Full Course Description

Module 1 | Treating Teens: Powerful Strategies for Trauma, Anxiety, Identity, and More

Stepping into the turbulent waters of teenage issues requires a deep understanding of what motivates them, from their reluctance to open-up to outright oppositional interactions….

…but engaging them effectively demands more than just empathy; it calls for specialized techniques and a nuanced approach.

That’s why child/adolescent behavior disorders and trauma specialist Dr. Susan Kane-Ronning, has put together this course sharing the techniques she has found most effective in over 35 years of clinical practice. You will finish with:

In-depth understanding of the remodeling process happening in the teenage brain
Advanced interventions targeting eating disorders, substance abuse, selfharm, adverse childhood experiences, and other critical issues prevalent among teens
Values-centered approaches to help adolescents cope with the overwhelming concerns of today’s world, from environmental crises to political unrest
Creative therapies to build social skills and resilience to counteract the impact of social media, bullying, body-shaming, and more

Additionally, you will gain powerful insights into working with families, assessing lethality risks, and a comprehensive toolkit for rapport-building and effective counseling in this challenging domain.

PURCHASE TODAY this fast-paced course filled with practical and ready-to-use strategies to make a huge impact on the lives of teens.

Program Information

Objectives

Utilize ACT techniques to decrease teen anxiety symptoms.
Use regulation skills to stabilize PTSD symptomatology.
Evaluate adolescent suicidality and self-harm behaviors.
Identify key variables that impact adolescent image and identity.
Utilize parent-based intervention strategies for high-risk behaviors.
Determine ethical considerations and confidentiality for counseling teens.

Outline

The Tumultuous Teen Years

Synaptic growth and critical brain changes
Hormones: The far-reaching impact
The impact of alcohol, cannabis, and other substances
Ever-evolving roles and responsibilities

Assessment and Diagnostic Strategies

Build attachment-focused therapeutic rapport
Screening tools that drive treatment
Teen angst vs mental health diagnoses
Ethical considerations: How and when to involve parents and caregivers
Evaluate suicidality, lethality, and risk of violence
Case conceptualization templates
Limitations of the research and potential risks

TEEN-SPECIFIC INTERVENTION APPROACHES

Anxiety and Depression
- 10 mindfulness strategies to tame anticipatory anxiety
- Creative therapies for social anxiety and shyness
- Techniques for test anxiety, perfectionism, and the inner critic
- Top strategies for school refusal
- CBT and mindfulness to mitigate excessive gaming and screen time
- Must-use ACT approaches for state-of-the world anxiety
- Case study: 16-year-old, cannabis use, failing grades
Trauma, PTSD, and C-PTSD
- Adverse Childhood Experiences
- Cultural responsiveness: Racial trauma
- Family system dysfunction and repair strategies
- Top trauma treatment modalities and approaches
  - Trauma-focused CBT strategies
  - Energy psychology techniques
  - Mindfulness-based stress reduction activities
- Case study: 13-year-old, h/o abuse and disrupted attachment
Image and Identity
- Affirmative tools to explore gender identity and sexual orientation
- Acceptance and positive body image
- Deal with social media: Cognitive defusion strategies
- Racial and socioeconomic inequity
- Mitigate bullying, social exclusion, and breakups
- Positive self-image through creative therapies
High-Risk Behaviors and Challenging Issues
- Get teens on-board with safety plans for self-injury and suicidal ideation
- Motivational interviewing and contingency management approaches for substance use
- Top CBT strategies to address teen insomnia
- Case study:19-year-old, poly-drug use, h/o sexual assault

The Business of Counseling Teens

Confidentiality and ethical considerations
Getting teens onboard with therapy and when to incorporate the family
Must-use strategies to engage the most reluctant clients
When parents are the problem: Next steps
Navigating legalities: Lethality risk, suicidality
Collaborate with medical professionals and educators

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychologists
School Counselors
School Social Workers
Marriage and Family Therapists
Educators

Copyright : 12/09/2024

Module 2 | Clinical Applications for DBT of Teens and Young Adults

Feeling “stuck” in your clinical work with teens and young adults?

