There is an old adage, “If you don’t know where you are going you will end up somewhere else.” Therefore, it is critical that we gain a clear picture from our clients of what will be hard signs of dramatic changes in their thinking, feeling, and doing in their successful treatment outcome. A great goal-setting […]

With families of adolescents that have had longstanding difficulties, there may be certain systemic constraints that have blocked family members from revealing the following: what specific past events or negative interactions are truly fueling their conflicts; are contributing to maintaining their distance in their relationships; or what specifically they strongly desire from a parent but […]

In my therapeutic work with clients, I strive to be totally transparent with sharing my hunches, ideas, and feelings with them. I also regularly invite their feedback about any recommended adjustments I need to make to help them feel more satisfied with our work together. That said, we all have had certain challenging clients in […]

Often, we get referred adolescents for family counseling services with extensive treatment histories that are either forced to see us by a powerful social control agent representing a larger system like the juvenile justice system or they are being dragged in by their parents to be fixed by us. With each one of these scenarios, […]

Many of our clients at one time or another, without professional help, have come up with some pretty outrageous or off-the-wall solution strategies that they failed to implement, thinking that they would not work or were not powerful enough to completely resolve their problems. However, what we have found over the years is that their […]