THERAPEUTIC MOMENTS THAT COUNT:

BRINGING HUMOR, DRAMA, AND ADVENTURE TO FAMILY THERAPY

No matter how precisely we follow a treatment protocol in the end it is our unrehearsed capacity to inspire spontaneous moments of humor, surprise, revelation, and emotional connection that transforms family therapy from clinical procedure to a healing art. How can we draw on our authenticity and natural inspiration to engage reluctant clients, encourage a sense of playfulness and adventure in families, and sponsor lively personal interactions that spark moments of real change? How do we successfully repair ruptures in our therapeutic alliances with family members who may have felt slighted or misunderstood by us in the therapeutic process?

In this upbeat, practice-oriented workshop, participants will focus on the creative use of self in family therapy as a catalyst for therapeutic change. Practical guidelines for bringing more humor, absurdity, drama, time-traveling, art, storytelling, creative writing and film-making projects, and in-session imaginative experiments into the clinical encounter will be demonstrated through videotape examples. Trouble-shooting guidelines for getting unstuck with resistant and difficult families will be presented. Therapists will leave the workshop feeling inspired, liberated, more daring, and inventive, and armed with a chockfull of effective therapeutic tools and strategies.

Workshop Objectives

1. Use therapeutic alliance-building strategies to co-create a therapeutic climate ripe for change in first family therapy interviews
2. Use the systemic use of self framework to guide therapeutic moves in specific clinical situations
3. Effective engagement strategies with resistant and challenging parents, adolescents, and children
4. Tap family members’ inventiveness to co-construct therapeutic experiments
5. Use storytelling, creative writing projects, time-traveling, drama, art, and playful and imaginative therapeutic experiments and rituals to produce long-lasting systemic change

Workshop Presenters:

Matthew Selekman, MSW, is in private practice and co-director of Partners for Collaborative Solutions in Evanston, IL and is the author of Pathways to Change: Brief Therapy with Difficult Adolescents (Second Edition).

Jim Wilson, CQSW, co-director of Partners for Collaborative Solutions in Gwent, Wales, United Kingdom, Consulting Systemic Psychotherapist Gwent Health Care Trust and Foster Care Associates, and author of Child-Focused Practice: A Collaborative Systemic Approach.

Mark Beyebach, Ph. D., Research Consultant for Partners for Collaborative Solutions in Salamanca, Spain, Director of the Master’s Degree Program in Systemic Therapy, Department of Psychology, Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, and author of Twenty-Four Ideas for Brief Therapy.