Becoming Centered
This podcast is a field guide for professionals seeking perspectives and techniques for helping others find their balanced path. It’s also for people who want to learn the self-counseling pathways, navigation tools, and practices to live a centered life. Organized into several series, this podcast focuses on: (1) understanding the territory of personal psychology, (2) tools and techniques for counseling others in how to develop a centered and balanced life, and (3) tools and techniques for navigating your own emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and self-regulation challenges.
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80. SIB4 - The Neuro-Psychiatry of Superficial Cutting
10/09/2026
80. SIB4 - The Neuro-Psychiatry of Superficial Cutting
Episode 80 of the Becoming Centered Podcast reviews the psychology that drives superficial cutting and layers on top of that a presentation of the neuro-psychiatric perspective. That understanding, of what’s actually going on in the brain when a client engages in superficial cutting, explains why minimizing staff attention given to this this self-injurious behavior does not reduce the frequency or the severity of repeat episodes. Superficial cutting becomes a habitual, even addictive, behavior because it powerfully changes the chemistry and functioning of the brain. With this understanding, Residential Treatment Staff can use physiological interrupts and other concrete interventions to give clients the skills they need to end their use of this maladaptive coping mechanism.
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79. SIB3 - The Psychology of Superficial Cutting
09/11/2026
79. SIB3 - The Psychology of Superficial Cutting
Episode 79 of the Becoming Centered Podcast is the third part of an arc focusing on self-injurious behaviors among children and youth at a residential treatment program. This episode moves on from the SIB of head-banging and looks at superficial cutting. Among some residential treatment populations, this is a distressingly common behavior; however, most staff probably have never attended any training specifically on this behavior. In addition to addressing the residential counselor’s initial response, this episode presents the psychology behind superficial cutting. Fifteen overlapping reasons for this method of non-suicidal self-harm are reviewed. It’s really helpful for counselors to know the most common reasons for cutting, so that they can help their child and youth clients find the words to identify their specific motivations. Being able to use words to discuss what is prompting them to engage in this SIB can prevent future incidents, lessen the medical seriousness of future incidents, and put the client on a path to ending this maladaptive way of changing their state-of-mind when emotionally overwhelmed, when experiencing positive feelings from the behavior, and when engaging in the behavior is a form of self-definition and identity.
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78. SIB2 - Responding to Intense Head-Banging
09/03/2026
78. SIB2 - Responding to Intense Head-Banging
Episode 78 of the Becoming Centered Podcast is the second part of an arc focusing on self-injurious behaviors among children and youth living at a residential treatment center. The first part of this episode continues to look at relatively light head-banging, but specifically among kids with severe and profound autism. As part of that, there’s a brief description of how to conduct a Functional Behavioral Analysis as a technique for responding to kids who are largely non-verbal. This episode then moves on to look at intense head-banging among emotionally disturbed kids and kids with psychosis. Intense head-banging is inherently upsetting to witness and intervening is often times an adrenalated event. That almost guarantees that this self-injurious behavior exposes staff to traumatic stress. Time is devoted to talking about what staff can do both before and after such exposure to minimize the lasting negative effects on their own nervous system.
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77. SIB1 - Responding to Light Head-Banging
08/23/2026
77. SIB1 - Responding to Light Head-Banging
Episode 77 of the Becoming Centered Podcast begins an arc focusing on self-injurious behaviors. Actions such as superficial cutting and head-banging are so frequent in residential treatment centers, especially those working with adolescents, that residential counselors are likely to encounter these issues. However, there tends to be little dedicated training in how to comprehensively respond to these problem-behaviors. The professional literature tends to focus on describing and interpreting these behaviors but doesn’t speak to how they impact the staff at a treatment program. Not enough attention is given to how staff are traumatized when having to respond to kids who become intent on harming themselves. Anticipation and training are two of the most effective preventive strategies for protecting the residential staff who are exposed to these extremely troubling client behaviors. This episode arc is for those staff. This episode introduces the topic and looks at how to effectively respond to relatively light head-banging in two treatment populations, kids struggling with emotional mental health issues and kids suffering from psychosis. Future episodes will focus on how to respond to light head-banging among neurodivergent kids on the autism spectrum, intense head-banging, and superficial cutting.
