Thursday 24 August 1315 - 14:45
Exploring and concentrating on character strengths of oneself and the others in positive religious psychotherapy
Mohammad Khodayarifard
No preregistration for the workshop
One clinical application of spirituality and positive psychology research is the “psycho-spiritual intervention,” which represents the potential that spirituality has to increase well-being. These coping mechanisms that aim to preserve the sacred have been found by researchers to increase well-being and return the individual back to the sacred (Shane, Lopez, & Snyder, 2011). For this reasons, the major aim of this workshop is to examine one dimension of religious psychotherapy which seems to be very essential; that is to recognize and to focus on the abilities of the individuals in a successful therapeutic approach. The participants will learn about positive psychotherapy and the importance and value of spiritual and religious perspectives in this area of study and practice. Over the course of the workshop, they will also learn specific strategies for how to use the clients’ strengths via practice-based positive intervention. Through these techniques, participants will develop a new awareness about themselves. The strategies are to be taught practically; therefore, the participants are expected to get actively involved in class discussion and participation. The practical aim of religious positive psychotherapy is to recognize and focus on character strengths and abilities of the individuals in a successful therapeutic process. Throughout this method, the participants are encouraged to recall and understand their positive experiences, increase their self-esteem, and learn to recognize positive points in other people. They will be instructed to review their personal memories with combinations of good and praiseworthy feelings. They then will select the most significant ones and will extract their points of strength. They will be able to use the comments of family or group members to clarify and sort their own list of strengths. They will obtain a new, unified, and integrated self-image through this technique and will develop it further and maintain it in the future sessions with the help and support of their family or group members.