A304 The Challenging Adolescent: A Collaborative, Strengths-Based Approach

Explosive and violent, highly oppositional, and self-harming adolescents can be a nightmare for parents, school personnel, and mental health professionals to manage. In this "hands-on," practice-oriented course, you will learn a collaborative, strengths-based approach that capitalizes on the resources of the adolescents, their family members, concerned peers, other key members of their social networks, and helpers from larger systems. We will focus on how to match therapeutic interventions with clients' unique learning styles, personal theories of change, and life goals. A strong emphasis will be placed on the creative use of self to stay creatively alive as a helper and to open possibilities for your toughest adolescent clients.

Meet The Instructor

Matthew D. Selekman, MSW, is a couples and family therapist in private practice and the co-director of Partners for Collaborative Solutions, an international family therapy training and consulting firm in Evanston, Illinois. He is the author of numerous family therapy articles and professional books, including Living on the Razor's Edge: Solution-Oriented Brief Family Therapy with Self-Harming Adolescents.

Course Contents

Session 1: Pathways to change: A collaborative, strengths-based therapy approach • The improvisational therapist: Practicing on the creative edge with difficult adolescents and their families • Guidelines for cultivating an inventive therapeutic mind

Session 2: The multisystemic assessment framework: Guidelines for determining at which systems levels to target interventions • Interviewing for possibilities: Therapeutic questions that elicit client expertise, curiosity, untold • Family stories, and well-formed treatment goals

Session 3: Effective engagement strategies with difficult adolescents • The mind as ally: Mindfulness meditation training and visualization tools to help adolescents master their self-defeating thinking patterns

Session 4: Difficult parents: Guidelines for fostering cooperative relationships with angry and hostile, laissez-faire, highly pessimistic, and substance abuse-impaired parents

Session 5: Guidelines for tailoring and matching therapeutic experiments with clients' unique learning styles, theories of change, and treatment goals • Rituals to establish or strengthen meaningful parent-adolescent relationships

Session 6: Untying family-helping system knots: Solution-generating dialogues with involved, helping professionals from larger systems • Covering the back door: Goal-maintenance strategies and constructive management of inevitable client slips

Learning Objectives

1. Identify therapeutic questions that elicit clients' key strength areas, untold family stories, and well-formed treatment goals.
2. Describe effective engagement strategies with difficult adolescents.
3. Design therapeutic experiments and rituals that fit clients' unique learning styles, theories of change, and treatment goals.
4. Discuss role of members of the adolescent's social network in family therapy.
5. Identify solution-generating dialogues with involved helping professionals from larger systems.

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