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76. Milieu Counseling5 - Relationships and Changing Maladaptive Beliefs
08/10/2026
76. Milieu Counseling5 - Relationships and Changing Maladaptive Beliefs
Episode 76 of the Becoming Centered Podcast concludes the Milieu Counseling episode arc by considering the role of relationships in giving residential counselors leverage to transform their clients’ beliefs. It takes a look at five categories of maladaptive beliefs that can start to emerge in childhood that drive a dysfunctional life. Residential Counselors are uniquely positioned to form relationships with clients that challenge these negative beliefs and support healthier beliefs. These negative beliefs frequently are formed when children and youth experience adverse childhood experiences, such as neglect, abuse, deprivation, trauma and dysfunctional family situations. However, before adulthood, these beliefs are not yet ingrained in most clients. There’s opportunity for these young people to experience an emotionally corrective environment that provides evidence that these damaging beliefs are not true. That’s not going to happen through residential staff having a passive approach to forming relationships. Instead, the effective residential counselor is frequently having purposeful interactions to plant seeds that alternative, positive, beliefs are a more powerful truth.
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75. Milieu Counseling4 - Beliefs in and Practicing Executive Skills
07/29/2026
75. Milieu Counseling4 - Beliefs in and Practicing Executive Skills
Episode 75 of the Becoming Centered Podcast is all about how Residential Counselors can help kids become more cognitively self-regulated. Residential Counselors are uniquely positioned to help children and youth clients develop their executive skills. These skills help kids to structure and regulate their own thinking. Residential treatment provides frequent opportunities for kids to practice planning, prioritizing, organizing, sustained attention, time management, working memory, and flexibility. Supported by beliefs in the importance of these skills, practice is what develops the self-regulating regions of the brain. This is done by repeatedly asking clients to plan ahead, to make thoughtful choices, to organize their physical environment and their thoughts, to pay attention when others are speaking to you, to pay attention to time constraints, to be thoughtful about how to complete sequences of tasks, and to be mentally flexible to daily disruptions and being able to identify more than one possible explanation for why something has happened or why another person has acted in a particular way. As your clients become more skilled at these executive skills they will become more thoughtful people with more thoughtful behaviors.
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74. Milieu Counseling3 - Structures Supporting Skills Development
07/14/2026
74. Milieu Counseling3 - Structures Supporting Skills Development
The latest episode of the Becoming Centered Podcast, Episode 74, explores three factors that blend together to create a treatment environment in a residential treatment program. The first factor is the way in which various Care activities are organized. For example, this episode compares feeding kids cafeteria-style versus family-style and looks at some aspects of how household chores are implemented. The second factor is how residential counselors instill beliefs in kids that support treatment. Some of these beliefs are more general, such as understanding that when a person becomes increasingly emotionally upset, that person’s ability to think and to use words degrades. Other beliefs are specific to the value of exercising and practicing executive skills. For example, believing that it’s a good idea to have a plan in anticipation of various social and task challenges. The third factor is how residential counselors prompt kids to have to practice and exercise their executive and social skills instead of just giving kids simple orders and directives. It’s these sorts of practices that elevate direct care staff from being Caregivers to being Counselors.
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73. Milieu Counseling2 - The Purpose of Residential Treatment
06/14/2026
73. Milieu Counseling2 - The Purpose of Residential Treatment
Episode 73 of the Becoming Centered Podcast continues to look at how direct care staff can incorporate treatment interventions into every part of the residential day. A lot of that involves interacting with the kids in a way that is consciously intended to promote in them a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose, a sense of agency, and a sense of meaning. These qualities will make kids more resilient to the stressors and triggers in their lives. Most staff have a good intuitive understanding of what sorts of structures and interactions are likely to make a client feel that sense of belonging. How to help children and youth experience a sense of purpose in their residential experience is less intuitive. It involves staff having a shared understanding of how to frame the residential treatment experience for the kids, how to explain it to them, and how to demonstrate that each kid is growing and learning from their experiences living in a treatment program.
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72. Milieu Counseling1 - Overview
05/24/2026
72. Milieu Counseling1 - Overview
This episode of the Becoming Centered Podcast begins a new arc that focuses on how to build treatment structures and interventions into every minute of the residential shift. In a treatment program, there will typically be some treatment structures like individual therapy, or even group therapy, that pull kids from the everyday residential structures. That’s certainly of treatment value, however, there can also be treatment structures and interventions that are baked into every part of the residential day, from how kids wake up to how activities and meals are run to how kids go to bed at night. These structures, and ways staff interact with the kids, build resilience, self-regulation abilities, teach concrete social and life-skills, and teach kids how to develop and maintain healthy relationships.
