Hope is well known. Training and research literature on hope has primarily focused on the therapeutic process for several decades, highlighting aspects such as the therapist-client relationship, positive or goal-oriented therapy approaches, and the therapist's role in creating client agency or self-efficacy. Very little focus has been on the supervisor-supervisee training relationship, and the impact hope can have on the supervision process. Even less literature has explored how clinical supervisors can build hope with supervisees throughout the supervision training process. We explore how clinical supervisors can build hope with their supervisees by knowing systemic approaches such as solution-focused brief therapy and narrative therapy, as well as by supporting supervisees and trainees in developing their sense of agency. Clinical supervisors can build hope by amplifying strengths and possibilities, exploring aspects of the trainee's identity, and clearly defining their role as a therapist to their clients.
Black women experience disproportionately high rates of sexual assault. Their survivorship and healing are shaped by the intersecting forces of racism, sexism, classism, and historical trauma. This hermeneutic phenomenological study, guided by Black feminist theory, explores how Black women make meaning of sexual assault and pursue healing within the context of gendered racism. Fourteen cisgender Black women residing in the United States participated in semistructured interviews, and thematic analysis was used to identify patterns across their narratives. Participants’ accounts revealed the compounded effects of gendered racialized stereotypes that hinder disclosure, amplify shame, and complicate recovery. At the same time, participants identified culturally grounded sources of resilience and empowerment. Clinical implications are also discussed.
Supervision is a mentorship and teaching relationship aimed at promoting adult learning as the professional therapist learns and develops their clinical skills. The authors discuss their experience conceptualizing supervision as teaching and the importance of supervision being constructed as a pro-learning relationship. The purpose of this article is to provide discussion and examples of how supervisors can utilize teaching strategies to construct expectations for spontaneous and structured learning, solidify therapists’ prior learning, and help therapists consciously challenge and enhance their knowledge schemas. Supervision is a prime opportunity to promote the expectation of and excitement for continuous, life-long learning. To this end, the authors review four specific teaching strategies—scaffolding, agentic feedback, retrieval, and interleaving—to promote pro-learning supervision. They provide brief examples from their own work as supervisors and encourage readers to conceptualize their own supervision opportunities to use the four teaching strategies to design pro-learning supervision.
Afro-Caribbean people are a major immigrant population in the United States, yet little is known about their health outcomes and practices, especially practices that buffer the effects of risk behaviors. Given the prevalence of matrifocal family structures and the importance of mother-daughter relationships, we examined the relationship between cultural adherence and risky sexual behavior, marijuana use, religiosity, transnationalism, and living in enclaves among first- and second-generation Afro-Caribbean women in the United States. Caribbean orientation, especially among those living in enclaves, was significantly related to generational status, with first-generation women reporting greater Caribbean orientation than second-generation women. First-generation women raised in Caribbean enclaves were less likely to have ever used marijuana. Clinical implications are provided for systemic family therapists to use these findings as a foundation for culturally responsive approaches for the prevention and treatment of substance use and high-risk sexual behaviors among Afro-Caribbean girls, women, and their families.
The beginning of a single-session encounter, one that might be the only time the client and therapist meet, is crucial. The invitation/response sequences at the beginning aim to set goals for the session and frame it, which are crucial for creating an effective and helpful session for clients. The author has interviewed single-session therapists and asked them to describe their preferred first questions in single-session therapy. The article focuses on how therapists of various theoretical and practical orientations can utilize these preferred first questions. The importance of the first sequences of invitations and responses, the infinite possibilities in the client-therapist encounter, and the importance of listening to the clients’ initial responses are strongly emphasized. The article contains numerous specific and detailed examples.