Are you, like so many of your colleagues, seeing more and more clients in the 12-25-year old age range who continue to struggle with sadness, anxiety, and anger in spite of your best efforts in therapy?

This is your chance to learn Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) directly from expert Charles Jacob, PhD, and integrate it into your practice to effectively address the nuanced needs of this generation.

After just one day under Dr. Jacob’s renowned expertise, you will walk away with:

Evidence-based DBT skills to address stress, depression, trauma, suicidal and self-destructive behaviors in teens and young adults
A start-to-finish roadmap to help your most challenging young clients reach new levels of healing
Clinical tools to address trauma, improve emotional regulation, and build resilience immediately
In-session DBT strategies and homework assignments to use immediately

Purchase today to get the skills and confidence you need to successfully help your teen and young adult clients with the power of DBT!

Program Information

Objectives

Identify the post-COVID-19 trends in mental health challenges that are prevalent among teens and young adults.
Differentiate between therapeutic approaches for adolescents and young adults versus adults.
Examine the relevance of foundational components of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), including mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotional regulation, interpersonal effectiveness, and validation, for young clients.
Evaluate the limitations of using DBT with adolescents and young adults.
Choose DBT skills, including mindfulness and emotional regulation, to manage distress in young clients.
Use DBT-informed safety and assessment tools to address self-destructive behaviors in teens and young adults.

Outline

The Mental Health of Teens and Young Adults

Statistics and trends in the U.S.
Anxiety and depression post Covid-19
12-25 year olds vs adults in therapy
- How therapy differs
- Is there a “right” way to work with young clients?
Three valuable strategies for improved client engagement

Laying the Groundwork of DBT

Why DBT is a good option for young people
The core components of DBT
- Mindfulness
- Distress tolerance
- Emotional regulation
- Interpersonal effectiveness
- Validation
DBT as evidence-based practice
- History and development
- Hierarchy and stages of treatment
Dialectics: the balance of acceptance and change
- Acceptance-oriented skills
- Change-oriented skills
- Examples and case studies
Limitations of the research and potential risks

The Process of Therapy

Adapting sessions for adolescents: “DBT-A” Group Therapy
Tips for an effective and receptive group culture
DBT skills in action
Individual therapy
Elicit-Provide-Elicit model for disseminating skills
Behavior and solution analysis strategies
Understand irreverence

Utilize DBT Strategies with Teens and Young Adults
Mindfulness – Turning Off Autopilot

De-mystify mindfulness
- A gateway skill & soothing technique
- Build up the “mindfulness muscle”
- Make wise mind make sense!
- Self-care and avoid internal judgment
Practical strategies to foster present-moment awareness
- The perfect mindfulness “sales pitch” to use with young clients
- In-session mindfulness activities and homework assignments

Emotional Regulation – Accept the Feelings

The neuroscience of emotions in teens
Valuable tools & skills to recognize, monitor, and manage intense emotions
- TIP: Temperature, intense exercise, Progressive Relaxation
- Wise Mind ACCEPTS – develop a skills resource
- Distraction skills
- Self-soothing skills
Build positive experiences to combat negative emotions

Distress Tolerance – When They Can’t Get Away

How to explain a SUDs rating
Outline the challenges of exposure and response prevention
The radical acceptance “sales pitch”
Tips to help teens recognize that all intense emotions pass with time
Rating scales to monitor emotions and experience self-efficacy
Use of routines and activities to make distress less intense and more manageable

Interpersonal Effectiveness – Create and Maintain Balance

Empower adolescents to recognize what behaviors they can control (namely: their own)
Reframe the classic DBT acronyms: DEAR MAN, FAST, and GIVE
Validate others to engage more effectively
Boundary-building skills
Step-by-step guide to crafting an effective “empathy statement”

