Changing Self-Destructive Habits: Pathways to Solutions with Couples and Families

For the first time in one volume self-harm, substance abuse, eating-disordered behavior, gambling, and Internet and cyber sex abuse―five crippling, self-destructive behaviors―are given a common conceptual framework to help with therapeutic intervention. Matthew Selekman and Mark Beyebach, two internationally-recognized therapists, know first-hand that therapists see clients who have problems with several of these habits in varying contexts. They maintain an optimistic, positive, solution-focused approach while carefully addressing problems and risks. The difficulties of change, the risk of slips and relapses, and the ups-and-downs of therapeutic processes are widely acknowledged and addressed. Readers will find useful, hands-on therapeutic strategies and techniques that they can use in both individual and conjoint sessions during couple, family, and one-on-one therapy. Detailed case examples provide windows to therapeutic processes and the complexities in these cases. Clinical interventions are put in a wider research context, while research is reviewed and used to extract key implications of empirical findings. This allows for a flexible and open therapeutic approach that therapists can use to integrate techniques and procedures from a variety of approaches and intervention programs.

Matthew D. Selekman, MSW, is a family therapist and a licensed addictions counselor in private practice, and the co-director of Partners for Collaborative Solutions, an international family therapy training and consulting firm in Evanston, Illinois, USA. He is an approved supervisor with the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, and also received the Walter S. Rosenberry Award in 2006, 2000, and 1999 from the Children’s Hospital in Denver, Colorado, for having made significant contributions to the fields of psychiatry and the behavioral sciences.

Mark Beyebach, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, and a licensed family therapist and family therapy supervisor in Spain. For the past 18 years, he has served as the director of the Master’s Degree Program in Systemic Therapy in the Department of Psychology at the Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, Spain. He also serves as a clinical research consultant and trainer for Partners for Collaborative Solutions in Evanston, Illinois, USA. He is currently a board member for the European Brief Therapy Association, and has been on the executive board of the Spanish Federation of Family Therapy Associations.