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Live Webinar

The Paradox of Trying Harder: Why Good Effort Can Fail—or Backfire

Jerome Lerner, MD
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Information

Date & Time

Description

Clinicians often work with patients who are sincerely engaged and receiving appropriate treatment, yet remain stuck—or sometimes get worse. The problem may not be motivation, resistance, or the treatment itself. Progress in one area can be limited by what is happening in another: the body, emotions, thinking, or relationships. This is the central idea behind paradoxical response to domain-specific intervention. Using the Four Dimensions of Resilience and a clinical case, participants will learn to recognize what may be interfering with progress, decide what needs attention first, and adjust the treatment plan without abandoning or unnecessarily delaying appropriate care.

Learning Objectives

Participants will be able to:

  • Explain how a difficulty in one of the Four Dimensions of Resilience can limit or worsen a patient’s response to appropriate treatment focused on another dimension.

  • Identify at least three clinical presentations that may be misread as poor motivation, resistance, or difficulty following through when an unrecognized problem in another dimension is interfering with progress.

  • Apply a four-dimension screen to a stalled clinical case to identify what may be interfering with progress and determine how treatment priorities should be adjusted.

  • Recognize how the clinician’s own stress or dysregulation may affect clinical judgment, reactions to stalled progress, and decisions about what to address first.

Educational Goal

The educational goal of this workshop is for participants to learn about the Four Dimensions of Resilience to recognize when a patient’s stalled progress may be caused by an overlooked difficulty in another area of functioning and adjust treatment priorities without abandoning appropriate care.

Target Audience

  • Addiction Professional
  • Counselor
  • Marriage & Family Therapist
  • Psychologist
  • Social Worker

Presenters

Jerome Lerner, MD
Jerome Lerner, MD, is board certified in Addiction Medicine and in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Over nearly four decades he has served as a medical director in rehabilitation hospitals, chronic pain programs, and residential substance use treatment, including roles as Medical Director at Sierra Tucson and Program Medical Director of its Pain Recovery Program and Licensed Professionals and Executives Program. He developed the Four Dimensions of Resilience, a whole-person organizing framework published in the Journal of Addictive Diseases in 2026. He was a Clinical Instructor at the Medical College of Wisconsin for over twenty years and has taught clinicians across addiction, pain, and rehabilitation settings.

Financially Sponsored By

  • Acadia Healthcare Treatment Placement Specialists® (TPS)