Powerful DBT Strategies for Self-Directed Violence & Suicidal Thoughts

Need-to-know statistics and trends
Safety and suicide assessment tools
Safety planning strategies and examples
Bridge-burning strategies for adolescent clients

Target Audience

Counselors
School Counselors
Psychologists
Psychotherapists
Social Workers
School Social Workers
Art Therapists
Marriage & Family Therapists
Addiction Counselors
Case Managers
Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 05/12/2025

Module 3 | Therapeutic Ruptures with Teens: A Complete Toolkit to Repair Broken Trust, Rebuild Connection and Get Treatment Back on Track

Working with teenagers in therapy can be incredibly rewarding, but let’s face it – it’s also one of the most challenging roles you’ll ever take on.

Desire for independence, fluctuating motivation, and evolving emotional needs make the work tricky – and can lead to therapeutic ruptures that can be difficult to identify, let alone repair …

That’s why I created this all-new training to make sure you can not only recognize but also address therapeutic ruptures with strategies that work, so you can repair the relationship and keep your work with teens on track.

You’ll get the skills, tools and clinical language to:

Assess the “mental and developmental” age of your teen clients to tailor your approach and interventions more effectively.
Implement a straightforward framework for recognizing and addressing ruptures during sessions with adolescents.
Master strategies to repair ruptures and rebuild trust with teens in a way that strengthens the therapeutic alliance.
Leverage past ruptures as opportunities for growth, using them to deepen and enhance your connection with your teen clients.

Don’t let ruptures derail your work – purchase today and take your therapeutic practice with teens to the next level.

Program Information

Objectives

Determine how to strengthen the therapeutic alliance.
Analyze the relationship between rupture-repair dynamics and treatment dropout in adolescent therapy.
Identify how different stages of adolescent development influence the formation and maintenance of the therapeutic alliance.
Identify the therapists’ role in rupture process.
Examine transference and countertransference pitfalls that occur within treatment with adolescents.
Determine how therapists can turn the experience of rupture into a tangible, identifiable series of observable behaviors.
Use strategies such as validation, trust-building, and curiosity to repair ruptures in the therapeutic alliance during adolescent therapy.

Outline

Alliance and Ruptures 101

Overview of the working alliance
Important features of maintaining a therapeutic alliance
Defining Rupture – a break in the working alliance
Impact of a rupture of the working alliance and treatment
Frequency/normality and importance of ruptures in therapeutic process

Adolescence, Developmental Age and Other Treatment Factors

How is an adolescent defined developmentally?
Distinguish chronological age from developmental age, and why is this important?
The impact of adolescence on social relationships
Autonomy and pushing boundaries as an important aspect of adolescence
Factors that may contribute to rupture (involuntary participation, parental involvement. etc.)

The Keys to Identifying Ruptures in Teen Treatment

The types of rupture
What do these types of rupture look like? (video references)
Behaviors typical of each rupture
Understanding ruptures impact on the teen
Rupture and countertransference
The rupture’s impact on the treatment

Autonomy, Power Dynamics, and the Role of Empathy in Repair

How will ruptures manifest differently in adolescents?
The power differential and how it affects rupture experience
Distinguish autonomy-seeking from rupture process
Countertransference experience in a rupture process with adolescents
How empathy during ruptures facilitates repair

Targeted Repair Strategies for Teens

Mentalization of rupture – what is being communicated during this rupture?
5 common rupture repair techniques
How to use adolescent developmental age to tailor repair to your teen
How to assess efficacy of repair interventions
Ongoing challenges to repair work with adolescents
Research, risks and limitations

Target Audience

Counselors
School Counselors
Psychologists
Psychotherapists
Social Workers
School Social Workers
Marriage & Family Therapists
Addiction Counselors
Case Managers
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 07/29/2025

Phones, Teens, & Plunging Mental Health

Today’s adolescents and teens barely drink or smoke, get into fewer fights, and have less sex. By many measures, they’re healthier and safer than they’ve ever been. And yet, in the last couple of decades, suicide rates have doubled among 12–14-year-olds, and there’s been a major increase in depression among teens in general. What gives?

