Successful Brief Therapy—Going Beyond Classic Solution-Focused Models

Whether it is because of agency demands for services, session limits by insurance companies, or clients' impatience to put a problem to rest, short-term therapy is no longer just a clinical model but also an increasingly necessary approach to therapy services. It's about interaction and direction, education and accountability; it's about behavior, action, breaking patterns, doing it different. It's more Dr. Phil and less Dr. Freud. It's a way of thinking about problems and a specific way of working in sessions.

Through lecture, role-plays and demonstrations, and case examples, you'll learn how to hit the ground running from the initial contact. Going beyond the classic solution-focused models and miracle questions, we'll discuss how and where to focus for quick and accurate assessments, give you roadmaps for treating the common problems that couples and families present—affairs; addictions; the violent, ambivalent, or stale couple; the family with the acting-out teen. You'll learn how to define and change the core dynamic that keeps individuals and couples stuck, motivate clients to break out of patterns and step outside of their comfort zones, and learn powerful, experiential exercises for both assessment and treatment.

Whether you want to try on a new perspective and shake up what you do, fine-tune, or learn some new tricks, you will leave this workshop feeling creative and energized.

Course Content

Introduction and Overview

Couple Role Play

Essential Elements of Successful Brief Therapy

• Setting behavioral goals
• Tight tracking of session process
• Behavioral homework to break patterns
• Changing the emotional climate
• Defining the core dynamic
• Assessment by measuring couple/family against mental health models

Foundational Concepts

• Anxiety coping styles
• Relationship triangle
• Learning problems vs. problems about learning
• The 6 Truths
• Unraveling the core dynamic
• Couple vs. Family—similarities and differences
• Changing the emotional climate—techniques

Guided Imagery Exercise

Treatment Maps for Common Couple Problems

• Affairs—grief/trust, deconstructing the affair
• Addictions—redefining in context of couple
• Violence—development of first aid plans, defining the core dynamic
• Ambivalent couple—getting them off the fence
• Stale couples—developing common vision, desensitizing to conflict

Demonstration of Emotional Freedom Technique

Treatment Maps for Common Family Problems

• Structural model of healthy families
• Polarized parents—getting everyone on same page
• Child management issues—sorting skills from emotions
• Adolescent conflicts—de-escalation techniques
• Stepfamilies—avoid the "evil" parent syndrome