A218 Therapy with Reluctant Teenagers

Teens are quick to spot therapists who won't stray from protocols and objectified treatment plans. This course will show how to meet the challenge of helping teenage clients who are firmly convinced that therapy is contrived and irrelevant. You'll learn how to handle the various obstacles to effective treatment with teens, including how to confront adolescents without fracturing the relationship, as well as how to work with teens who won't talk at all. You'll also learn how to mobilize parents who walk on eggshells around their children and feel hostage to their teen's emotional volatility.

Meet The Instructor

Janet Sasson Edgette, Psy.D., is a clinical psychologist practicing in the suburbs of Philadelphia and is the author of Candor, Connection, and Enterprise in Adolescent Therapy and Stop Negotiating with Your Teen: Strategies for Parenting Your Angry, Manipulative, Moody, or Depressed Adolescent.

Course Contents

Session 1: Offering Adolescent-"Friendly" Mental Health Service • Working in sessions while always respecting that they didn't ask to come • Picking up on and responding to the adolescent's implicit communication • Avoiding pretense or the assumption of mutual objectives • Avoiding the traps of trying too hard

Session 2: Becoming Savvy About Adolescent Therapy Clients • The importance of therapist credibility over rapport • Moving forward together in spite of a lack of motivation, interest, consensus, trust, or therapeutic alliance • The importance of helping teens save face while getting help • Engagement through accountability, direct responding, and transparency/candor • The danger of overempathizing

Session 3: Figuring Out Your Best Use of Time and People • What is your job? What do the others (teen, parent, foster parent, probation officer) think your job is? • Hurry up - but don't rush! • The challenges of presenting a differing opinion about the teen to the teen, or about a teen to the teen's parent • Being on everyone's side at the same time • Dealing with silence, anger, disagreement, denial, defensiveness • Helping parents who are shut down

Session 4: Working with Teenagers and Parents Together • Working with parents/stepparents/foster parents • Who wants you to "talk" sense into the teen? • Who'll be in the room with you while you treat the teen? • Who's overbearing or insensitive? • Helping the adolescent isolate and voice legitimate requests, needs, and points of view • Moving fluidly among individual, family, and parent sessions

Session 5: Societal and Parental Blind Spots About Adolescent Development • Raising and treating kids in a socio-cultural climate of indulgence and unaccountability • Misattribution of high risk, irresponsible, or inconsiderate behavior as "typical teenage stuff" • Helping parents/educators/mentors see teens' destructive or unbecoming behaviors as choices

Session 6: Expanding the Definition of Therapy • Helping kids whose parent(s) are ineffective, counterproductive, or hurtful • Humanizing therapy with adolescents and troubled families • Conclusion

Learning Objectives

1. Identify opening questions that cause adolescent clients to lose confidence in a therapist.
2. Identify five adolescent beliefs about change that interfere with the therapeutic process.
3. Describe an interpersonal climate in which a reluctant adolescent can most effectively accept help.
4. List strategies for deciding if and how to address family issues.
5. Design face-saving interventions to help adolescents accept help.

Search all CE courses

Search all Audio courses