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Solution-Focused training ~ DVDs

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Brief Coaching: Taken More Seriously
Peter Szabo conducts a solution-building interview with the founder and director of a company who feels overwhelmed by daily business issues and wants to be taken more seriously by the board members and colleagues in pursuing some of his long-standing dreams. Insoo Kim Berg finds out what has been most helpful to the client in an immediate post-session interview. The second interview about further progress he made is also included.
Safety Planning in Child Protective Services: Building Solutions with Clients

The ability of the CPS worker to quickly enlist the client’s cooperation is crucial to ensure the safety of their children. Learn how to engage with clients respectfully while holding the client accountable for the safety of her child. On this DVD, a CPS worked not only gets invited into the house by a reluctant mother, but they also collaborate to develop detailed, concrete, measurable plans generated by the client herself.
Eagle and a Mouse: Treatment of a Very Fearful Boy

Because children lack the language skills of an adult, Therese Steiner uses many visualization techniques, perfected over 25years of work with children in Switzerland, to generate solutions based on the child’s ideas. On this DVD, Therese Steiner meets with a fearful 10 year old boy and his mother to help them build their own solutions over two sessions.
“I’m glad to be alive . . .”: Working with Suicidal Youth

What about “emotion” in solution-focused brief therapy? Miller and de Shazer not only address this frequently asked question but go further and challenge the paradigm of this question. They also describe Ludwig Wittgenstein’s influence on the everyday, ordinary language therapists use with their clients.
“I want to want to . . .”

Steve meets with a young man who has been paralyzed from the waist down from a car accident. 26 year-old Simon has been struggling to “want to want to be hopeful” about his future and has been finding no reason to continue. This DVD features Steve at his best, fitting with the client in his gentle, cautiously questioning, empathic approach that has become his trademark. The results are impressive, as the second interview demonstrates. This is an excellent teaching tape.
“I know he is not good for me, but . . .”

Yvonne Dolan interviews a young woman who is struggling with getting on with her life after her heart stopped after a drug overdose. This involves giving up her relationship with her abusive boyfriend while missing him and staying in touch with him. By following the woman carefully, Yvonne is able to skillfully guide the negotiation about what the client really wants.
Talking Solutions with "Mandated" Clients

A panel of four experienced solution-focused brief practitioners and teachers take a close look at the solution talk Insoo has with a mother that immediately builds a positive working relationship. The mother, Diana, has been “mandated” by the court to follow through on parent contacts with her two younger children who were placed in a foster home. Describes as a client with an “attitude that won’t quit,” she is thought to be very “difficult” to work with.
The Right Path or the Other Path: Working with a Teenage Substance Misuser

16 year old Naomi is heavily into the drug and boyfriend scene, skips school, and hangs out with the wrong crowd. Recent events have led her to begin questioning where the “wrong path” will lead. Instead of giving her suggestions and advice, Steve guides her by exploring in detail the right path or the other one, with Naomi talking herself into making the right choices. Insoo, a seasoned clinician, and Gale, an ethnomethodologist, discuss the various turning points in the session.
Together in the Middle of the Bed: Brief Treatment of a Couple

In these two sessions, de Shazer shows how his minimalist style impacts the couple – who see therapy as a “last ditch effort” to save their 15 year marriage – by slowing down the process of solution-building. During the post-session interview immediately following the first session, the couple describe some amazing insight into their fights. Their response to the question, “What is better?” at the start of the second session will probably be only the first surprise for you.
No More Lectures: Building Solutions with a Family in Crisis: A Consultation Interview

An excellent teaching tape, Insoo interviews a family that seems to be headed for disaster. Hard-working parents, “uncontrollable” teenagers, substance abuse among family members, suicide attempts, volatile tempers, financial problems, and painful frustration all around, shown by fathers repeated lectures to his children. Solidly grounded in her absolute faith and conviction about the client’s desire to make his life better, Berg skillfully turns a potentially explosive situation into solution talk, even after the teenage son walks out of the session in anger at the father.
"I Love My Kids": Getting Her Children Home

This 19 year old mother’s 2 children were “taken from” her as the result of physical injury to one of the children by mother’s male friend. He also “beat” her and threatened her life. Learn how a skilled therapist guides the solution-building conversation so that a “depressed and stressed out” mother transforms into a remarkable woman of courage, strength and determination. Insoo Kim Berg and Peter DeJong will guide you through this solution-building conversation within the framework of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy.
Coming Through The Ceiling: A Solution-Focused Approach to a Difficult Case

The client complains of difficulty sleeping because her upstairs neighbor is beaming shock waves through the ceiling from his strange “electrical machine” aimed at her bed. She reports that hospitalization and psychotherapy, including medication, has not helped. In the style Steve is famous for, the unedited first session demonstrates the process of “radical acceptance” of the client’s view as a way to build a useful therapeutic relationship, to find exceptions, and how to use scaling questions. The client returns for the second session having discovered her own ingenious solution to the problem that has plagued her.
Over the Hump

Watch as Insoo Kim Berg meets with a family with 5 children present whose past includes drugs, violence, contact with the criminal justice system, and protective services. Learn how Insoo begins solution-building with the family and continues working with the parents in the second session to help them continue their successes and convince the agencies and workers involved that they are indeed "over the hump."
Interviewing for Solutions, 3rd Edition

This video contains "Guided Exercises" that invite you to view interviews through a set of pre-programmed stops and requests for their interviewing questions and responses. You will be asked to listen, absorb client perceptions and language, and formulate responses and next questions "in the moment" much as you would in actual interviews. The book, Interviewing for Solutions, 3rd Edition, by Peter DeJong and Insoo Kim Berg, for which this DVD is a companion, is completely cross-referenced to identify specific clips where given skills and types of solution-focused conversations may be found.
"I'd Hear Laughter" Finding Solutions for the Family

Conducting a family therapy session is difficult to do successfully, and yet, when done in a competent manner, the result can be effective and rewarding to both the family and the therapist. This DVD demonstrates two family therapy sessions using the Solution-Focused Brief Therapy approach. The case shows ways to build solutions where there are a multitude of seemingly conflicting agendas and problems in a family. This DVD illustrates the effective use of many of the key elements of the model including goal negotiation, the miracle question, scaling questions, and messages to the family.
Irreconcilable Differences: A Solution-Focused Approach to Marital Therapy

Working with couples is a challenge to most therapists. Each partner’s view is so compelling that it easily invites the therapist to take a side. This DVD demonstrates how the Solution-Focused Brief Therapy model can be effectively used to overcome what appears at first to be a hopelessly conflictual situation. Therapists can learn from this DVD how to develop a helpful posture that keeps them from aligning with one of the partners against the other. It also shows how to assist couples to create solutions that are the best for each of them as well as the relationship.