Cool Counseling, Counseling and Psychotherapy Theory and Practice, mental health, Personal Reflections

Albuquerque — The RMACES Conference PPT Slides

Leave a comment

Hello from beautiful Albuquerque, NM where I just landed and am patiently awaiting the availability of my hotel room so I can begin taking a substantial nap.

I was looking for fellow conference attendees on my flight from Denver to Albuquerque and, of course, found them. Given that my faith in humanity is teetering on the brink right now, it was so cool (and reassuring) to meet fellow counselor educators and feel their vibes–vibes that distinctly vibrate to the frequency of big motivation to help others lead happy, meaningful, and healthy lives. Thanks, Sharon, for initiating a conversation using your extraversion skills!

This is a small conference populated with people who have big and empathic hearts. Let’s savor that for a moment.

Speaking of savoring, I have two presentations tomorrow. The first is with Dr. Ümüt Arslan of the University of Nebraska–Kearney. Dr. Arslan is a former doc student at UM, who used to refer to himself as “the only male feminist in Turkey.” He is a magnificent person and counselor and professor and I am honored to co-present with him.

Tomorrow afternoon, I’m flying solo and offering a presentation titled: “The Future of Counseling is Counseling for Happiness.” To save on paper, I’m posting the ppts here:

2026 RMACES JSF on HappinessDownload

I hope we can all grow our hearts so they metaphorically become as large as the hot air balloons floating around Albuquerque this weekend, but may they be full of empathy instead of hot air.

Cool Counseling, Counseling and Psychotherapy Theory and Practice, mental health, Personal Reflections, Therapy with Adolescents, Tough Kids, Tough Kids Cool Counseling, Writing

Chapter 3 — Resistance Busters (from Tough Kids, Cool Counseling, 2nd ed.)

Leave a comment

The chapter linked below is from the book, Tough Kids, Cool Counseling: User-Friendly Strategies for Working with Challenging Youth. The book was published in 2007, so the language is outdated and some ways we talk about youth have changed. For example, we’re no longer comfortable with the term “Tough Kids” because referring to youth as “tough” centers the problem in them, which isn’t fair and can make change more difficult. We have a different philosophy now (please excuse the language as I make my point):

In the beginning, we thought our “tough kids” book title was clever. Sometimes Rita and I argued about who came up with our ingeniously clever title. But now we’re uncomfortable with message embedded in the title. We believe we were wrong to label youth as “tough.” There are no tough kids. There are only kids in tough situations. And one, among many tough situations young people face, is counseling. When they roll their eyes, tell us to fuck off, or refuse to talk, we shouldn’t blame them; we shouldn’t call them difficult, disturbed, or tough. Blaming young people for behaving in ways that appear defensive, obnoxious, or resistant contributes to the problem. Too often we make the mistake of thinking we’re special (we’re not) and that young people should automatically respect us (they won’t) or that they should bow to the alter of our guidance (which is as flawed as we are). Working with youth requires humility, acceptance, creativity, and compassion. We should seek to communicate to all young people who enter our space that there is no other place we’d rather be than in the room with them—without ever directly saying that there is no other place we’d rather be than in the room with them. We call that radical interest. But we’re not talking about radical interest in helping or radical interest in being competent or radical interest in social justice (all of which are great things). We’re talking about radical interest in another living, breathing, person who in this present moment, is experiencing a challenging life, part of which involves being in the room with a fucking counselor.

Not long ago, a friend called me and wanted to read me a quote from the book, “My Friends” by Fredrik Backman. He said the quote made him think of me. He read it. I loved it.

Louisa is a teenager, the best kind of human. The evidence for this is very simple: little children think teenagers are the best humans, and teenagers think teenagers are the best humans, the only people who don’t think that teenagers are the best humans are adults. Which is obviously because adults are the worst kind of humans (p. 1).

