Course Overview
This 3 CE-hour self-study course equips California mental health practitioners with a working clinical foundation in core belief work. Grounded in Aaron Beck's CBT framework — the most-researched psychotherapy in the field — the course is applicable across modalities. Whether participants identify their clients' beliefs using CBT (core beliefs), Schema therapy (early maladaptive schemas), or IFS (burdens), the underlying clinical phenomenon and foundational work are the same.
The course covers Beck's three-level cognitive model, the common negative core beliefs and their formation, the self-perpetuating maintenance cycle, and — crucially — why cognitive work alone is often insufficient. Core techniques are taught as full protocols with verbatim language: the downward arrow, the Belief Inventory Conversation, evidence work including the discounting problem, and alternative belief construction. The five mechanisms of enduring change (cognitive, emotional, somatic, corrective experience, meaning-making) are each taught in working detail, with belief-by-belief treatment approaches — including suicide screening for burden and worthlessness beliefs — a first-twelve-sessions map, and three extended case studies. The Advanced companion course (Course 21b) goes deeper into Schema Therapy, EMDR core belief targeting, and complex trauma applications.
Blossom Wellness Counseling maintains responsibility for this program/course and their content.
Instructor: Jeanne Prinzivalli
Jeanne Prinzivalli - LMFT (License #52833) — Clinical Director & Director of Continuing Education, Blossom Wellness Counseling.
Jeanne Prinzivalli, LMFT, is the Clinical Director and Director of Continuing Education at Blossom Wellness Counseling in Los Angeles, where she has maintained a private practice serving adults since 2013. She holds an M.A. in Clinical Psychology (MFT track) from Antioch University Los Angeles. Her clinical experience spans community mental health, telehealth, forensic and parole-population work, trauma-focused outpatient care, and domestic-violence intervention. She integrates core belief work across orientations.
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Educational Goals
- Build foundational understanding of Beck's cognitive model and core belief work across orientations.
- Develop the clinical eye to identify negative core beliefs in adult clients.
- Provide therapists with full protocols: the downward arrow, the Belief Inventory, evidence work, and the five mechanisms of change.
- Address therapist self-awareness as the foundation for core belief clinical work.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this course, participants will be able to:
- Describe Beck's three-level cognitive model and the self-perpetuating maintenance cycle of core beliefs.
- Identify the common negative core beliefs across self, others, and world domains, and administer the Belief Inventory Conversation.
- Conduct evidence work, including handling the discounting problem and flagging real wounds for emotional processing.
- Apply the five mechanisms of enduring change: cognitive updating, emotional processing, body work, corrective experience, meaning-making.
- Use the downward arrow technique as a full protocol, and apply suicide screening when burden or worthlessness beliefs emerge.
