotional states, relational needs, protective functions, and capacity for engagement—creating conditions for meaningful and enduring therapeutic change.
FOR CE CREDITS
Society Member
Non-Member
NON-CEU CREDIT OPTIONS
Society Member
$40*
Non-Member
$60
Student
FOR CE CREDITS
NON-CEU CREDIT OPTIONS
Society Member
Society Member
Non-member
Non-member
.
.
Student
*NYSSCSW Discount applies to NYSSCSW current members only.
**Student Discount only applies to full time students currently enrolled in social work and MHP master level programs.
Please register by Thursday, October 15 at 5pm.
Live Online via Zoom
The Advanced Clinical Education (ACE) Foundation of the NYS Society for Clinical Social Work, Inc. is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed marriage and family therapists #MFT-0028; licensed mental health counselors #MHC-0045; licensed psychoanalysts #P-0017; licensed psychologists #PSY-0121; licensed social workers #SW-0056; and licensed creative art therapists #CAT-0120.
Out-of-state providers are welcome to request a certificate upon completion of the presentation evaluation but must check with their own state licensing boards to inquire about whether or not the certificate is recognized as transferrable for CEs in their state’s jurisdiction.
After attending this lecture, participants will be able to:
1. Conceptualize complex and comorbid clinical presentations through a non-pathological relational lens, identifying how clinically significant symptoms and behaviors may function as protective adaptations shaped by developmental and relational experience.
2. Identify and assess relational anxiety across cognitive, emotional, behavioral, somatic, and interpersonal domains, including patterns of relational hypervigilance, dysregulation, avoidance, and protection.
3. Differentiate diagnostic description from functional formulation, evaluating when recognition of pathology is clinically necessary and how a non-pathological relational lens can add meaningful information to assessment and treatment planning.
4. Apply a non-pathological relational framework to risk assessment and high-stakes clinical decision-making, distinguishing validation of a client’s experience from endorsement of unsafe behavior while maintaining appropriate boundaries and protective action.
5. Integrate and adapt therapeutic interventions responsively to clients’ emotional states, relational needs, protective functions, and capacity for engagement, supporting client agency and deeper, more lasting therapeutic change.
Psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, licensed psychoanalysts, nurse practitioners and family and marriage/couple therapists, mental health counselors and licensed creative art therapists.
This seminar is appropriate for clinicians with all levels of experience.
Stephanie Bloch Doyle, LCSW, is a psychotherapist, clinical consultant, and educator with more than 20 years of experience working with individuals, couples, families, and systems across private practice, community mental health, child welfare, and psychiatric crisis settings. Her clinical work focuses on relational anxiety, complex and developmental trauma, attachment, and the treatment of complex and comorbid presentations. Drawing from attachment-based, experiential, psychodynamic, cognitive, and somatic approaches, Stephanie brings a non-pathological lens to understanding how symptoms and behaviors develop as meaningful adaptations to lived experience. Her teaching emphasizes translating this understanding into responsive clinical practice that strengthens therapeutic alliance, empowers clients, and creates conditions for deep and lasting change.
Contact Hours will be awarded once the entire course is completed, as evidenced by signing in and out and completing a course evaluation. Instructions for evaluating the presentation will be emailed within 5 days of the course date. Once evaluation is complete, CE certificate will be emailed to you.
ACE welcomes participants with diverse abilities. Please contact Kristin or Debbie at info.acefoundation@gmail.com, at time of registration, to request accessibility accommodations. Accommodation requests are considered in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities ACT (ADA), Section 505 of the Rehabilitation ACT.
Cancellations made at least five days before the event will be refunded less a 10% cancellation fee. For cancellation please call 1-800-288-4279, or email us at info.acefoundation@gmail.com.
Should Inclement weather occur, we will be notifying all registrants via the email by which the registrant signed up. Please be sure to check your email before you leave for the course.
Please visit our FAQ page to review our frequently asked questions.