I’m honored my friend thought of me when he read this passage. I wish all teens could automatically sense that I think they’re the best humans. But unfortunately, adults are so often so dismissive and demeaning of teenagers that teenagers typically assume the opposite is true. That translates into the sad fact that if we’re going to convince teenagers we think they’re the best humans, we must do the direct and indirect work, which is not easy because we’ve been so effective—as individuals and as a society—to make teenagers think they’re the worst humans.

Here’s a link to the chapter. I hope it helps you convince teenagers they’re the best humans.

C03 Resistance Busters Tough KidsDownload

education, Happiness

Good Morning Frenchtown, Montana

Leave a comment

This morning I’ll be spending over three hours with the educators and staff at Frenchtown High School. Frenchtown (Go Broncs) is a small and cool community just west of the big city of Missoula.

A big thanks to the Principal, Shane Bartschi for inviting me. And a big thanks the Frenchtown educators and staff for helping young people learn and embrace their futures.

Here is my ppt for today.

2026 8 20 FrenchtownDownload
Clinical Interviewing, Counseling and Psychotherapy Theory and Practice, Happiness, Personal Reflections, Suicide Assessment and Intervention

The MHA Suicide Prevention Summit is Free (up to 20 CEUs) and Coming Soon!

2 Comments

Why should you know about the Mental Health Academy’s annual Suicide Prevention summit?

It’s big. There are luminaries (e.g., David Jobes, Stacey Freedenthal, and Rory O’Connor). It’s free. And the MHA is an amazing Australian-based organization that gives as good as it gets. On their website, they report:

Supporting local initiatives
Through partnering with leading organizations around the world, we’ve been able to support local initiatives we’re passionate about, including helping prevent child abuse and suicide, expanding mental health services to communities in need, and more.
$1.7M given since 2009

As a part of the annual Suicide Prevention Summit, this coming Sunday, at 10:30am Eastern, August 23, 2026, I’ll be presenting. My talk is titled: “The Bad News Brain: Five Psychological Truths on Why It’s So Damn Hard to Focus on the Positive.”

Did I mention that this whole summit is free? You can get up to 20 CEUs. You can also pay $20 to have access to session recordings until October 18.

Here’s a link to the whole schedule, which begins Wednesday, August 19 at 7pm Eastern, with a presentation by David Jobes. In case you don’t know, Jobes is awesome.
https://d9hv9sikl36u8.cloudfront.net/documents/MHA-USA-SPS-2026-Schedule-V1.pdf

Not only is the live version of this event free, all the presenters also present for free.

Sometimes, when presenting online to large groups, like the Summit, it’s hard to know how the presentation is being received. This is especially true for webinar-style presentations where there’s no interaction other than the “chat feed.” The problem with using the chat feed for feedback is that it’s overwhelming. Trying to split my attention between doing my talk and reading participant comments requires repeated figure-ground shifts that render my brain dysfunctional. Consequently, I only focus on talking, ignore the feed, and wait for the illustrious Pedro Gondim to facilitate Q&R during the final 10 minutes.

Last time I presented at the Summit, a very kind, smart, and talented mental health professional I know happened to be in attendance. She wrote me a very short Dear John email:

See attached!
I have never seen anything close to this in terms of the outpouring of appreciation for you. 

All by itself, her email made my day. But she also attached the chat feed. I opened it and found a gift of 449 amazing comments. I was stunned and humbled.

This blog post is a reminder that you can still sign up for the Summit. MHA will use a portion of the funds they generate from the $20 registrants to give back to local communities. I hope to see you there—even though I won’t really see you.

Just in case you’re curious, here’s a link to the whole 449 chat feed responses (with last names of commenters deleted).

JSF COMMENTS from MHA TALK AnonDownload


 

education, Group counseling, Happiness, Love, mental health, Parenting, Personal Reflections

Dead End Street: More Poetry with Pádraig Ó Tuama

2 Comments

At the poetry retreat with Pádraig Ó Tuama, we experienced numerous prompts and poetry forms on Tuesday and Wednesday. One prompt was extraordinarily simple: This I Believe. So, while on my Wednesday morning slow run, I came up with the following poem. . .which is mostly about my mother and what she taught me to believe.

