Thursday, September 15, 2016, Northwestern Human Services, Colmar PA
Thursday, September 22, 2016, PA Counseling Services, Lebanon, PA
Thursday, September 29, 2016, Philhaven Conference Center, Mt Gretna, PA
Efforts to communicate basic needs and resolve day-to-day conflicts can be a major challenge in multi-stressed families. Failed communication and problem solving undermines already fragile attachments among family members, creates further family disorganization and chaos, and thwarts caregiver efforts to help their children with their emotional functioning. This workshop identifies common ineffective, maladaptive patterns of communication as well as those patterns of communication that systems oriented researchers suggest leads to more adaptive family functioning. This is a practice based training in which focus is given to two major intervention strategies, psycho-education/coaching and enactments, that have proven to be effective in strengthening family communication and deepening relationships. Guidelines will be provided for identifying when to use which strategy with families.
Objectives:
As a result of attending this training, participants will be able to:
- Identify the role of communication patterns in escalation of family conflict
- Describe the link between individual family member psychology and family communication patterns
- Identify common maladaptive family communication patterns found in families treated in PA’s FBMHS program
- Identify positive conflict management skills to be taught
- Demonstrate the use of psychoeducation and coaching strategies to increase effective family communication
- Demonstrate the use of in-session enactments to create more functional family relationships