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71. (Archival) Ep18 After Processing Suicidal Ideation
05/02/2026
71. (Archival) Ep18 After Processing Suicidal Ideation
Today’s episode is from the archives that are available at . It’s a re-cast of Episode 18, addressing how counselors can stabilize kids after an incident involving suicidal ideation or gestures. The role of a counselor is fundamentally different than the role of a therapist in these situations. The counselor’s focus is on helping the client see the suicidal ideation or gesture as a symptom and then helping the client cope with that symptom. It’s not about understanding where the symptom comes from – leave that for the individual sessions with a therapist. Next episode I’ll be back with the beginning of a new episode arc in the group-level interventions learning pathway. The focus will be on how to incorporate treatment interventions into every part of the residential shift. In the meantime, I hope this episode helps you, and your program, to effectively intervene and support your most overwhelmed clients when they are in crisis.
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70. (Archival) Ep17 Suicidal Ideation
04/20/2026
70. (Archival) Ep17 Suicidal Ideation
This is an archival episode that re-releases Episode 17 on Suicidal Ideation. Episodes 17 and 18 explore how to counsel residents who experience suicidal ideation. Residential children and youth are part of a high-risk group for having thoughts of suicide and, often times, it will fall upon residential staff to provide effective counseling, typically late at night. Learn how to effectively process suicidal ideation with your clients and what sort of follow-up interventions can help keep your clients safe.
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69. Expectation Systems & Contracts
04/12/2026
69. Expectation Systems & Contracts
Episode 69 of the Becoming Centered Podcast, building off of the previous two episodes, presents listeners with a powerful tool for residential treatment programs – Expectation Contracts. Episode 67 presented the underlying conceptual difference between using point systems, behavior contracts, and other “behavioral” change techniques to impact performative surface behaviors versus impacting inner systemic change. Both have their place. Episode 68 expanded on these distinctions by introducing the idea of a “behavior-management” system versus a “feedback-incentive” system. Both use the same elements of tracking some behavior or other aspect of performance, giving it a score (or coupon or other token), the accumulation of which results in a pay-out. However, feedback-incentive systems are a fundamentally different intervention aimed at cognitive change in how kids manage themselves, their beliefs, their values, and their relationships with others. The focus is not on discrete behaviors but on increasing the efforts kids make to develop themselves. This episode takes that understanding and explores concrete ways to take the feedback-incentive model and turn it into a focused Expectation Contract. A structure is presented to empower listeners to create customized Expectation Contracts for their residential units or for individual clients.
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68. Behavior-Management vs Feedback-Incentive Systems
03/29/2026
68. Behavior-Management vs Feedback-Incentive Systems
Episode 68 of the Becoming Centered Podcast expands on the topic of how to design interventions targeted at changing performative surface behaviors versus interventions designed to inspire inner systemic changes in how kids manage their emotions, adopt self-regulating beliefs and values, and consciously manage relationships with others. The key design difference is whether or not a point system, coupon system, token economy, or other forms of behavior contracts track observable behaviors or try to track the kids’ efforts at self-directed change. This episode examines the profound differences between behavior-management systems and feedback-incentive systems. On the surface these two structures look similar to one another, both involving kids getting some type of score based on staff observations and then rewarding them for attaining some goal number. However, when designed and implemented properly these interventions are fundamentally different. Behavior-Management interventions track observable behaviors in an attempt to condition improved behaviors. Feedback-Incentive interventions get kids invested in implementing feedback and then making more pro-social choices. One is targeted at specific behaviors. The other is a cognitive intervention designed to engage kids in making real effort to manage their own development. Understanding this difference is key to designing these essential tools for effective residential treatment of children and youth.
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67. Performative vs Systemic Change
03/20/2026
67. Performative vs Systemic Change
Becoming Centered Podcast 67, “Performative vs Systemic Change” lays the groundwork for understanding how to design effective behavior-focused program structures that are intended to shape the behaviors of children and youth in residential treatment programs. The key to effective design of these structures is understanding when and how to focus on performative behaviors versus when and how to focus on inner systemic change. “Performative behavioral change” are changes in the kids’ surface behaviors while they are at the treatment program. “Inner systemic change” are changes in how the kids manage their feelings, use staff feedback, put effort into their own personal development, and manage their relationships with others. Systemic change will lead to changes in surface behaviors that are much more likely to last after kids leave a residential program. Both types of change have their place in a residential treatment program. Depending on the design, both types of change can be encouraged through behavior-focused structures including things like point systems, point and level systems, coupon systems, token economies, and behavior contracts. These techniques are, often times, the structural foundation of a lot of residential programs. This podcast will give you the tools to understand how to better design and use these techniques.
