I currently offer five highly interactive full day trainings, including my highly popular ethics workshop. They are:
- Treating Trauma in Teens: Core concepts, meaningful metaphors, and field-tested strategies
- Behind the Mask: Depression in adolescent males
- No Reason to Stop: Understanding and addressing substance-related problems in teens
- Mindfulness With Teens
- Ethical and Legal Considerations When Counseling Teens
Descriptions can be found below. These trainings provide six CEUs each. They’re typically scheduled to run 9:00am to 4:30pm, with an hour lunch break and two 15-minute breaks. Due to their highly interactive design, these full day trainings are offered in-person only. For more details or to schedule a workshop, contact me today.
TREATING TRAUMA IN TEENS: CORE CONCEPTS, MEANINGFUL METAPHORS, AND FIELD-TESTED STRATEGIES
Two-thirds of all Americans experience some form of trauma by age 16. If left untreated, this often leads to a variety of emotional, behavioral, and developmental concerns — including increased mental health challenges, substance-related issues, school failures, and more.
In this highly interactive daylong training, we’ll examine useful ways to conceptualize trauma among teens, identify the active ingredients for successful trauma therapy, and explore core clinical strategies for understanding and treating trauma in teens. Inspired by motivational interviewing, narrative therapy and the latest trauma research, these strategies are sure to increase engagement and improve treatment outcomes.
BEHIND THE MASK: DEPRESSION IN ADOLESCENT MALES
Depression is soaring among adolescent males. However, these young men often go undiagnosed and untreated, likely because they don’t exhibit standard diagnostic criteria for depression. Instead, after a lifetime being told boys don’t cry, they’re angry, oppositional, self-destructive, or simply numb. They hide behind these masks, trying to push away the world and hoping nobody notices they’re actually sad, lonely, vulnerable boys.
In this highly interactive daylong training, we’ll develop the knowledge and skills to look behind those masks, including the roots of this covert depression, the impact of the Guy Code, and the Stuckness that results when biological predispositions and environmental stressors collide. Since this Stuckness often includes death, meaninglessness, and isolation, we’ll consider practical strategies for exploring these existential themes with depressed adolescent males.
Often, these masks are attempts at avoidance of feelings, connections, and life. With that in mind, we’ll identify practical strategies for building therapeutic alliance by improving trustworthiness, nurturing connectedness, and developing therapeutic presence. Throughout the day, we’ll also consider ideas from attachment-based therapy and stages-of-change theory. These field-tested strategies will help youth get unstuck, start moving forward, and leave their masks behind.
NO REASON TO STOP: UNDERSTANDING AND ADDRESSING SUBSTANCE-RELATED PROBLEMS IN TEENS
Most mental health counselors have limited training regarding substance use, especially when it comes understanding or addressing these issues among teens. However, teens with these concerns show up in our offices all the time! In fact, statistics show that up to 40% of teens in mental health counseling have a diagnosable co-occurring substance use disorder.
When these teens don’t get effective treatment for their substance-related problems, they can become stuck in endless cycles of maladaptive behaviors, experiencing multiple treatment failures and frustrating even the most dedicated professional helpers. In this highly interactive daylong training, we’ll help change these outcomes by deepening our understanding of substance use among teens, exploring the connections between mental health concerns and using, and identify practical skills for helping teens recognize problems, resolve ambivalence, and identify their own reasons to make different choices.
MINDFULNESS WITH TEENS
Research shows that practicing mindfulness can be extremely helpful to those 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 concerns such as 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 over 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.
ETHICAL AND LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS WHEN COUNSELING TEENS
Teen counselors confront a variety of unique ethical and legal considerations–from navigating informed consent requirements, to defining what “imminent harm” actually means, to balancing best practices and client willingness.
This can be especially challenging here in Washington state, where laws about confidentiality and related treatment issues places the age of consent for counseling at 13 years old, at least in most cases. That’s why this workshop focuses specifically on the unique ethical and legal challenges faced by therapists who work with teens.
We’ll start by reviewing state laws covering confidentiality and consent when counseling teens, with a focus on recent changes. Next, we’ll explore HB1874, which went into effect in 2019 and continues to challenge counselors regarding requirements, expectations, and ethical considerations. Then we’ll examine a variety of practical considerations related to imminent danger, issues when working with mandated teens, and more.
Throughout the day, we’ll examine applicable sections of the American Counseling Association’s Code of Ethics, exercise our ethics muscles by discussing several case studies, and engage in discussions that bring relevant ethical challenges to life.
This training meets Washington state’s biannual licensing requirement for master’s level therapists. It exceeds Washington state’s biannual credentialing requirement for substance use disorders professionals.