From Conflict to Collaboration: Communication Strategies for Difficult Conversations in Therapy

Description

Difficult conversations in therapy are rarely only about the words being said. When clients become defensive, disengaged, guarded, emotionally escalated, or resistant to collaboration, they may also be managing identity, dignity, shame, uncertainty, belonging, autonomy, and relational safety. For behavioral health professionals, these moments can be clinically important, but they can also be difficult to navigate when tension rises or the therapist is unsure how to respond without increasing rupture.

This course helps clinicians understand difficult therapy conversations through a communication science lens. Rather than treating client defensiveness, shutdown, lying, reassurance seeking, or escalation as simple opposition, the training explores how these behaviors may function as attempts to preserve dignity, reduce uncertainty, protect identity, manage vulnerability, or respond to perceived threat. Clinicians will learn how to slow down, recognize the communication dynamics beneath conflict, and respond in ways that support safety, collaboration, and repair.

Dr. Corey Petersen, PhD, LCMFT, is a clinical marriage and family therapist with advanced academic training in communication studies. Her background includes doctoral-level study of communication, clinical training in marriage and family therapy, collegiate teaching experience, continuing education training, and work applying communication theory to relational and therapeutic contexts. This combination of clinical and communication expertise directly informs her approach to helping behavioral health professionals understand and respond to difficult conversations in therapy.

In this training, Dr. Petersen introduces communication frameworks that help clinicians make sense of challenging clinical interactions. Social Exchange Theory is used to explore how clients may weigh the perceived costs and benefits of honesty, vulnerability, engagement, and collaboration. From this perspective, behaviors such as disengagement, compliance, or lying can be understood as meaningful clinical information about perceived risk rather than as a lack of motivation or investment.

The course gives particular attention to how clients and therapists manage identity, dignity, competence, autonomy, and belonging when conversations become emotionally charged. Drawing from Face Negotiation Theory, Uncertainty Reduction Theory, and Relational Dialectics Theory, Dr. Petersen helps clinicians recognize how premature insight, problem solving, misattuned interpretations, microaggressions, implicit bias, power imbalances, uncertainty, or competing needs can create defensiveness, rupture, or withdrawal. The training emphasizes practical ways to respond in these moments, including slowing the pace, naming shifts in the room, validating impact without defensiveness, using therapist transparency thoughtfully, supporting co-regulation, addressing problematic language, asking ethical questions, and inviting collaboration so clients can remain engaged even when the work feels vulnerable or tense.

Key Takeaways

• Understand conflict beneath the surface: Learn to recognize how difficult conversations may involve identity, dignity, uncertainty, face needs, and relational safety—not only disagreement or resistance.
• Reduce defensiveness and support repair: Apply communication concepts to respond more effectively when clients feel misunderstood, exposed, judged, or threatened.
• Strengthen collaboration in tense moments: Use practical language to slow the conversation, restore agency, name process, invite choice, and support therapeutic safety.
• Recognize dignity and power dynamics: Explore how microaggressions, implicit bias, premature insight, and therapist authority can affect client trust and engagement.
• Use communication theory clinically: Translate communication science into practical therapeutic responses for difficult conversations.

Why This Course?

• Clinically practical communication tools: This training helps clinicians move beyond general advice about “staying calm” by offering specific communication frameworks and language for difficult therapy moments.
• Relevant across clinical settings: The concepts apply to individual therapy, couples work, emotionally escalated sessions, rupture and repair, client disengagement, reassurance seeking, and conversations involving identity or vulnerability.
• A stronger lens for client behavior: Clinicians will learn to view resistance, defensiveness, lying, or shutdown as meaningful communication data rather than simply as obstacles to treatment.
• Grounded in communication science: Dr. Petersen connects communication theory to real clinical situations, helping behavioral health professionals better understand how language, power, identity, and relational safety shape therapy.

Learning Objectives

• Apply Face Negotiation Theory to reduce defensiveness in conflictual exchanges.
• Identify dialectical tensions that drive difficult conversations and help clients reframe them.
• Use Social Exchange Theory to help clients weigh perceived costs/benefits and engage in collaboration.

Conflict is part of therapeutic work, but it does not have to derail the relationship. This course gives behavioral health professionals a practical, theory-informed way to understand difficult conversations, respond with greater intention, and create conditions for safety, repair, and collaboration when clinical dialogue becomes tense.

Format and Access

This is a Non-interactive, self-study course. Instruction consists of 3 hours of on-demand video and a post-test.

Course Details

Availability: 

From the time of registration, you have six months to access the coursework.

Who Should Attend: 

This course is intended for clinicians who provide behavioral health services. This continuing education course is designed for licensed behavioral health professionals.

Teaching Methods: 

This is a non-interactive, self-study course. Teaching methods for this course include recorded lectures, videos, a post-test, and a course evaluation.

How to Attend: 

Course access and completion instructions.

Instructor and Disclosures

Instructor

About Corey Petersen, MA, MS, Ph.D, LCMFT

Dr. Corey Petersen is a communication specialist and the owner of Communication and Connection Therapy. She completed her Ph.D. in Communication Studies at the University of Kansas, where her research focused on psychotherapeutic language and communication ethics. Prior to her Ph.D., Dr. Petersen earned a Master’s degree in Marriage and Family Studies and Professional Communication. She has over 9 years of collegiate communication and psychology teaching experience and is currently a continuing education and corporate trainer. When not teaching, Dr. Petersen can be found working and meeting with clients in her private practice.

Disclosure Statement: 

The instructor(s) for this course receive compensation for their services. There are no reported conflicts of interest to disclose.

CE Hours

Credit Hours:

This course consists of 3 continuing education hours of credit.

Counselors:

Telehealth Certification Institute, LLC has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No, 6693.  Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified.  Telehealth Certification Institute, LLC is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

Telehealth Certification Institute, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for Licensed Mental Health Counselors. #MHC-0048.

Marriage and Family Therapists:

Many MFT licensing boards accept our courses or one of the approvals which we have from professional associations.  You can check with your board to determine if your licensing board would accept this course.

Social Workers:

Telehealth Certification Institute LLC, #1609, is approved as an ACE provider to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Regulatory boards are the final authority on courses accepted for continuing education credit. ACE provider approval period: 05/02/2024 – 05/02/2027. Social workers completing this course receive 3 clinical continuing education credits.

Telehealth Certification Institute, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for Licensed Social Workers #SW-0435.

Addiction Professionals:

This course has been approved by Telehealth Certification Institute LLC, as a NAADAC Approved Education Provider, for educational credits, effective 3/6/2026. NAADAC Provider #193104, Telehealth Certification Institute LLC is responsible for all aspects of the programming.

Psychologists:

Telehealth Certification Institute LLC is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Telehealth Certification Institute LLC maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

Telehealth Certification Institute, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for Licensed Psychologists #PSY-0128.

Art Therapists:

Telehealth Certification Institute, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for Licensed Creative Arts Therapists #CAT-0093.

Other Professionals:

This course qualifies for 180 minutes of instructional content as required by many national, state and local licensing boards and professional organizations.  Retain your certificate of completion and contact your board or organization for specific filing requirements.

This course is a non-interactive, online self-study.

Participants may request a printed version of their certificate of completion to be delivered by mail. A shipping/handling fee of $6.95 will be charged per request. Shipping internationally may require an additional charge.

Accommodations and Policies

Close Captioning is available for live webinars and recorded video presentations.

You can click on the following links to view our policies:

• Accommodations for Individuals with Disabilities.
• Cancellation Policy
• Grievance Policy
• Support Options
• Disclosure Statement