Restoring Connection in High Conflict Families with Troubled Adolescents

This 90-minute workshop will introduce a systemic framework for the understanding of conflict between parents and their adolescent children. We will then discuss specific interventions designed to promote de-escalation, foster improved understanding, and increase a sense of connection and self-esteem among all family members. The animating principle of this set of ideas is the notion that people are better at assessing and correcting their behavior if they feel meaningfully understood and loved by the people that are close to them.

Learning Objectives:

Participants will be able to:

• Understand the dynamics that promote conflict between parents and the adolescent children
• Learn good questions for adolescents that help de-escalate conflict
• Learn good questions for parents that help de-escalate conflict

Who Should Watch

Mental health professionals, therapists, social workers, and clinicians who work with families and adolescents and want practical strategies to understand and de-escalate parent-adolescent conflict, foster connection, and strengthen family relationships.

Meet Dr. Michael Davidovits:

Michael Davidovits, PhD, LCSW is a lecturer in the Narrative Medicine Program at Columbia University, and a clinical supervisor in the Family Medicine Residency Program at the Columbia University School of Medicine. He is also a teaching faculty member at the Ackerman Institute for the Family. Davidovits has offered trainings and workshops on conducting family therapy with adolescents and narrative medicine interventions in primary care settings. He maintains a psychotherapy practice in Manhattan.