This qualitative study examined the lived experiences of Taiwanese counselors in applying solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) to work with Taiwanese clients of ethnic Chinese heritage in Taiwan. Specifically, this investigation explored the conceptual and technical compatibility between SFBT and traditional Taiwanese cultural values and norms. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 15 SFBT-practicing counselors, and the data were analyzed using thematic analysis. The results yielded two main themes and 11 embedded subthemes. Importantly, the main themes highlighting SFBT’s cultural relevance and adaptability with Taiwanese clients are represented by Theme 1: Conceptual and Philosophical Compatibility Between SFBT Principles and Taiwanese Cultural Values, and Theme 2: Technical Compatibility and Adaptation of the SFBT Techniques to the Taiwanese Culture. Based on these thematic results, the interconnection between SFBT and Taiwanese-Chinese cultural values, beliefs, and norms is analyzed and explained. As well, the study’s implications for future research are considered and discussed.
Single-session therapy (SST) proposes that one therapeutic encounter can generate meaningful change. This study examined SST informed by narrative therapy, which views life as multi-storied and supports the re-authoring of personal narratives. Three online sessions were conducted and analyzed as case studies. Participants engaged in a “revisit” process, watching session recordings and reflecting on key moments. The analysis identified five impactful narrative practices: agenda setting, externalization, re-authoring conversations, remembering conversations, and strategies to sustain therapeutic effects after the session. Participants reported increased clarity, agency, and emotional relief. Externalization and re-authoring reshaped their relationships with problems, while remembering and post-session strategies helped maintain change. The findings highlight narrative SST as a promising brief intervention within the Brazilian context.
Practitioners who implement family interventions in Chile's child and adolescent policy confront daily tensions. These difficulties arise from the dysfunctional operation of this institutional framework and are a consequence of the neoliberalism imposed on the Chilean state during the civil-military dictatorship (1973–1990). In response, practitioners carry out discreet, precarious, and fragmented forms of professional resistance that remain confined to the individual sphere of action of those who enact them. In this article, we propose that mutual support can be a practice that amplifies the effects of these professional resistances within family intervention. Drawing on individual interviews with practitioners working in Chile's child and adolescent policy, the study analyzes gestures that run counter to the neoliberal logics embedded in Chile's child-protection policy and in the professional subjectivities of those who implement it. From a vulnerable position, these professionals must know how to strategize to survive and safeguard their work with families.
Narrative therapy is a powerful perspective to apply when learning to engage in client care in helping professions. Additionally, engaging with indigenous views of health, healing, and family can open students’ minds to ways of applying care. A study-abroad class for one month in Australia and New Zealand did both these things. The purpose of this article is to describe the class and demonstrate student learning and outcomes through insights and quotes from their reflection assignments. Learning in an international context is a powerful method for teaching narrative concepts and cross-cultural perspectives on health, family, and healing.
How can we understand suicide and the ways communities address it when neither the word “suicide” nor the anatomical-physiological body exists in their languages and worldviews? From modernity and its colonial power, this has entailed an epistemic imposition that names as suicide what is not, intervenes upon a nonexistent body, and delegitimizes knowledges outside Eurocentric suicidology. Here, I seek to unsettle the epistemic violence of modernity and its coloniality in order to listen, learn, and sentipensar (feel-think) other corporealities and relationships with human and nonhuman suffering that invoke el mal morir, or what is called the “epidemic of the ropes” in the Colombian Amazon. I propose re-thinking and re-sensing other ways of addressing suffering, life, and death beyond Eurocentrism. I discuss suicide through the real-magical and the Andean-Amazonian sentipensar of indigenized communities that soothed this epidemic through ancestral knowledges.
El artículo presenta a Casa Tonalá, un espacio terapéutico y comunitario en la Ciudad de México cuyo propósito es ofrecer acompañamiento desde una ética feminista, decolonial y narrativa, alejada de modelos tradicionales y patologizantes. Casa Tonalá surge como respuesta a la necesidad de prácticas dignas y justas de salud mental, centradas en la colectividad, la hospitalidad y el aprendizaje continuo. El proyecto se sostiene mediante voluntariado, talleres y diplomados que promueven la autogestión y la participación comunitaria. A través del Centro de Atención Comunitaria (CACT), se ofrecen sesiones solidarias de Terapia de Sesión Única (TSU) que priorizan la agencia y sabiduría de las personas consultantes. La casa se entiende como un organismo vivo en constante transformación, donde se honra la pluralidad de voces, la escucha activa y el cuidado mutuo. Casa Tonalá propone una forma artesanal, política y ética de acompañamiento terapéutico orientado hacia la justicia social y la construcción de mundos más dignos.
