response to "Effectively Engaging and Collaborating with Children and Adolescents in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Sessions"
As a former teen in CBT, this article was interesting in terms of reflection as well as clinical practice. A lot of this article also spoke to my experience as a teacher - for example the emphasis on/use of modeling, checking for understanding, practice explaining relevant details, facilitating collaboration, use of feedback, etc. All of these are teaching techniques as well as therapeutic practices, and reading this article framed facilitating CBT for children as a kind of project based learning / inquiry model. While this is great in terms of ease of execution, I do wonder if strict adherence to these ideals interferes with the therapeutic power of flexible practice / responding in real time to the client. For some people (like me as a teen) the formulaic approach worked great, but I can also imagine it really preventing some kids from opening up. Predictability is great, especially for kids with certain issues, but like teaching sometimes a live response is better than your scripted one.
Which kind of brings up this quote from the article -
"stories and appropriate therapist self-disclosure are other methods to explain the CBT rationale and to improve the therapeutic alliance"
I feel like organically using appropriate self disclosure or story telling with your client would be a great way to employ flexibility to strengthen the relationship (although I can also see organic self disclosure causing problems for newer clinicians)