Dead End Street

Contrary to the sign, our street wasn’t dead.

And it did not end.

Maybe it was the confusing and tangled mass of Mormon, Italian, Catholic, Levite, Austrian roots that led to that rainy morning when, delayed by my longstanding personal relationship with toilets, I burst into the living room in my underwear, shouting.

I got it! 

My gaze met the neighborhood. Darrell, Rosa, Matt.

My Mother’s explanation was weak.

“Now you’ve all missed the bus. I can drive you to school.”

I might’ve known sooner when my Catholic mother growled about wanting to shout down Matt’s Evangelical mother for wondering whether my father, the only Jew on the dead-end street, could make his way past Saint Peter.

I might have known in 1973, when I stumbled upon evidence of her infidelity.

She confessed. Yes, she had been repeatedly having coffee and cookies with Mario, Darrell’s younger brother—the only gay, black, teenager on our street, and probably the only gay, black teenager in our county.

I was justifiably concerned. “Why did you let Mario eat all the cookies?”

Years later, Darrell explained, “You were okay. But we really loved your mom. Some days we didn’t have food. Your mom fed us.”

Everyone was welcome at her table.

Everyone.

Even White Christian neighbors.

Even her son, who mistakenly thought he owned the cookies.

education, Happiness, Personal Reflections

Poem of the Day

2 Comments

I’m on Day Two of our poetry retreat with Pádraig Ó Tuama (see photo above). He is truly a genius. With a background in theology, conflict mediation, group facilitation, and poetry his knowledge and experience is immense. He is host of Poetry Unbound on NPR. I have found his comments crystal clear and illuminating.

We wrote several poems today. The one I’m sharing came to me while on a slow morning jog. The others may not be ready for prime time. . .or even for blogging. Oddly, the one I’m sharing is the one that took the least time to write.

Running Away

I forgot to dance today.

I think it was the bombs

or the laser surgery.

Either way

I had to stay in and hold the baby.

I forgot to sing today.

My inner voice was hoarse from yelling at me for things

I should have

done

or said

or felt

I forgot to read today.

It’s funny how a tiny bit of saltwater

makes the letters blur

I forgot to pray today.

The gods have been so quiet lately

and my prayers are always the same

anyway.

I forgot today.

Just like my parents before me

and their parents before them.

Dates and heads arrange themselves

in order of age across the horizon.

Who goes first?

You tell me.

Clinical Interviewing, Counseling and Psychotherapy Theory and Practice, Personal Reflections, Writing

August is Upon Us

Leave a comment

Historically, August was the month when psychotherapists vacationed. In that spirit, this evening I find myself at a retreat center just south of Santa Fe. Rita and I are celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary with a four-day poetry retreat.

Our retreat is with Pádraig Ó Tuama. I would have said “the amazing Pádraig Ó Tuama,” but this evening he let us know in no uncertain terms that he’s what might be called an adjective- and adverb-slayer. Meaning, he doesn’t like them and he’s inclined to kill them. He also doesn’t like repetition, which could spell trouble for me, being an academic type who likes to foreshadow what’s coming and then summarize what happened.

You can learn more about Pádraig Ó Tuama at: https://www.padraigotuama.com/

My favorite line from Pádraig’s opening comments this evening was (paraphrasing here):

If you’re projecting your resentment on me, you’re wasting your resentment.

He also said something about diagnosis and not putting lots of stock in it and suggested he didn’t much trust the solidity of identity anyway.

Tomorrow, we start at 7am. We also got a mini-lecture on punctuality. Oh my. I had no idea poetry was so disciplined. Although I’m inclined to preface the 7am start time with an adjective or two, I’ll keep this sparse, which allows you to formulate your own phenomenological projections of what my adjectives about a 7am poetry start time might have been.