This article covers Casa Tonalá, a therapeutic and community space in Mexico City founded with the purpose of offering accompaniment based on feminist, decolonial, and narrative ethics, far from traditional and pathologizing models. Casa Tonalá emerges as a response to a need for just and dignified mental health practices, centered in collectivity, hospitality, and continuous learning. The project is sustained by volunteers, workshops, and certifications that promote independence and community participation. The Community Care Center at Casa Tonalá (CACT, by its Spanish acronym) offers solidarity-minded single-session therapy (SST) sessions that prioritize the wisdom and agency of consultants. Our organization is understood as a living organism in constant transformation, where the plurality of voices, active listening, and mutual care are honored. Casa Tonalá proposes therapeutic accompaniment that is artisanal, political, ethical, and oriented towards social justice and the building of a more dignified world.
Las interventoras familiares de la política chilena de infancia enfrentan tensiones cotidianamente. Ante estas dificultades, estas trabajadoras implementan resistencias profesionales discretas y fragmentadas. Este trabajo propone que el apoyo mutuo puede amplificar los efectos de las resistencias profesionales en la intervención familiar. A partir de entrevistas con estas trabajadoras, analizamos los ‘gestos' que contravienen las lógicas neoliberales instaladas en la política y en las subjetividades profesionales de quienes la implementan. Los resultados muestran que estas profesionales se ven como ‘carne de cañón’, entre el sistema proteccional y las familias. Desde una posición vulnerable, deben ‘hacer jugadas’ para sobrevivir y resguardar su trabajo familiar. En este contexto, ellas utilizan la expresión ‘apañar’, chilenismo de origen Aymara que releva la dimensión afectiva de la articulación de estrategias colaborativas. Se discuten las implicancias de interpretar el apañar como apoyo mutuo, en tanto implica un sentido solidario que permite politizar el quehacer profesional.
¿Cómo comprender el suicidio y lasformas en que las comunidades lo abordan cuando ni la palabra “suicidio” ni el cuerpo anatómico-fisiológico existen en sus lenguas y cosmovisiones? Desde la modernidad y su poder colonial, esto ha implicado una imposición epistémica que nombra como suicidio aquello que no lo es, interviene sobre un cuerpo inexistente y deslegitima saberes fuera de la suicidiología eurocéntrica. Aquí intento desprenderme de la violencia epistémica de la modernidad y su colonialidadpara escuchar, aprender y sentipensar otras corporalidades y relaciones con el sufrimiento humano y no humano que invocan el mal morir, o la llamada “epidemia de las cuerdas “en la Amazonía colombiana. Propongo resentipensar otras formas de abordar el sufrimiento, la vida y la muerte más allá del eurocentrismo. Discuto el suicidio desde lo real-mágico y el sentipensar andino-amazónico de comunidades indigenizadas que lograron apaciguar dicha epidemia a partir de saberes ancestrales.
Narrative therapy is well known for its emphasis on deconstructing the influence of marginalizing dominant discourses and re-authoring lives. Narrative work typically concludes with a focus on individuals’ preferred experiences of themselves within their immediate relationships. This article encourages practitioners to pursue therapeutic conversations beyond consolidating clients’ stories of preferred identity. While immensely helpful in therapeutic practice, the notions of “preferred self” and “preferred identity” are concepts with ties to individualism. We can build on White and Epston’s intentions to emphasize relational dimensions by supporting the emergence of what has been coined the “magnanimous self” (Beaudoin, 2023; Beaudoin & Monk, 2024). Exploring clients’ magnanimous inclinations expands possibilities of well-being, is more congruent with collectivistic-inclined cultures, and allows our clinical work to become further aligned with narrative therapy’s dedication to social activism. This process is illustrated with transcripts of conversations with a client struggling with depressive feelings associated with caring for her husband.