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66. House Meeting6 - Parts & Treatment Objectives
02/23/2026
66. House Meeting6 - Parts & Treatment Objectives
This episode of the Becoming Centered Podcast presents four major parts to a residential treatment program’s House Meetings (a regularly scheduled meeting of staff and clients). Each part, (1) check-ins, (2) announcements, (3) group discussions / agenda items, and (4) wrap-up provides a forum for promoting resilience, self-regulation, social skills, and team-building. Regardless of the specific content of any single meeting, staff focus on four aspects of resilience, four aspects of self-regulation, and four aspects of “meeting behaviors” or social skills. Resilience is promoted through encouraging the kids to experience, due to their participation in House Meeting, a sense of belonging, purpose, agency, and meaning. Improved self-regulation is promoted through encouraging emotional sensitivity, through presenting evidence to support positive beliefs, through discussing values, and through giving the kids opportunities to practice their executive skills. The “meeting skills” of respectful listening, stating opinions appropriately, giving and receiving feedback, and negotiating and compromising are taught and encouraged through every part of the House Meeting. By using House Meetings to provide treatment aimed at improved resilience, self-regulation, and social skills the residential counseling staff will guide the kids through the forming, storming, and norming phases of team development to turn them into a high-performing team that provides each client with a transformative residential treatment experience.
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65. House Meeting5 - Storming and Purpose
01/25/2026
65. House Meeting5 - Storming and Purpose
Skillful facilitation of House Meetings is one of the most challenging, but also most impactful, aspects of providing a treatment experience. Developing a group of troubled kids into a high-performing team, that absorbs each other’s misbehaviors and promotes maturation, is a difficult task. Storming behaviors are common among kids in residential treatment. In House Meetings, a significant number of kids will deeply struggle with inappropriate meeting behaviors – ranging from aggressively menacing the whole room to simply not paying attention or actively distracting others. However, storming behaviors, that sabotage team-building efforts, can be leveraged by staff to actually speed up the team-building process. One of the best ways to do that is to focus not on the misbehaviors, but on the impact of those misbehaviors on team-building. That is greatly enhanced by repeatedly explaining to the kids the purposes of forming a strong team, the purposes of House Meetings, and really the purpose of their entire residential treatment experience.
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64. House Meeting4 - Emotional Sensitivity
01/11/2026
64. House Meeting4 - Emotional Sensitivity
Running a residential unit for children and youth that goes beyond providing quality Care to also delivering an impactful Treatment experience requires staff to constantly focus on team-building. It’s as a high-performing team that the kids develop their own self-regulation and resiliency; through helping their team-mates manage their daily emotional, cognitive, and behavioral challenges. One of the best structures in which to develop a residential unit into a team is the, at least weekly, House Meeting. House Meetings have several parts, such as announcements, group problem-solving, feedback, celebrations, and team-building exercises; however, the heart of House Meetings, at least in my mind, is the structured check-in. This episode focuses on using check-ins to encourage kids’ skills at emotional sensitivity which then leads to consideration and cooperation. Unlike empathy, emotional sensitivity doesn’t require feeling what someone else is feeling. Instead, it refers to consciously perceiving another person’s feelings and moods, potentially simply because they have told you how they’re doing. Emotional Sensitivity is then taking that knowledge and modifying your interactions out of consideration for the other person’s state of being. It’s being a good housemate, a good friend, and a good team-mate for experiencing residential treatment.
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63. House Meeting3 - Check-ins
01/01/2026
63. House Meeting3 - Check-ins
Episode 63 of the Becoming Centered Podcast focuses on how to facilitate Check-ins as part of a residential treatment program’s House Meetings. Check-ins are an excellent way to start House Meetings. Literally, people take turns giving a brief report on how they are doing that day. Structured effectively, the practice of conducting Check-ins can become a foundational technique for a program providing a treatment experience for the kids. When used in a group setting, Check-ins are steered by the facilitator to focus not so much on the kid doing the check-in, but on how everyone else on the team can support that kid in having a good day and a good week. In this way the check-in structure supports the development of a high-performing team and supports the kids improving at emotional sensitivity. Emotional Sensitivity is taking other people’s feelings and moods into account for how you interact with them. Improved Emotional Sensitivity helps kids be successful in any shared living setting, and with all the important relationships in their lives.
