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AAMFT Winter
Institutes for Advanced Clinical
Training
March
4 - 8, 2009
Asheville,
North Carolina
Therapeutic Moments that Count:
Bringing Humor, Drama, and Adventure to Family Therapy
Matthew D. Selekman, MSW
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 therapy from a clinical procedure to a healing art.
How can we draw on our authenticity and natural inspiration to
engage reluctant clients, encourage a sense of adventure in
couples and 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 Institute, participants will focus on the
creative use of self in couples and family therapy as a
catalyst for therapeutic change. Practical guidelines for
bringing more humor, absurdity, drama, art, storytelling,
creative writing projects, and in-session imaginative
experiments into the clinical encounter will be reviewed.
Trouble-shooting guidelines for getting unstuck with difficult
couples and families will be presented. Therapists will leave
the workshop feeling inspired, liberated, daring, and more
inventive clinical practice. The session will combine
information-rich didactic presentation, extensive use of
videotape examples, and playful, out-of-the-box skill-building
exercises that tap participants’ creativity.
The Institute will
cover:
- therapeutic alliance-building
strategies and techniques with couples and families to
co-create a climate ripe for change.
- a systemic use of self framework
guidelines to determine therapeutic moves in specific
clinical situations.
- tapping family members’ and your
inventiveness to co-construct solutions.
- taking positive risks and being more
transparent outside the comfort zone in couples and family
therapy sessions.
- using storytelling, creative writing
projects, time-traveling, drama, art, and playful and
imaginative therapeutic experiments and rituals with couples
and families.
- effective therapeutic strategies for
constructively managing unexpected ruptures in alliances
with couple partners and family members.
- trouble-shooting guidelines for
getting unstuck with difficult couples and families.
Course Schedule
Thursday,
March 5 – Sunday, March 8, 2009
8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. each day
This course provides 20 hours of continuing education.
Matthew D. Selekman,
MSW is a couple and family therapist and addictions
counselor in private practice and the co-director of Partners
for Collaborative Solutions, an international family therapy
training and consulting firm in Evanston, Illinois. He is a
Clinical Member and Approved Supervisor with the AAMFT.
Matthew received the Walter S. Rosenberry Award in 2006, 2000,
and in 1999 from The Children’s Hospital in Denver, Colorado.
Matthew is the author of numerous family therapy articles and
five professional books: The Adolescent and Young Adult
Self-Harming Treatment Manual: A Collaborative Strengths-Based
Brief Therapy Approach; Working with Self-Harming Adolescents:
A Collaborative Strengths-Based Therapy Approach;
Pathways to Change: Brief Therapy with Difficult Adolescents
(Second Edition), Solution-Focused Therapy with
Children: Harnessing Family Strengths for Systemic Change,
and Family Therapy Approaches with Adolescent Substance
Abusers. He has presented workshops on his collaborative
strengths-based brief family therapy approach with challenging
children, adolescents, and adults extensively throughout the
United States and abroad.
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