In this workshop, a teen anxiety expert and a popular research psychologist will help you help your clients:

Connect the dots between smartphones entering the market and our stunning drop-off in teen wellness

Go beyond the headlines and into the research about what developing a healthy relationship to technology looks like

Tease apart the reasons socializing online may not be a replacement for in-person time

Understand the good and bad of already anxious teens connecting through technology

Program Information

Objectives

Describe the impact of smartphone use on adolescent relationships.
Teach parents two skills to address phone use with decreased family conflict.
List three research-backed risk factors of social media use on adolescents mental health.

Outline

Current research on impact of smartphone use

Development of teen independence
Relationships and IRL contact 
Current trends in child/adolescent mental health 
Sleep Disruption

What role do therapists have? 

Conveying the data in an environment of defensiveness
Practical rules for enforcement 
Handling conflict between parents and children and parents and schools
Social media, tracking, communication: fertile ground for anxious families

Next steps in light of the research

Is it time to stop being so careful with messaging?
Causality versus correlation: what we know 
Schools, “new" rules and messages of prevention
Parents’ use and the role of modeling

Risks and Limitations

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage and Family Therapists
Social Workers
Physicians
Psychologists
Addiction Counselors

Helping the Anxious Generation: A Power-Packed Menu of Evidence-Based Interventions to Ease Anxiety and Build Resilience in Teens and Young Adults

There’s no doubt that a record number of teens and young adults are on the brink of crisis.

But it takes a special skillset to help this hurting and anxious generation.

This is your rare opportunity to learn the latest and most effective techniques directly from Dr. Ashley Smith, an award-winning psychologist, sought-after speaker, researcher and author of The Way I See It: A Psychologist’s Guide to a Happier Life!

Drawing on evidence-based clinical interventions and 20 years of specializing in youth anxiety, Dr. Smith designed this fast-paced, strategy-rich training to help you feel confident and competent in addressing this growing need.

In this training, you will:

Go beyond diagnostic labels and criteria
Learn rapport-building strategies that work with reluctant and resistant teens and young adults
Dive into the neurology of anxiety in the 15–25-year-old brain
Gain hands on experience in the implementation of cognitive, mindfulness, relaxation, and behavioral strategies
Leave with a menu of intervention options and a clear framework for deciding when to use which tool

Purchase now and prepare to meet the needs of this hurting generation that desperately needs your help.

Program Information

Objectives

Choose mindfulness techniques, cognitive interventions, and relaxation strategies to use with teens and young adults.
Utilize metaphors to explain key concepts and intervention rationales to teens and young adults.
Identify cognitive strategies to help clients address anxious or unhelpful thoughts.

Outline

From Normative to Clinical Anxiety

Today’s teens: generation-specific predisposing factors
Anxiety disorders – does diagnosis even matter?
Two pathways in the brain and implications for intervention
- The amygdala
- The prefrontal cortex
Limitations of the research and potential risks

Supporting Anxious Youth

Rapport-building approaches
Rapid stabilization approaches for crisis intervention
Conceptualizing anxiety: Body, brain, behavior
Unhelpful stances for providers, parents, caregivers:
- Accommodating
- Demanding
Supportive stance: SPACE Protocol

INTERVENTIONS

Breath retraining and visual imagery exercises
10 teen-friendly mindfulness strategies
Thinking strategies: Cognitive restructuring and more
Exposure: in vivo, imaginal, interoceptive
Values-based and committed actions
Behavioral experiments
Experiential activities and case studies

Put it All Together: A Decision-Making Framework

Design interventions – when to use what
Enhance treatment effectiveness
- Lifestyle factors
- Boost motivation and treatment adherence
Trouble shooting when you get stuck

Target Audience

Clinical Psychologists
Counselors
Art Therapists
Marriage and Family Therapists
Social Workers
School Counselors
School Social Workers
School Psychologists
Nurses
Educators