Becoming Centered

Building off of the recent episodes on superficial cutting, Episode 81 of the Becoming Centered Podcast begins an arc that presents a combination of counseling techniques, along with concrete tools, that can transform clients' brain functioning to vastly improve their skills at self-regulating their feelings, thoughts, physiology, and behaviors.   Some of these interventions focus on reducing the...

Episode 80 of the Becoming Centered Podcast reviews the psychology that drives superficial cutting and layers on top of that a presentation of the neuro-psychiatric perspective.   That understanding, of what's actually going on in the brain when a client engages in superficial cutting, explains why minimizing staff attention given to this this self-injurious behavior does not reduce the frequency...

Episode 79 of the Becoming Centered Podcast is the third part of an arc focusing on self-injurious behaviors among children and youth at a residential treatment program.   This episode moves on from the SIB of head-banging and looks at superficial cutting.   Among some residential treatment populations, this is a distressingly common behavior; however, most staff probably have never attended any t...

Episode 78 of the Becoming Centered Podcast is the second part of an arc focusing on self-injurious behaviors among children and youth living at a residential treatment center.   The first part of this episode continues to look at relatively light head-banging, but specifically among kids with severe and profound autism.   As part of that, there's a brief description of how to conduct a Functional...

Episode 77 of the Becoming Centered Podcast begins an arc focusing on self-injurious behaviors.   Actions such as superficial cutting and head-banging are so frequent in residential treatment centers, especially those working with adolescents, that residential counselors are likely to encounter these issues.   However, there tends to be little dedicated training in how to comprehensively respond t...

Episode 76 of the Becoming Centered Podcast concludes the Milieu Counseling episode arc by considering the role of relationships in giving residential counselors leverage to transform their clients' beliefs.   It takes a look at five categories of maladaptive beliefs that can start to emerge in childhood that drive a dysfunctional life.   Residential Counselors are uniquely positioned to form rela...

Episode 75 of the Becoming Centered Podcast is all about how Residential Counselors can help kids become more cognitively self-regulated.   Residential Counselors are uniquely positioned to help children and youth clients develop their executive skills.   These skills help kids to structure and regulate their own thinking.   Residential treatment provides frequent opportunities for kids to practic...

The latest episode of the Becoming Centered Podcast, Episode 74, explores three factors that blend together to create a treatment environment in a residential treatment program.  The first factor is the way in which various Care activities are organized.  For example, this episode compares feeding kids cafeteria-style versus family-style and looks at some aspects of how household chores are implem...

Episode 73 of the Becoming Centered Podcast continues to look at how direct care staff can incorporate treatment interventions into every part of the residential day.   A lot of that involves interacting with the kids in a way that is consciously intended to promote in them a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose, a sense of agency, and a sense of meaning.   These qualities will make kids more re...

This episode of the Becoming Centered Podcast begins a new arc that focuses on how to build treatment structures and interventions into every minute of the residential shift.   In a treatment program, there will typically be some treatment structures like individual therapy, or even group therapy, that pull kids from the everyday residential structures.   That's certainly of treatment value, howev...

Today's episode is from the archives that are available at  www. BearClanllc.com .   It's a re-cast of Episode 18, addressing how counselors can stabilize kids after an incident involving suicidal ideation or gestures. The role of a counselor is fundamentally different than the role of a therapist in these situations.   The counselor's focus is on helping the client see the suicidal ideation or ge...

This is an archival episode that re-releases Episode 17 on Suicidal Ideation. Episodes 17 and 18 explore how to counsel residents who experience suicidal ideation. Residential children and youth are part of a high-risk group for having thoughts of suicide and, often times, it will fall upon residential staff to provide effective counseling, typically late at night. Learn how to effectively process...

Episode 69 of the Becoming Centered Podcast, building off of the previous two episodes, presents listeners with a powerful tool for residential treatment programs – Expectation Contracts.   Episode 67 presented the underlying conceptual difference between using point systems, behavior contracts, and other "behavioral" change techniques to impact performative surface behaviors versus impacting inne...

Episode 68 of the Becoming Centered Podcast expands on the topic of how to design interventions targeted at changing performative surface behaviors versus interventions designed to inspire inner systemic changes in how kids manage their emotions, adopt self-regulating beliefs and values, and consciously manage relationships with others.   The key design difference is whether or not a point system,...

Becoming Centered Podcast 67, "Performative vs Systemic Change" lays the groundwork for understanding how to design effective behavior-focused program structures that are intended to shape the behaviors of children and youth in residential treatment programs.   The key to effective design of these structures is understanding when and how to focus on performative behaviors versus when and how to fo...

This episode of the Becoming Centered Podcast presents four major parts to a residential treatment program's House Meetings (a regularly scheduled meeting of staff and clients).   Each part, (1) check-ins, (2) announcements, (3) group discussions / agenda items, and (4) wrap-up provides a forum for promoting resilience, self-regulation, social skills, and team-building. Regardless of the specific...

Skillful facilitation of House Meetings is one of the most challenging, but also most impactful, aspects of providing a treatment experience.   Developing a group of troubled kids into a high-performing team, that absorbs each other's misbehaviors and promotes maturation, is a difficult task.   Storming behaviors are common among kids in residential treatment.   In House Meetings, a significant nu...

Running a residential unit for children and youth that goes beyond providing quality Care to also delivering an impactful Treatment experience requires staff to constantly focus on team-building.   It's as a high-performing team that the kids develop their own self-regulation and resiliency; through helping their team-mates manage their daily emotional, cognitive, and behavioral challenges.   One...

Episode 63 of the Becoming Centered Podcast focuses on how to facilitate Check-ins as part of a residential treatment program's House Meetings. Check-ins are an excellent way to start House Meetings.   Literally, people take turns giving a brief report on how they are doing that day.   Structured effectively, the practice of conducting Check-ins can become a foundational technique for a program pr...

Episode 62 of the Becoming Centered podcast is the second episode in an arc focused on House Meetings.  In my experience, House Meetings are the single most effective group structure in the residential week for promoting team-building and for developing the kids into a high-performance team.  When that happens the entire residential experience shifts from having to spend an excessive amount of tim...

Episode 61 of the Becoming Centered podcast starts an episode arc focused on the use of House Meetings in residential treatment programs.  House Meetings are a structured meeting of all the residents and available staff that are part of a residential unit at a treatment program. House Meetings are the single most powerful structure for building a positive unit culture that supports the formation o...

Episode 60 continues along the Group-Level Interventions Pathway.  Building on the last episode, other foundational perspectives for going beyond only providing quality Care to providing transformational Treatment are presented.  These include making a distinction between Care and Treatment, and understanding that behavior management techniques, while often times essential, are part of Care and no...

Episode 59 of the Becoming Centered podcast marks the start of Season 3.   This Season will contain two learning pathways.   One series will focus on working with kids in varying size groups.   Group work ranges from simple interactions in a living room or classroom to managing various activity groups to running group meetings focused on various aspects of team-building and congregate living.   An...

Episode 58 of the Becoming Centered Podcast provides a vision for how to design and facilitate an extremely challenging structure in residential treatment programs – the weekly unit staff meeting.   This episode covers a lot of ground.   Along with presenting a general team-building strategy, an outline is suggested for how to do simple case presentations, for how to organize an issues agenda-driv...

I'm very excited about Episode 57 of the Becoming Centered podcast!   It provides guidance in an area that most human service agencies simply can't fit into their training programs; how to design and facilitate internal staff meetings.   Middle managers, such as Unit Directors, are tasked with running some of the most technically difficult meetings.    With only the training provided by their own...