Therapeutic Rapport: How to Build it, How to Maintain it

Two illustrated hands reach toward each other across a soft glow, suggesting connection.

Therapeutic Rapport: How to Build It, How to Maintain It (1.5HR) Presented by Dreya Blume, LCSW

$27.00

Course Description

This foundational training explores the art and science of building and sustaining therapeutic rapport: a core element of effective psychotherapy across all modalities. Participants will examine the key components of rapport, including empathy, attunement, trust, presence, and nonverbal communication. The training will offer strategies for establishing connection early in the therapeutic relationship, maintaining alliance through ruptures and repairs, and adapting rapport-building techniques across diverse clients and clinical contexts. Emphasis will be placed on cultural humility, the therapist’s use of self, and the ethical importance of rapport in supporting safety, collaboration, and positive outcomes.

Upon completion of this training, participants will be able to:

Identify the essential elements of therapeutic rapport and their role in effective clinical outcomes.
Apply practical strategies to build, strengthen, and repair rapport with clients across various stages of therapy.
Analyze culturally responsive and ethically sound approaches to fostering therapeutic alliance with diverse clients.

Social workers completing this course receive 1.5 Clinical asynchronous continuing education credits.

For other board approvals, this course qualifies for 1.5 Clinical continuing education training.

Instructor: Dreya Blume, LCSW

Recording Date: 11/03/2026

Course Format

NBCC ACEP # 7091, CE Training Workshops has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP #7091. Programs that do not qualify are clearly identified. CE Training Workshops is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs. CE Training Workshops designates this continuing education activity for 1.5 continuing education hours.

CE Training Workshops, LLC, #1770, is approved as an ACE provider to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Regulatory boards are the final authority on courses accepted for continuing education credit. ACE provider approval period: 08/02/2025 to 08/02/2028. Social workers completing this course receive 1.5 Clinical continuing education credits.

Meet Your Facilitator

Dreya Blume, LCSW

Dreya Blume is a licensed clinical social worker, with her MSW from Radford University and an MA in anthropology from the University of Hawaii. Dreya has twenty years of experience working in mental health, from case management to intensive in-home services to leading groups for addicts in recovery. Dreya began a part-time counseling practice in 2004, and as a psychotherapist, her focus has been on serving the LGBTQ+ community. Dreya also has been a teacher for thirty years. Prior to her career in social work, she taught English in places such as Japan, Thailand, Australia, and Hawaii. Since 2010, Dreya has been an adjunct professor for Virginia Western Community College, preparing future social workers for the field.

In her spare time, Dreya loves to write. She is the author of a number of books (published under her former name, Andy Matzner), including “Everyone Has a Story: Using the Hero’s Journey and Narrative Therapy to Reframe the Struggle of Mental Illness,” “The Tarot Activity Book: A Collection of Creative and Therapeutic Ideas for the Cards,” and “The Buddha Diet: A Guide to Creating a Positive Relationship with Food and Eating.”

Syllabus

Introduction

Objective #1: Identify the essential elements of therapeutic rapport and their role in effective clinical outcomes.

Defining rapport
Rapport and the therapeutic alliance

Objective #2: Apply practical strategies to build, strengthen, and repair rapport with clients across various stages of therapy

How to build rapport
Verbal vs non-verbal strategies

Objective #3: Analyze culturally responsive and ethically sound approaches to fostering therapeutic alliance with diverse clients.

Cultural humility
Respecting differences

Summary/Q&A