An Adaptive Mentalization-Based Integrative Treatment (AMBIT) workshop studying the applications of mentalization for teams, supervisors and leadership will take place on May 22, 2025, at the New Center for Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles. The AMBIT system of care has shown to be effective for clients who struggle with complex relationships with trust, change and hope, and the workers that support them. This Ellenhorn-sponsored workshop will feature a blend of academic lectures and interactive skill-building activities that will equip attendees with AMBIT techniques they can immediately put into practice. It’s a workshop that will be beneficial for practitioners who want to enhance their ability to support themselves, their teams and their colleagues through a mentalization-based approach. In preparation for the event, Ellenhorn’s Gabrael Dunn, LCSW, director of brand & identity development, sat down with Shelly Simpson, LCSW, director of AMBIT, to talk about AMBIT, mentalization, balance and trust. 

Gabe: Can you explain what AMBIT is and how it incorporates mentalization? 

Shelly: Mentalization lives at the heart of AMBIT, thus everything we do when we provide an AMBIT system of care comes from mentalization. An AMBIT system targets a couple of different domains. First, it targets working with your clients and doing the mentalization-based work with them. Second, it focuses on keeping mentalization turned on with your team, who are then able to go to their clients and continue the stance. Third, AMBIT focuses on working within our networks and engaging all parts of the network with a mentalization-based approach. Finally, the last part of AMBIT is the domain of learning. AMBIT suggests that if we are not mentalizing we cannot learn—and we don’t know what we need to learn if we’re not being curious. Each of the skills attendees will learn in the workshop is attached to one of those domains. 

Gabe: What makes mentalization such a powerful tool for clinicians, not just in client work, but within team dynamics? 

Shelly: Mentalization is a tool that builds upon the trust clients display by entering into therapy. The goal is to create epistemic trust so that a client not only trusts you with their thoughts and feelings, but also trusts that you will help them navigate those sacred thoughts and feelings. The process of mentalization makes clients trust that they can be open with you, and that you will give them feedback and suggestions that feel right. Mentalization allows clients to trust that they are understood, held and felt by you as a clinician. That doesn’t change much in terms of how mentalization impacts clinician-to-clinician work or supervisor-to-clinician work. The difference is that when we’re working with other clinicians, we often listen to the problem that’s being presented to us and then move straight to: Did you try this? Or why didn’t you do this? And then, of course, we miss those mentalizing moments and the chance to instead say something like: That’s a really hard position to be in. Can you tell me what you think about this position? How did you get here? How can I help get you out? The goal is to hold space for let’s break down the process of what’s happening here, and then we move into the fixing. If, on the other hand, we always jump into the fixing we might give suggestions that have already been tried, or we might miss actual needs to be met. This can lead to burnout and to feeling misunderstood, and can also damage the trust between clinicians. 

Gabe: How does this workshop uniquely combine theory and practice to ensure attendees feel confident applying what they have learned? 

Shelly: It’s all about how we have the workshop set up. We will do a lecture about a particular skill, give an example of the skill and then we’ll break off into groups and practice the skill. All of the skills are research based and have been utilized for almost 15 years by AMBIT teams all across the world. Plus, we’ve cherry-picked the skills that we think are most applicable globally for all different types of teams. 

Gabe: Are you planning to separate folks into groups according to professional background? 

Shelly: Absolutely. One of the ways we will combine theory, skill and practice is to group participants who work in similar organizations or practice in similar ways. For example: those who work in treatment, those who are in group practices, those who serve as consultants or supervisors. Our goal is to make it a meaningful experience for each small group and give everyone the chance to really get to know one another and become a community. Our hope is that each community will utilize one another as resources outside the workshop as well.

Gabe: You’ve told me that you want the skills taught in this workshop to improve communication and trust within clinical teams. Can you explain how you plan to accomplish this? 

Shelly: By teaching teams how to effectively slow down the way they communicate. Don’t worry: We’re not talking about slowing things down in a way that’s going to add extra labor to your workload or extra time. Our hope is that this extra step actually makes the workload a bit easier on the back end. When we attempt to mentalize with our colleagues, we take a very verbal explicit step to let them know: I’m working to understand you and I’m working to hear what you are experiencing. This is my thought about it—what do you think? We use our time to communicate in a way that’s not just venting about the problem, and by the end of the conversation we use mentalizing to communicate in ways that provide holding for both the person seeking help and the person providing help. 

Gabe: What role do you think mentalization plays in fostering a safe, supportive work environment? 

Shelly: Mentalization allows us to really understand our colleagues and to understand that sharing our mind and our heart is an appropriate and helpful thing to do at work. Mentalization exemplifies the power of vulnerability and how holding others begets more of that behavior. It creates a safe space where a team is able to express their thoughts and feelings and know that they will be held in mind, but not held against them. 

Gabe: What would you suggest a social worker say to their supervisor in order to gain approval to attend this training? 

Shelly: I love this question. I think this workshop is a good investment for social workers and other mental-health providers because they’ll be able to pass what they’ve learned on to both their team members and their clients. AMBIT is what we consider an “open source,” so none of the information is incredibly private. In fact, we want to freely share the sources and the resources we have so that more people can practice from a mentalization-based lens. 

Gabe: Do you think that this is the right time for clinicians to deepen their understanding of mentalization? 

Shelly: One of the basics of mentalization is curiosity. Our current climate is an anxious one. Mentalization strives to break that apart and have curious connecting conversations, and I think that now is the best time for that. We see a lot of people struggling with loneliness and isolation who have more connections on their phone or on the internet than in real life. Mentalization really helps people understand how to connect with others, whether that’s on a virtual platform or in person. Dialectical behavior therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy don’t teach these skills because they don’t teach how to be curious about the minds of others and how to be explicit about that curiosity in a way that builds trust. Teaching clients mentalizing not only builds trust and epistemic trust between us, it helps clients go out into the world and build or rebuild this trust with people they care about. 

Gabe: How do the principles of mentalization align with the challenges clinicians face in today’s fast-paced world? 

Shelly: Everyone seems to want a quick fix these days, but that is not what mentalization is about. Mentalization helps us slow down. It allows us to be curious about things that are happening before we attempt to solve them. And it allows the client, not the therapist, to use this curiosity to solve the problem. That’s a really powerful thing with which to send a client off into the world. It’s saying: I believe in you. I believe you’re capable. I don’t think you’re broken. I think that we just need to sort through some stuff and you and your autonomy and your strengths can and will pull you through.