It might be that this week I will also try to weave in some counseling and psychotherapy theories content into the poetry experience (and vice versa). For tonight, my thoughts turn to Chapter 1 in the brand-new 4th edition of Counseling and Psychotherapy Theories in Context and Practice. Here’s a section on “A Plan for Maximizing Positive Outcomes” in counseling/psychotherapy. How does that relate to the beginning of a 4-day poetry retreat? It seems obvious to me, but you should let me know what you think. Here’s the excerpt:

***********************************

Below, we’ve listed six ideas for maximizing positive outcomes.

  1. Emphasize the therapy relationship (J. Sommers-Flanagan & Sommers-Flanagan, 2024). Intentionally try to be genuine, accept clients for who they are, and show empathy (see Chapter 6 for more details). Consistent with Bordin’s (1979) tripartite working alliance, you should (a) establish an emotional connection with clients; (b) set mutual goals; and (c) collaborate on therapy tasks linked to therapy goals (Budge et al., 2023; J. Sommers-Flanagan, 2015; Zagorscak et al., 2020).
  2. Use flexible and culturally sensitive assessment approaches to tailor treatment to clients and their problems. As you read each chapter, you’ll see that each theory includes recommended assessment strategies. Regardless of theory, therapeutic assessment should be collaborative, empathic, and practiced with cultural humility (Finn et al., 2012; Summers & Nelson, 2023).s.
  3. Engage clients in role induction. Role induction “involves educating clients about their role and what to expect in the assessment and treatment process. When implemented well, role induction not only educates clients but also facilitates an interactive discussion about client expectation” (J. Sommers-Flanagan & Sommers-Flanagan, 2024, p. 91). Clients will do better when you discuss therapy process openly and transparently, offer them a chance to ask questions, and explain the pros and cons of specific therapy techniques.
  4. Keep up with research. Educate yourself on evidence-based relationships (Parrow, 2023), empirically supported treatments (ESTs; Harrer et al., 2025), and research-supported skills and methods (Hill & Norcross, 2023). Given the multitude of ESTs, you should learn a few for working with specific populations (e.g., if you want to work with individuals suffering from trauma, learning trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy, cognitive processing therapy, and/or eye movement desensitization reprocessing would be useful).
  5. To avoid negative outcomes, you should (a) continually work on self-awareness using individual supervision and peer supervision; (b) individualize therapy approaches to fit clients—rather than expecting all clients to benefit from one approach; and (c) avoid using PHTs (Lilienfeld, 2007).
  6. Use practice-based evidence or progress monitoring (PM) to track therapy process and outcomes. Practice-based evidence (aka PM) involves collecting data, sometimes every session, pertaining to client symptoms and/or client satisfaction (Meier, 2015; Sun et al., 2021). This will allow you to make modifications in your approach as needed (Lambert, 2010).

Counseling and Psychotherapy Theory and Practice, Suicide Assessment and Intervention

Strengths-Based Suicide for Community Medical Center in Missoula

2 Comments

All too early tomorrow morning I’ll be doing a couple presentations for medical staff at the Community Medical Center in Missoula. Despite the early hour, I look forward to some interesting and useful conversations with the staff. This link is to a very long ppt slide deck. It’s long because the two groups with which I will work are small, and so I will do portions of the slides depending on what the groups would like to cover. Here’s a pdf of the ppts!

2026 7 9 SBSA for CMCDownload
Happiness, mental health, Personal Reflections, Research, Suicide Assessment and Intervention

More Thoughts on Suicide Prediction and Suicide Screening (from Craig Bryan, Ph.D.)

6 Comments

Hi All,

Below, I’ve a pasted LinkedIn post from Dr. Craig Bryan, author of “Rethinking Suicide” and a leading suicide researcher. At the bottom of his comments there’s a link to the article of which he speaks.

Enjoy!

