The therapist’s use of self: being the catalyst for change in couple and family therapy
At times in our professional careers, all of us have been faced with clinical situations in which we were intimidated by or experienced therapeutic paralysis in reaction to particular clients’ provocative and perplexing presenting problems, extensive treatment histories, families with multiple symptom-bearers carrying serious DSM-V diagnoses, and couples and families that seem to thrive on one crisis to the next. With these challenging and nightmarish client situations, it can feel like we are trapped in and neutralized by the gravitational pull of a stellar black hole. In this hands-on, practice-oriented seminar, several effective ways therapists can tap the full range of their inner resources and creative selves for getting unstuck and being the catalysts for therapeutic change with complex and difficult client practice situations are presented. Participants will come away from this seminar with a plethora of therapeutic tools and strategies, feeling inspired, energized, and more daring and confident working outside their comfort zones with their most challenging couples and families. The seminar format will combine didactic presentation with videotape examples of major therapeutic tools and strategies.
Organiser
Association for Family and Systemic Psychotherapy
The seminar outline is as follows:
- Apply valuable lessons and the philosophical wisdom from leading pioneers in the family therapy field on the therapist’s use of self
- Clients as the true heroes: Key research findings on what clients report therapists do that optimized for their treatment success
- How the latest research on wisdom and wise therapists can inform our clinical practices
- Become a skilled reflective practitioner: Keeping an open mind, maintaining therapeutic maneuverability, and increasing accuracy with intervention-client-fit
Practicing out on the edges: The therapist’s use of self-toolkit - Cultivating your therapeutic inventiveness: Prospecting for ideas outside of our field for finding useful metaphors, crafting bold and intriguing questions, and designing therapeutic experiments
- What we bring to our clients: Using your top strengths, talents, and life passions for solution-finding
- Monty Python meets Cirque du Soleil: Bringing more drama, suspense, surprise, humor, and playfulness to liven up the session climate and create possibilities
- Construct, select, and tailor-fit therapeutic experiments and rituals in line with clients’ stages of readiness for change, theories of change, and goals
- Use of idea-generating tools and strategies for tapping the inventiveness and imagination powers of our clients to co-construct creative high-quality solutions
- Therapeutic brick walls: Trouble-shooting guidelines for getting unstuck with complex and stuck client situations
Matthew D. Selekman, MA, LCSW, is the clinical supervisor for 360 Wellness & Coaching in Lake Forest, IL, USA, and maintains a private practice working with children, adolescents, adults, and high conflict couples. He specialises in addressing anger management, oppositional and defiant behaviours, gang involvement, substance abuse, self injury, and eating related challenges using a collaborative, strengths based family therapy approach.
He is an Approved Supervisor and Clinical Fellow of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, a licensed clinical social worker, and an addictions counsellor. Matthew is also Director of Partners for Collaborative Solutions, an international family therapy and brief therapy training and consultation organisation based in Evanston, IL.
A three time recipient of the Walter S. Rosenberry Award, he is the author of nine practice oriented books and has presented his work extensively across North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania.
Duration/CPD: 2 hours