Contributed by Martha Straus

18 Results

Cultivating Relationships in Real Life

Seven Strategies for Guiding Lonely Young Adults

By asking the right questions in therapy, we can help make the road to adulthood less lonely for high school and college-age kids. Read more

Practice Tools May 23, 2022

Practice Tools - May/June 2022

"Own Your Hooks and How They Affect You" and "Understand Your Role in the Cycle of Escalation"

Handouts and worksheets are helpful ways of reinforcing therapeutic interventions, helping clients develop new skills, and kickstarting change. That’s why in... Read more

You've Got to Be Kidding

The Power of Humor in Therapy

Shared laughter is an attachment language. Though therapists usually engage more knowingly with tears, the exchange of brighter affect is another kind of... Read more

You Can Do Anything

The Outsized Dreams of Adolescents

What if we stopped looking to modify the unique functioning of the teenage brain—delusional though it may be at times—and did more to foster the creative... Read more

Playing Together Apart

Figuring Out Teletherapy for Kids

Without a well-researched paradigm for reaching young children who might need teleplay therapy in an uncertain time like this, therapists are forging ahead... Read more

VIDEO: The Power of Predictability

The Cornerstone of a Strong Therapeutic Alliance

Providing familiarity and predictability is one of our greatest tools in therapy, and can provide much-needed comfort to clients who aren't used to it... Read more

My Nightmare Client, My Greatest Gift

Sometimes Our "Worst" Clients Are Our Best Teachers

My young client, Brian, can reduce even confident mid-life adults to an infantile puddle, one provocative comment at a time. He's a therapist's nightmare... Read more

Craving Device-Free Attention

Technoconflicts in Families Today

Therapists are used to adolescent girls grumbling about their hovering, overinvolved parents. But these days, many have a new complaint—technoference in the... Read more

Listening to the Next Generation

Are We Hearing What They Have to Say?

Admitting her bafflement with some of her millennial clients, a veteran therapist accepts her ignorance and gets advice from some of the young people in her... Read more

Being There

Inhabiting the Moment with Traumatized Teens

With traumatized adolescent clients, it’s emotion that gradually changes emotion—not rational explanation or interpretation, not snazzy techniques or... Read more

Are You a "Permaparent"?

Your Adult Child Just Moved Back Home. But Is It Normal?

Today, about 25 million young adults between between 18 and 34 are currently residing with their parents. In its basic form, this story holds that most... Read more

Getting Unhooked

Connecting with Traumatized Kids Who Push Your Buttons

Most parents “loan” children their adult regulatory system beginning at birth. But developmentally traumatized teens have missed out on this opportunity... Read more

Case Study May 12, 2014

Rush to Judgment

Beware of the ADHD diagnosis

Part of the epidemic of misdiagnosed ADHD in young children today results from a failure to understand how trauma often leads to difficulty learning in school. Read more

Case Study May 1, 2011

From Conflict to Alliance

A road map for family interventions

There's no substitute for a clear clinical model that can guide you through the therapeutic change process. Read more

Bungee Families

You Can Go Home Again

While some warn that the conveyor belt that once transported adolescents into adulthood has broken down, other insist the increasing number of adult children... Read more

Case Study May 1, 2008

The Worry Hill

A Child-friendly Approach to OCD

Therapists helping children confront OCD face a formidable obstacle: helping their young clients get beyond their immediate terror in the hope of reaping... Read more

Hungry for Connection

10 Ways to Improve Your Therapy with Adolescent Girls

A veteran therapist draws from her years of clinical practice and personal experiences to meet every teenage client where they are. Read more

Nunna Yer Beeswax

No-talk Therapy with Adolescents

What to do when the standard techniques of joining provoke furious silence Read more

Martha Straus

Martha Straus, PhD, a professor in the Department of Clinical Psychology at Antioch University New England, is the author of No-Talk Therapy for Children and Adolescents, Adolescent Girls in Crisis, and Treating Traumatized Adolescents: Development, Attachment, and the Therapeutic Relationship.