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The Knowing-Doing Gap: Practical Executive Function Interventions for Everyday Practice

Wednesday, January 13th, 2027   6:00 PM EST -9:00 PM EST
Joseph Wilner
$59.99 USD

Executive dysfunction presents across the diagnostic spectrum, yet clinicians most often associate it with ADHD alone. Depression impairs task initiation. Anxiety occupies working memory. Insufficient sleep degrades prefrontal performance. Trauma biases attention toward threat at the expense of planning. When clients articulate accurate insight yet remain unable to act, clinicians frequently conceptualize the discrepancy as resistance or low motivation, and treatment stalls. This three-hour training presents a transdiagnostic framework for identifying executive function breakdown and selecting interventions matched to the capacity involved.

 

The class first delineates executive function as a set of discrete capacities, including activation, working memory, inhibition, cognitive flexibility, and emotional regulation, and reviews how mood, anxiety, sleep, trauma, and attentional disorders each affect them differently. Participants then learn to distinguish state-based from trait-based impairment and to separate task paralysis from procrastination, distinctions that direct intervention selection. The remainder provides instruction in Goal Management Training, including its evidence base and four-step protocol with structured practice, then develops a broader repertoire spanning nervous system regulation, environmental scaffolding at the point of performance, implementation intentions, and acceptance-based approaches to the shame cycle that follows repeated failed attempts. Participants will leave with a replicable process for matching intervention to breakdown.

About the Presenter

Joe Wilner is a licensed clinical psychotherapist, board-certified coach, and ADHD-Certified Clinical Services Provider based in Overland Park, Kansas. He holds a Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology from the University of Saint Mary and a Master's in Liberal Arts with a concentration in Management and Leadership from Baker University. His private practice centers on ADHD, burnout, and career counseling, and much of that work involves clients who struggle to regulate executive function. He has completed training in Goal Management Training, holds formal training in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and is a certified meditation instructor. Joe teaches psychology as an online faculty member at Southern New Hampshire University and regularly leads trainings on mental health and professional development for individuals and organizations.

Learning Objectives:

  1. Identify which executive function capacity has broken down for a given client and how mood, anxiety, sleep, trauma, and ADHD each contribute to that breakdown.
  2. Apply the four-step Goal Management Training sequence to a clients presenting concern.
  3. Select interventions from at least three approaches based on where the clients executive functioning breaks down.

Agenda:

0:00 – 0:15 | Introduction
Welcome, brief overview of the session, and why I keep running into this problem in my own practice. Participants share in the chat one client who knows what to do but isn't doing it.

0:15 – 0:45 | What executive function actually is
Walk through the main capacities: getting started, holding information in mind, filtering out distraction, shifting between tasks, and managing emotion. Lots of clinical examples.

0:45 – 1:20 | Why it breaks down
How depression, anxiety, poor sleep, trauma, and ADHD each hit different parts of the system. Includes the difference between impairment that comes and goes with a mood state and impairment that has been there all along. Also cover the difference between task paralysis and procrastination, since these look alike and call for different responses.

1:20 – 2:10 | Goal Management Training
Where it came from, what the research shows, and how the four steps work. Participants pair off and run through the sequence on a goal of their own so they know what it feels like before using it with clients. Group debrief afterward.

2:10 – 2:45 | Other tools that help
Calming the nervous system first when a client is too activated to plan. Setting up the environment so the client doesn't have to rely on memory or willpower. If-then planning. And working with the shame that builds up after repeated failed attempts, drawing on acceptance-based and self-compassion approaches.

 

2:45 – 3:00 | Putting it together and Q&A
Participants go back to the client they named at the start and pick one place to intervene. Questions and closing.

This presentation is open to:
  • Social Workers
  • Professional Counselors
  • Therapists
  • Psychologists
  • Licensed Mental Health Practitioners
  • Medical Doctors and Other Health Professionals
  • Other professionals interacting with populations engaged in mental health based services
Course Level: intermediate
Level of Clinician: intermediate
  • New practitioners who wish to gain enhanced insight surrounding the topic
  • Experienced practitioners who seek to increase and expand fundamental knowledge surrounding the subject matter
  • Advanced practitioners seeking to review concepts and reinforce practice skills and/or access additional consultation
  • Managers seeking to broaden micro and/or macro perspectives

Participants will receive their certificate electronically upon completion of the webinar and course evaluation form.

Disability Access - If you require ADA accommodations, please contact our office 30 days or more before the event. We cannot ensure accommodations without adequate prior notification. Please Note: Licensing Boards change regulations often, and while we attempt to stay abreast of their most recent changes, if you have questions or concerns about this course meeting your specific board’s approval, we recommend you contact your board directly to obtain a ruling. The grievance policy for trainings provided by NEFESH INTERNATIONAL is available here Satisfactory Completion Participants must have paid the tuition fee, logged in and out each day, attended the entire workshop, and completed an evaluation to receive a certificate (If this is a pre-recorded program, a post-test with a passing grade of 80% to receive a certificate.) Failure to log in or out will result in forfeiture of credit for the entire course. No exceptions will be made. Partial credit is not available. Certificates are available after satisfactory course completion by clicking here.
There is no conflict of interest or commercial support for this program.
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Refund Policy:
Full Refund until 48 hours before scheduled date.
48 hours before: full refund less $5.00 processing fee. After event no refund will be given.
*exclusions apply for reasonable need and cause.
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