Complete Counseling: From First to Last Session: Brief, Strengths-Based, Collaborative Therapy. Session 2

Over the course of five counseling sessions, Matthew Selekman works with Raquel and Lydia, a mother–daughter duo who have come to therapy to discuss some bumps in the road as the family is transitioning through a typical developmental stage—Lydia moving from the end of adolescence and into young adulthood, which includes attending community college and moving in with her boyfriend. Selekman works with the mother and daughter to see what successes they have already had and how they will continue to capitalize on their strengths into the future. They work on avoiding the “I'm right, you're wrong” pattern and de-escalating typical blowups in the family. Selekman works with the mother and daughter together in the first session. In subsequent sessions, he begins with both clients together for the first 20 minutes and then works individually with each person for the last part of the session. Matthew Selekman is a licensed clinical social worker and founder and director of Partners for Collaborative Solutions, based in Chicago. He is the author of numerous family therapy articles and seven professional books. His eighth book, Working With High-Risk Adolescents: An Individualized Family Therapy Approach, is due out in December 2015. He works with clients in his private practice from a brief, collaborative, postmodern strengths-based perspective. He believes that all clients have the strengths, resources, and self-healing capacities to change and are the experts with their own life situations. His expertise as a therapist is in tapping his clients' strengths to coconstruct solutions together. Complete Counseling: From First to Last Session takes the viewer through five sessions with the same client. Viewers will witness how clients change from session to session, how the approach to treatment changes over time, and how various therapeutic interventions are applied in different situations.