*****************

From Craig Bryan, LinkedIn – 6/29/2026

We keep trying to predict who will attempt suicide. A 15-year study suggests we’re asking the wrong question.

Researchers followed 2,060 Brazilian children from age 10 into their mid-twenties—one of the longest prospective suicide studies ever conducted outside a high-income country. They measured genetics, perinatal history, family psychiatric illness, childhood adversity, cognition, and clinical symptoms, then tested all of it together against who later attempted suicide.

The result: even with multiple domains of risk factors combined, prediction accuracy stayed modest (AUC 0.665), barely above the ceiling seen across 50 years of suicide research. More sophisticated machine learning models didn’t do any better than simple logistic regression.

Three factors stood out as consistent, actionable, and population-relevant: childhood threat exposure (especially bullying), caregiver history of suicide attempts, and childhood externalizing disorders. Bullying alone accounted for the largest share of preventable risk in the entire study.

The authors’ conclusion is blunt: distal childhood risk factors will likely never predict individual suicide attempts with precision, because suicide is driven by acute, fast-moving processes that a baseline assessment can’t capture. Trying to screen our way to safety has a ceiling. We hit it decades ago.

The better investment may not be sharper prediction. It may be quieter, structural prevention like anti-bullying programs, supporting parents with histories of suicidal behavior, and early identification of behavioral disorders, the kind of intervention that helps a population, whether or not we ever know which child needed it most.

**************************

Here’s the article link: https://lnkd.in/eRWtBiXK

I’m excited about Dr. Bryan’s post not because of the difficulties with prediction (which we’ve long know), but because of the idea of moving upstream toward structural prevention. I also feel this fits really well with what we’re trying to do with CAPE.

Obviously, I love this quotation: “Trying to screen our way to safety has a ceiling. We hit it decades ago.”

Have a great evening!

JSF

Happiness, mental health, Personal Reflections, Suicide Assessment and Intervention

How to Grow Wellbeing in Teachers and Schools

2 Comments

I’m at the Office of Public Instruction Summer Institute in Bozeman today (and tomorrow), along with the Pirate and the Pusher. The Summer Institute is an annual four days of training for Montana educators.

Shortly after arriving, two women sitting at a table stared at me, looked away, and then stopped me as I walked by, saying, with enthusiasm, “We just took your class!”

They were, of course, referring to our Happiness for Educators course. Although completely online, I’m presenting in many of the videos, sometimes in my pajamas. We were all excited to meet in person.

They also got to meet Dylan Wright (who plays the role of a pirate in our Happiness for Educators course). I mean, how can you have a Happiness for Educators course without a pirate? They also met Tammy Tolleson Knee, the new and fabulous director of the Phyllis J. Washington Center for the Advancement of Positive Education at the University of Montana and high leverage “Pusher” of all things positive.

Tomorrow will be even more excitement. I have the honor of delivering the morning keynote. I’ll be opening with a make-believe scenario, with me as a candidate for governor. I’ve done this a few times previously during presentations for educators. It’s a method I use for emphasizing the central and foundational role that educators and education play in society.

My platform as a candidate for governor of Montana is education . . . education . . . and education . . . because. . .

The road to a good economy goes through education.

The road to a healthy enviroment goes through education.

The road to a civil society goes through education.

The road to excellence in health care goes through education.

The road to justice goes through education.

I could go on, but I think you get the point. As John Adams, founding father and our 2nd president once said (I’m paraphrasing), “It’s impossible to spend too much money on public education.”

And so, yes, there will be more excitement tomorrow because it doesn’t get much better than spending a day with 400 Montana educators who are dedicated to helping young people become educated citizens.

I’m posting ppts of my two presentations (keynote and workshop) below.

6 17 2026 MT OPI Happiness JSFDownload

2026 6 17 OPI on Suicide AssessmentDownload

The place to click if you want to learn about psychotherapy, counseling, or whatever John SF is thinking about.