09/09/2026
Techniques Won't Get Us to Flourishing — Dr. Karen Doll on Positive Psychology and Grace
Your client has the tools. The symptoms are down. And something still hasn't happened.
You know the session. Nothing is wrong anymore, and nothing is right either. The treatment plan says you're finished. You both know you aren't.
Most clinical training has no name for that client — and no map for what comes next.
Integrating Catholic Beliefs with Positive Psychology for Human Well-Being gives you both.
Taught by Karen DeCesare Doll, Psy.D., L.P., this course is part of the Elijah Institute's certification in Catholic Christian Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy. It takes up the question most training leaves alone: what are we actually aiming at, once symptom reduction stops being the finish line?
What you'll walk out with
A framework for the client who isn't ill and isn't well. Keyes' dual continuum treats mental illness and mental health as two separate axes, not one line. A client can carry a diagnosis and flourish. Another can meet no criteria at all and languish. You'll be able to name where a client actually sits — and treat accordingly.
Strengths-based assessment that doesn't collapse into self-help. Read through Catholic anthropology, strengths are gifts given rather than traits earned. That single move removes the pride problem that makes so many clinicians quietly avoid strengths work.
Three interventions with an evidence base and a spiritual home. Gratitude, learned optimism, and forgiveness — as clinical practices with measurable effects, not sentiment. Including how to introduce them to a client who is done being told to think positively.
Language for faith in the room. How to hold flourishing as a clinical aim without turning holiness into an achievement, and without leaving your client's deepest commitments outside the door.
Why this course and not a generic positive psychology CE
Because your Catholic Christian clients can tell the difference. Roughly 16 million Catholics in the United States experience some form of mental illness, and too many of them believe they have to choose between their faith and their healing. Clinicians who can hold both are rare. This is training to become one.
Your instructor
Karen DeCesare Doll, Psy.D., L.P. — consulting psychologist, executive assessment specialist, coach, keynote speaker, author, and Chair of the Flourishing at Work Network. She serves on the Elijah Institute faculty for Catholic Christian Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy.
Who this is for
Mental Health clinicians and chaplains who want to treat the whole person — body, mind, relationships, the spiritual life, and the moral life — and want the framework and confidence to do it well.
Two ways in. Both start with the same free course.
Start free. Decide later.
ENROLL → elijah-institute.org/course-pathways
The Elijah Institute has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7719. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. The Elijah Institute is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.
