with Patricia Harte Bratt,PhD

Brown Bag Lunch Series

Wednesday, May 17, 12:00 – 1:00pm (Eastern Time)

On Zoom – 1 CE

$17 administrative fee for each CE certificate.

You sit in the office with a smoldering adolescent, staring away from you at the wall. Clearly, there will be no talking.

Meanwhile, his anxious, hovering mother waits outside, after insisting, you have to help him get friends. He doesn’t know how to have a conversation.

WHAT DO YOU DO?

Therapists often ask me,”How do you relate to adolescents?” Or “Do I need to meet with parents?” “Should I tell the kids I’m meeting with their parents?” “Do I say something if a child is cheating at a game?” “What if they tell me something in confidence and the parents insist I tell them everything?”

How do we maintain confidentiality and still have the essential relationship with parents?

We can answer all those questions, but most important for us is, how to be with and work with kids? They are not just mini versions of adults. They have their own ways of perceiving the world and relationships.

Adolescents speak in symbols, defying us to decode. Let’s talk about how to navigate the precarious world of working with adolescents and helping them become resilient adults.

Course Objectives – Participants will be able to:

• Identify at least three ways to explore the symbolic communications of adolescents and adolescents;
• Design interventions that address the special ways we need to communicate with adolescents to help them feel comfortable, safe, and spontaneous in the therapeutic milieu;
• Develop a toolbox of strategies working effectively with parents, while preserving the confidentiality and integrity of the child’s treatment.

Patricia Harte Bratt, PhD

…is a psychoanalyst and psychotherapist, practicing in Livingston, NJ and NYC. She is a Director of ACAP, its Trauma and Resilience Programs, and ICPS. Dr. Bratt is President of the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (NAAP), and of the NJ State Advisory Committee for Psychoanalysis. Her publications include, “Consulting the Patient: The Art of Being Together”, “Nurturing Resilient Children”, and Mutual Growth in the Psychotherapeutic Relationship: Emotional Resilience, published by Routledge.

Join me in discovering the challenges and rewards when working with adolescents who are:

• invincible,
• ultra-sensitive and narcissistic,
• uncertain and ambivalent,
• help-refusing and needy, and
• all while being resentful and rejecting.

They are joyful, funny, and often – thanks to technology – know more about the world than their adults. So we have to be at top game to connect when it is most vital for maturation.

For questions or information email Susan Carnes at [email protected] or call 862-216-2400