Session #: 718-209
Presenter(s): Matthew Selekman
Session Length: 2 hr. 00 min. Event: 2008 Networker Annual Symposium Date: March 13-16, 2008
How does a therapist make headway with a tough, gang-involved youth who's been court-ordered into therapy? What do you do with a stubbornly silent teen girl? How do you contain your anxiety when an adolescent is dragged into your office with a mountain of file folders detailing his multiple DSM-IV diagnoses? Regardless of how or why teens show up into your office, they respond best to a therapist who's funny, respectful, straight-talking, and able to go with the flow of the moment. This workshop will teach clinicians how to be improvisational artists who honor an adolescent's voice, while using playfulness and novelty to keep tough teens interested and engaged. You'll learn ways to use yourself to tap an adolescent's imaginative powers to generate solutions, as well as how to use "time-traveling" to heal past relationship wounds and cocreate compelling futures. You'll discover new ways to use storytelling, drama, music, and art as resources for healing, and how to recruit key people from the teen's social network to be creative catalysts for change.
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