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62. House Meeting2 - Phases of Team Development
12/08/2025
62. House Meeting2 - Phases of Team Development
Episode 62 of the Becoming Centered podcast is the second episode in an arc focused on House Meetings. In my experience, House Meetings are the single most effective group structure in the residential week for promoting team-building and for developing the kids into a high-performance team. When that happens the entire residential experience shifts from having to spend an excessive amount of time on behavior management to a treatment environment that promotes mental health. Developing that kind of positive peer and staff culture takes time. It also takes solid strategy and understanding of team development. This episode blends together the basics for resilience (a sense of belonging, purpose, agency, and meaning) with a well-known model for understanding the phases of team development - forming, storming, norming, and performing. This episode also presents a way to understand four major ways in which our brain's regulate our emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. With time-tested structures like check-in's, House Meetings become a time for practicing executive skills, learning emotional sensitivity, acquiring prosocial beliefs, and healthy values. At the same time, House Meetings can become an effective way to teach listening respectfully, stating opinions appropriately, giving and receiving feedback maturely, and learning how to negotiate and compromise with others.
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61. House Meeting1 - Resilience & Skills Development
11/23/2025
61. House Meeting1 - Resilience & Skills Development
Episode 61 of the Becoming Centered podcast starts an episode arc focused on the use of House Meetings in residential treatment programs. House Meetings are a structured meeting of all the residents and available staff that are part of a residential unit at a treatment program. House Meetings are the single most powerful structure for building a positive unit culture that supports the formation of a resilient residential team of staff and clients. This episode arc starts out by presenting a vision for how House Meetings can contribute to team-building efforts and especially to the kids developing a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose, a sense of agency, and a sense of meaning to their residential experience. At the same time House Meetings also provide an effective forum for encouraging the development of social skills and executive skills in the kids. This episode also addresses the first step in developing House Meetings to meet their full potential; creating a shared vision among all the staff involved in the residential unit. This requires aligning the development of House Meetings with the mission and vision of the residential treatment agency, creating a shared understanding of the purposes and goals of House Meetings, empowering direct-care staff to take an active role in developing House Meetings, and helping people find meaning in putting work and effort into the design and implementation of these meetings.
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60. Care vs Treatment, Behavior Management, and Respect
11/10/2025
60. Care vs Treatment, Behavior Management, and Respect
Episode 60 continues along the Group-Level Interventions Pathway. Building on the last episode, other foundational perspectives for going beyond only providing quality Care to providing transformational Treatment are presented. These include making a distinction between Care and Treatment, and understanding that behavior management techniques, while often times essential, are part of Care and not Treatment. Several organizational traps of becoming too focused on behavior management are explored, including the key distinction between interventions that inspire mindless compliance and interventions that inspire thoughtful cooperation. The importance of respect for a transformational treatment experience is also highlighted.
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59. Season 3 - Overview and Intentions
11/02/2025
59. Season 3 - Overview and Intentions
Episode 59 of the Becoming Centered podcast marks the start of Season 3. This Season will contain two learning pathways. One series will focus on working with kids in varying size groups. Group work ranges from simple interactions in a living room or classroom to managing various activity groups to running group meetings focused on various aspects of team-building and congregate living. Another series will focus on physiological centering by presenting a program for listeners to gain a basic level of competence at mindfulness / relaxation / meditation; in preparation to teach these techniques to kids. This episode will also touch upon one of the foundations for forming therapeutic relationships – explaining your intentions. It ends with a brief pitch about the importance of kids having fun and of you having fun with the kids.
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58. Supervision14 - Weekly Staff Meetings
09/17/2025
58. Supervision14 - Weekly Staff Meetings
Episode 58 of the Becoming Centered Podcast provides a vision for how to design and facilitate an extremely challenging structure in residential treatment programs – the weekly unit staff meeting. This episode covers a lot of ground. Along with presenting a general team-building strategy, an outline is suggested for how to do simple case presentations, for how to organize an issues agenda-driven portion of the meeting, and for how to deliver trainings specifically geared toward the needs of direct-care staff. In addition, a general model for how to develop your program’s existing staff meeting design to a more sophisticated approach is presented. Guidance is also given to listeners to help adapt this material to fit the size of your agency, your program, your number of staff, and the average length of stay of your clients. The weekly residential unit staff meeting is likely the largest, longest, and in the sense of staff hours, one of the most expensive structures in your program. The more effective the design and facilitation of this meeting, the better your agency will be able to provide quality care and treatment to children and youth.
