WORKING WITH DIFFICULT CLIENTS: EFFECTIVE THERAPEUTIC TOOLS AND STRATEGIES

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 and extensive treatment histories, families with multiple symptom-bearing members carrying serious DSM-V diagnoses, clients entangled in many larger helping systems due to the chronicity of their difficulties, and clients 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 workshop, participants will learn several effective therapeutic tools and strategies to build alliances and/or get unstuck with, and promote change with the most difficult individual clients, couples, and families on their caseloads. As a result of attending this workshops participants will be able to:

• Build therapeutic alliances with challenging and resistant clients
• Craft and select powerful therapeutic questions that tap into clients’ expertise, elicit their untold stories, and co-create with them compelling visions of positive future outcomes of success
• Design, select, and tailor-fit therapeutic interventions with unique client needs and characteristics
• Use effective relapse prevention tools and strategies to consolidate clients’ gains and constructively manage inevitable slips
• Foster solution-generating conversations with involved helping professionals from larger systems
• Use trouble-shooting guidelines to get unstuck with your toughest clients