Last year, Beck Institute was excited to welcome Dr. Ariel Nickie Davies to our bench of expert faculty. Dr. Nickie Davies is a licensed clinical psychologist who completed her post-doctoral residency at Wellspan Behavioral Health under the supervision of BI’s Executive Director Dr. Allen Miller. Dr. Nickie Davies currently uses CBT with adults experiencing anxiety, mood disorders, and issues related to their minority status. We are so pleased to have Dr. Nickie Davies share her expertise in working with people of the African diaspora, promoting overall wellness using a cultural framework.
We recently sat down with Dr. Nickie Davies to find out more about her, both professionally and personally.
Beck Institute: Thanks for taking the time to speak with us today. First, we’d love to hear more about your current roles, both in your own practice and what you’ve been doing with Beck Institute.
Dr. Nickie Davies: I see a pretty diverse group of individuals in the Baltimore area. They are primarily people of the Black and African American population, but diverse in every way. That’s one of the unique things about being in Maryland and the Baltimore area. A big part of my practice is using CBT with diverse groups of individuals.
In addition to that, I supervise doctoral students who have a master’s degree and are en route to getting a doctorate. My role is to help them get more real life out-of-the classroom experience within a CBT framework. I didn’t get an experience like that in grad school, so it’s very exciting to be able to do that.
At Beck Institute, my role is conducting workshops and training for organizations, and supervision with individuals interested in certification. The workshops I provide are focused on adapting CBT to diverse populations—Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.
I am going to be working on a webinar on a typical CBT session, which I’m hoping trainees will think of as a great complementary tool to their certification. I think there’s a lot of value in the longer programs, but the shorter webinar format provides a snippet of what a real-life CBT session looks like. I’m excited about showing a session that breaks the myth of CBT being a manualized treatment.
Beck Institute: Why did you want to become a therapist and what drew you to CBT specifically?
Dr. Nickie Davies: Essentially, I grew up in a community where adults didn’t really talk to younger people. I noticed there was a shift when I became an adolescent. The adults treated me differently. I didn’t understand this, and I thought: Was I supposed to be different, too?
At a relative’s home I found a book by a psychologist answering 100 questions about having a teenage child. After reading it, I started to understand what happens outside of what I was taught in health class. I had learned about what happens in my body, but I hadn’t really learned about what happens to my mind, how my role in society changes, how I’m being seen differently as I become more mature. And then I determined that I wanted to be like [the author]. I wanted to help teenagers and specifically teen girls feel comfortable and have a place where they could talk to someone and learn.
Even though I don’t see teens anymore, I found value in working with parents, trying to facilitate change in what the next generation looks like. If I can shift the thinking of my clients who are parents, they can shift their approach to parenting and have more openness about emotions and thoughts, maybe breaking generations of unhealthy patterns.
In terms of CBT specifically, I think of CBT as hope—tangible ways for people to create change. Like many grad students, I had classes on different theories and when I learned about CBT, I was like—Oh, this is mine! There was something different about CBT, the idea that people had an active role in creating change in their lives. And to me, that felt more sustainable than other theories or therapies that were more like—Okay, you come to my session and I just kind of let you talk about all this stuff from the past. I thought [with CBT] maybe the clients will always feel like there’s change that’s happening in the present—and that’s why I thought CBT was pretty awesome.
And [then Director of Behavioral Health at Wellspan, and current BI Executive Director Dr. Allen Miller] did a presentation at my internship, and I decided that I want to find a way to work with [Dr. Miller and his colleagues]. So I got my post-doctoral training with him at the CBT Center at Wellspan.
Beck Institute: We often see criticism that CBT is not appropriate for clients from diverse cultural backgrounds. How do you respond to that and what are some of the ways that you adapt treatment for your clients?
Dr. Nickie Davies: At first, my slightly defensive response is that that’s not real CBT. However, I do believe that there are places where CBT can be adjusted, and I’ve been doing this with my clients. Let me say this: I can see where CBT can be used to invalidate clients of color, primarily when dealing with racial issues.
It’s our job as clinicians to be intentional about adjusting and adapting CBT to help it fit [with diverse clients]. Sometimes we don’t use cognitive restructuring. It’s not appropriate. Sometimes we don’t ask a client to evaluate thoughts. Maybe recognizing that sometimes behavioral experiments could be dangerous for your client—maybe that’s not something that they can specifically do, and that can be for any minority group, right?
In addition to that, we have to emphasize the collaborative aspects of CBT a little bit more. So if we’re talking about diverse groups of people who are not a part of the mainstream majority culture, they feel oppressed, they feel ignored and not heard. In the therapeutic setting you want to be way more collaborative than you might be normally. What you want these clients to know and to hear is, “I am doing this with you. You have agency over your life. And I am not above you.”
Those are the things that I have found to be helpful.
Ultimately, I think that if, in general, we have determined that CBT is the gold standard practice in the field, then why wouldn’t people of diverse backgrounds be deserving of it? So, it’s a matter of what we need to do to make it a good fit. That’s how I think about it.
Beck Institute: It feels like we’re at a turning point now where there is so much more attention being paid to how we can get evidence-based treatments to anyone and everyone. How do we adapt them and how do we make them affordable and accessible and address all of the barriers that can make CBT out of reach for people? I think there’s a lot of work to be done in that area and it’s something that’s important to us. I know it’s very important to [CBT Program Director] Sofia [Chernoff]. We’re really happy to have you on board to help us.
Dr. Nickie Davies: I believe that part of my clinical duty is helping clinicians learn how to use CBT to appropriately treat people of the African diaspora. And all people of color, to be honest with you. I believe it starts by acknowledging that there is a cultural difference and then being willing to receive additional training.
This is important work for us to do. Everyone should be able to have the same access to optimal mental health care.
Beck Institute: So last question, how do you spend your time outside of work? What are you passionate about personally?
Dr. Nickie Davies: I spend a lot of time doing fitness-related activities, which is odd as someone who didn’t do any sports growing up. My favorite activities are yoga and taking walks.
Learn more about Dr. Nickie Davies’s webinar Practicing CBT: Inside a Complete Session!