Your life circumstances, ranging from the type of feelings you have been experiencing, to the quality of relationships you have been engaging, to your desire to either crawl into bed or run off to the races, to the degree to which you enjoy your job are all connected and can be made more acceptable by understanding your location in the process of transformation. Transformation is not something that happens in a lighting bolt of an instant, rather it is a subtle progression that unfolds over the course of months and usually years. Learn the phases of transformation identified through this presenter’s doctoral research and apply the information to better assess and treat your clients’ needs. Learn the inherent limitations and potential that lies within each phase in order to help clients to make choices and take action that utilize this natural process rather than to unknowingly struggle against it. This lens can help clients make sense of physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual conditions and gain language to explain their challenges to others.

Learning Objectives: Distinguish the difference between change and transformation; Recognize thirteen phases of transformation; List three ways this theory can contribute to client assessment and/or treatment.