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57. Supervision13 - Meeting Fundamentals
08/28/2025
57. Supervision13 - Meeting Fundamentals
I’m very excited about Episode 57 of the Becoming Centered podcast! It provides guidance in an area that most human service agencies simply can’t fit into their training programs; how to design and facilitate internal staff meetings. Middle managers, such as Unit Directors, are tasked with running some of the most technically difficult meetings. With only the training provided by their own experiences, they are responsible for a program structure, that if you were to add up the hourly wages of all the participants, is an incredibly expensive use of time for agencies that typically run under very tight budgets. In addition, this content area strongly illustrates how the Meta-Compass Model can be used to integrate diverse perspectives. This podcast explores the profound parallels between fostering resilience in clients, working effectively with groups of kids, how to structure internal staff meetings, and how to develop high-functioning teams. These strategies are a blending of teachings from psychology, social work, and business administration.
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56. Supervision12 - Resilience pt.2
07/28/2025
56. Supervision12 - Resilience pt.2
Episode 56 of the Becoming Centered podcast is part two of a two-part arc focusing on the concept of resilience. Resilience is the ability to stay centered even in the face of various stressors and triggers. It's related to, but different than, self-regulation which is the ability to become centered when emotionally dysregulated, cognitively disorganized, behaviorally chaotic, and physiologically / neurologically elevated. There are four qualities that support emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and physiological / neurological resilience. A sense of belonging. A sense of purpose. A sense of agency. A sense of meaning. This episode reviews the factors that make up a sense of belonging and expands on the importance of a sense of purpose for kids in residential treatment and special education. It then presents the importance of, and ways to foster, a sense of agency and meaning in clients and staff.
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55. Supervision11 - Resilience pt. 1
07/16/2025
55. Supervision11 - Resilience pt. 1
Episode 55 of the Becoming Centered podcast focuses on the concept of resilience. Resilience is the ability to stay centered even in the face of various stressors and triggers. It's related to, but different than, self-regulation which is the ability to become centered when emotionally dysregulated, cognitively disorganized, behaviorally chaotic, and physiologically / neurologically elevated. There're four qualities that support emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and physiological / neurological resilience. A sense of belonging. A sense of purpose. A sense of agency. A sense of meaning. This episode, part one of a two-part arc, focuses on emotional and cognitive resilience and how to promote a sense of belonging and purpose in a residential program or special education setting.
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54. Supervision10 - Choices, Breaks, Support Center, Physical Intervention
05/27/2025
54. Supervision10 - Choices, Breaks, Support Center, Physical Intervention
Episode 54 concludes a four-episode arc, within the Unit Supervision Pathway, that presents the 10 techniques that make up the Hierarchy of Interventions. This episode focuses on how to implement these interventions in a way that goes beyond surface behavior management to supporting the development of self-regulation in children and youth. This episode particularly focuses on the Forced-Choice and related Weighted-Choice techniques. These interventions leverage a program's consequence system to help child-clients make choices that determine whether or not they receive a consequence for any misbehaviors. That, in turn, supports the development of self-regulation over their own impluses and emotional-reasoning. These techniques are also a very effective way to help kids who struggle with taking responsibility for their own feelings, thoughts, and especially behaviors to mature. They are also excellent techniques for ending pointless control-battles between a staff person and a client. Centering Breaks are similar to Time Outs, however, they add structures to the time that move the intervention beyond simply removing a client from an over-stimulating or triggering situation. These structures are individualized to the needs and abilities of individual kids, but are strategically intended to help each child or youth become emotionally, cognitively, behaviorally, and physiologically centered. The Support Center structure and intervention is used by many multi-unit residential programs and schools to completely separate misbehaving kids from their peers. Typically, separate counselors staff the Support Center, providing a change of face as well as a Change-of-Environment. Ideally, Support Center counselors also Process the incidents that resulted in a child or youth being separated from the group. A structured approach to Processing is presented in prior podcast episodes. Physical Interventions, including physical restraint, are techniques used in residential treatment programs to safely de-escalate or contain extreme behaviors. Processing afterwards is key for moving these interventions beyond behavior management to supporting the development of self-regulation in kids.
