These workshops explore field-tested approaches for providing developmentally appropriate, effective therapy when working with adolescents. Packed with practical strategies, stories from the field, and a bit of inspiration, the workshops include topics such as resolving resistance, fostering therapeutic alliance, and practical strategies for facilitating change.
Workshops include:
- When Teens Won’t Engage: Clinical strategies for overcoming resistance
- Reframing Resistance: Maybe teens aren’t stubborn, oppositional, or in denial
- Cultivating Rapport: Building transformative therapeutic alliances with teens
- Facilitating Change: Helping teens move from ambivalence to action
Descriptions can be found below. For more details or to schedule a workshop, contact me today.
Most therapists have little training or experience counseling teens. As a result, we often treat teen clients like big kids or little adults—and then wonder why they don’t engage.
That doesn’t mean teens are resistant, though. It means they don’t want to be treated like big kids or little adults. They also probably don’t want to talk about their feelings with a stranger, learn shrink-wrapped coping skills, or identify measurable treatment goals. What teen would? However, acting resistant isn’t the same as being resistant. In this workshop, we’ll unpack this very important idea and identify field-tested strategies to improve willingness, engagement, and treatment outcomes.
In the first part of this workshop, we’ll reframe this so-called resistance using three alternate perspectives:
- A Developmental Reframe: Adolescence is a discreet developmental stage with predictable tasks to complete. We’ll explore those tasks, ideas for being developmentally savvy therapists, and what can happen when tasks go undone.
- An Attachment Reframe: Attachment styles impact every therapeutic interaction. With that in mind, we’ll examine ways attachment shows up in sessions, strategies for navigating insecure attachments in teens, and how our own attachment styles matter, too.
- A Trauma Reframe: We’ll deepen our understanding of trauma, including common impacts of untreated trauma exposure, differences between trauma-informed and trauma-specific therapy, and ways trauma adaptations can masquerade as resistance.
These three reframes help us look beyond a teen’s apparent resistance. Often, that’s all it takes for treatment reluctance to disappear. Some teens, though, are stuck. In other words, they simply won’t or can’t engage–because change seems too hard, too risky, or too pointless. In the second part of this workshop, we’ll explore this Stuckness, including the role of risk avoidance, learned helplessness, and stalled identity formation. Along the way, we’ll consider a variety of field-tested strategies for helping these teens get unstuck.
Packed with practical strategies, stories from the field, and maybe some laughs, this highly interactive, full day workshop will transform your clinical work with teens.
Learning Objective 1: Attendees will examine treatment resistance among teens using developmental, attachment, and trauma perspectives. This includes identifying practical clinical strategies for improving engagement, willingness, and treatment outcomes.
Learning Objective 2: Attendees will explore the idea of Stuckness, including the role of risk avoidance, learned helplessness, and stalled identity formation. They will also consider relevant ideas from existential psychotherapy.
Learning Objective 3: Attendees will consider the role of therapeutic alliance in overcoming treatment reluctance. They will also identify and practice several field-tested approaches for cultivating rapport with treatment reluctant teens.
My most popular daylong workshop, When Teens Won’t Engage is typically scheduled to run 9:00am to 4:30pm, with an hour lunch and two 15-minute breaks. Due it’s highly interactive design, it’s offered in-person only.
REFRAMING RESISTANCE: MAYBE TEENS AREN’T STUBBORN, OPPOSITIONAL, OR IN DENIAL
Many teen clients seem unwilling, unengaged, or uninterested in therapy. That doesn’t mean they’re resistant, though. It means they don’t want to talk about their feelings with a stranger, learn shrink-wrapped coping skills, or identify measurable treatment goals. What teen would?
In this workshop, we’ll reframe this so-called resistance from developmental, attachment, and trauma-informed perspectives — to help us look beyond this initial reluctance, engage teen clients more effectively, and help them get unstuck. Packed with practical strategies, stories from the field, and a bit of inspiration, this workshop is sure to transform your clinical work with teens.
Learning Objective 1: Attendees will examine resistance among teens using developmental, attachment, and trauma lenses. This includes identifying ways these lenses are useful for reframing treatment reluctance among teen clients, as well as practical strategies for improving engagement, willingness, and treatment outcomes.
Learning Objective 2: Attendees will explore the idea of Stuckness, including common exacerbating factors such as stalled identity development, developmental debt, and minority stress.
Learning Objective 3: Attendees will review current research related to treatment reluctance among teens, the importance of trauma-informed strategies, and the role of therapeutic alliance when working with this population.
This workshop is three hours long. It can be offered online or in-person.
CULTIVATING RAPPORT: BUILDING TRANSFORMATIVE THERAPEUTIC ALLIANCES WITH TEENS
Building therapeutic alliance can seem daunting to many clinicians, especially when working with hard-to-engage teens. However, studies show effective therapeutic alliances are absolutely essential for engagement, retention, and positive outcomes.
We’ll start this workshop by exploring the importance of developing effective alliances and identifying common reasons teens can be resistant to treatment. Then, we’ll develop practical skills for overcoming those obstacles by increasing our trustworthiness, nurturing connectedness, and embodying empathy. Along the way, we’ll explore the role of self-disclosure, field-tested strategies for engaging teens with insecure attachment styles, and more.
Learning Objective 1: Attendees will review evidence regarding the importance of therapeutic alliance, identify common reasons teens are often reluctant to engage in treatment, and examine relevant developmental considerations.
Learning Objective 2: Attendees will explore the role of therapist trustworthiness, identify behaviors that demonstrate trustworthiness, and examine the role of self-disclosure in cultivating rapport with teen participants.
Learning Objective 3: Attendees will develop and practice at least five practical skills to increase the willingness of teens to engage in counseling services.
This workshop is three hours long. It can be offered online or in-person.
FACILITATING CHANGE: HELPING TEENS MOVE FROM AMBIVALENCE TO ACTION
Change is a process, not an event. Many teens enter counseling with minimal commitment to this process. Instead, they seem resistant, stubborn, or in denial. Our goal as professional helpers isn’t to talk them into action — that wouldn’t work anyway — but to help them resolve their ambivalence about change, find their own motivation, and start moving forward. If we can make the process fun, even better!
We’ll start this workshop by examining core ideas from Motivational Interviewing and the Stages of Change model — two evidence-based , trans-theoretical approaches for facilitating transformative change. Then we’ll explore stage-specific interventions, strategies for integrating change-talk into every session, and field-tested ideas for facilitating change with teens. Along the way, we’ll examine developmental considerations, review the neuroscience of it all, and laugh a little.
Learning Objective 1: Attendees will develop a working knowledge of the Stages of Change. This includes developmentally appropriate, field-tested strategies for intervening at each stage.
Learning Objective 2: Attendees will review core concepts from Motivational Interviewing, with an emphasis on developmentally useful application of these concepts when counseling teens.
Learning Objective 3: Attendees will explore relevant ideas from neuroscience, including strategies for making new learning “sticky” and the importance of fun when facilitating change.
This workshop is three hours long. It can be offered online or in-person.