These workshops explore field-tested approaches for providing developmentally appropriate, effective therapy when working with teens. Packed with practical strategies, stories from the field, and a bit of inspiration, they include topics such as resolving resistance, fostering therapeutic alliance, and facilitating change.
Workshops include:
- 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
- Mindfulness with Teens
Descriptions can be found below. For more details or to schedule a workshop, contact me today.
We’ll start by reframing 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 reconsider a teen’s apparent resistance — and in the process, turn that so-called resistance into actionable treatment goals. Sometimes though, teens don’t engage because change seems too hard, risky, or 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 the role of therapeutic alliance, self-as-therapist, and a variety of field-tested strategies for helping teens moving forward. Packed with stories from the field, practical approaches, and even some laughs, this workshop could transform how you 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, Reframing Resistance 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.
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.
MINDFULNESS WITH TEENS
Research shows that practicing mindfulness can be extremely helpful to teens challenged by trauma, depression, anxiety, ADHD, substance use disorders, and more. In fact, mindfulness is an essential component of several evidence-based practices, including Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention.
However, the abstract nature of mindfulness can make it challenging to teach in ways that are meaningful and translate into the daily lives of many teen clients. In fact, those clients who would find mindfulness the most difficult to practice — due impulse control issues, extreme hyper-vigilance, or chronic chaos-making — are generally the ones who would most benefit from it.
Our task as helpers, then, is to present mindfulness in ways that are concrete, accessible and provide obvious value. This workshop focuses on strategies for doing just that, as well as presenting a dozen teen-tested mindfulness activities. Along the way, we’ll also develop a deeper understanding of mindfulness, review the evidence supporting clinical applications of mindfulness, and explore the importance of trauma informed approaches.
Learning Objective 1: Attendees will review the research for the clinical application of mindfulness when treating trauma, depression, anxiety, substance use disorders, and impulsive behaviors.
Learning Objective 2: Attendees will develop practical skills for integrating mindfulness into both individual and group sessions, including participating in over a dozen teen-tested treatment-appropriate activities that help make mindfulness concrete, accessible, and effective.
Learning Objective 3: Attendees will explore the importance of integrating trauma-informed strategies when utilizing mindfulness with teens.
This workshop is three hours long. Due it’s highly interactive design, it’s offered in-person only.