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53. Supervision9 - Change Environment and Limit Setting
05/13/2025
53. Supervision9 - Change Environment and Limit Setting
Episode 53 reviews the first four tools and techniques that make up the Hierarchy of Interventions (Distraction, Engaging, Verbal Redirection, Labeling) and presents the next two steps in the Hierarchy, Changing the Environment and Limit Setting. A major emphasis is placed on using these techniques to not only manage behaviors, but also to help clients develop their abilities to self-regulate. Behavior Management is a necessary component of providing Care to troubled children and youth. All kids sometimes exhibit behavior problems. However, kids in residential treatment, perhaps especially because they're surrounded by other struggling peers, will sometimes use problem-behaviors. Part of the Care of children is to maintain a safe environment, including efforts to keep kids safe from their own dysregulated behaviors and those of their peers. But behavior management is not enough. In addition to providing Care, a residential treatment program must also provide a Treatment experience. It's not enough to create an environment in which kids "behave" only to have problem-behaviors reappear after kids leave the program. For lasting change to occur, kids need to improve their abilities to self-regulate their emotions, thoughts, and behaviors (including internal physiological "behaviors"). When used skillfully, the techniques that make up the Hierarchy of Intervention can be used in way that not only manages behaviors but also encourages the brain development necessary for improved self-regulation. Changing the Environment is a very powerful way to help kids who have become overwhelmed and dysregulated to the point where they can no longer fully process language. Changing various aspects of a kids surroundings is a generally reliable way to help them to calm down to the point where they can calm down enough to make thoughtful choices. Limit Setting, when used to clarify behavioral expectations, and especially when used to clarify values, is another way to help kids learn how to better regulate their own thoughts and behaviors.
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52. Supervision8 - The Aspect Compass and Labeling
04/01/2025
52. Supervision8 - The Aspect Compass and Labeling
This episode is the second in a three-episode arc that presents the Hierarchy of Interventions. This grouping of 10 interventions forms a core curriculum of counseling skills used by residential staff to encourage the development of kids' self-regulation abilities. Last episode focused on using Distraction, Engaging, and Verbal Redirection to interrupt and prevent kids from going down an off-track path toward increased emotional, cognitive, and behavioral dysregulation. This episode introduces the Aspect Compass model of the human mind. Understanding this metaphor for how the mind works, makes it easier for direct-care counseling staff to move beyond the behavior-management level of intervention and instead help kids development their self-regulation abilities. This episode revisits those three interventions from the perspective of the Aspect Compass Model and then goes on to present the labeling intervention. Different variations on the Labeling intervention are used to increase clients' self-monitoring of their own behaviors, their own bodies, their own feelings, and their own developing social skills. One variation on Labeling is also used in place of giving directions and setting limits. Those interventions are intended to encourage compliance, where labeling encourages kids to chose cooperation.
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51. Supervision7 - The Hierarchy of Interventions
03/25/2025
51. Supervision7 - The Hierarchy of Interventions
This episode on the Unit Supervisor Learning Pathway moves away from a focus on managerial skills and switches to a focus on counseling skills to be taught to direct-care Child Care Counselors. It presents 10 interventions, or techniques, for Counselors to use with kids when they become off-track, dysregulated, and uncentered. Skillful use of this package of interventions starts with understanding the ways in which they can be thought of as forming a hierarchy. That includes the higher up interventions being increasingly disruptive to the group environment of the residential unit, being an increasingly heavy-handed display of the staff being in charge, and requiring more judgement and skill from staff so that the intervention de-escalates the situation rather than causing an ecalation. However, these ten interventions are not like a true hierarchy in that staff can start anywhere on the scale, can use the interventions in various combinations, and even that some of the interventions can be thought of as just examples of the other interventions. This episode goes on to take a closer look at three interventions at the bottom of the hierarchy: distraction, engaging, and verbal redirections. Distraction is frequently the first intervention used for interrupting an emerging pattern of dysregulation. Engaging is the most frequent intervention that should be used by residential staff in that it provides the kids with practice at co-regulating with a calmer and more psychologically and neurologically organized person. Improved co-regulation skills leads to improved self-regulation skills. Verbal Redirection is regularly used to support the development of kids' self-awareness, and is frequently used with having kids Practice or Over-Practice a desired behavior and in combination with Listening Checks.
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