For Practitioners
Case Consultation
You already know which case you need a strategic consult for. The name of that client popped into your head as soon as you read this.
You've tried what you know. You've considered referring out and decided against it. The session ends, your client thanks you. Your notes from today read like last week's. Nothing has changed for the client, and you're concerned about them coming back or not.
That is the case you bring.
When to choose case consultation
Your modality is not the problem. For most clients, what your training gave you is enough.
Some cases need a more pragmatic, behavior-based approach. The kind that produces visible movement in weeks instead of months.
Clients stay committed to therapy when they can see and feel they're progressing. Talk therapy can take months to produce that signal, which is normal for the work. The client still wants to feel they're paying for progress.
Strategic therapy was built for this gap. It works alongside your existing approach so the client sees progress sooner.
A message from our director
Jay Haley had Milton Erickson as his mentor. I had Jay Haley as mine.
Therapy is not driven by knowledge. Your clients can read the books you've read, attend the lectures you've attended, watch the same case study tapes. Knowledge is necessary for the work. It is not what produces change.
What produces change is intuition shaped by experience.
You learned methods, and the methods are sound. The problem is that picking an intervention from the presenting problem rarely works. The intervention that fits this client today comes from recognition you've earned over years of difficult sessions.
When a case has you stuck, your intuition for that type of context hasn't been built yet. That is good information. Work through it with someone whose intuition for that context is already built, and every future case of a similar kind becomes easier to read.
Case consultation is where you build that.
How it works
You bring the case to the session.
Your client remains anonymous, but you share the relevant details of the case and the pattern you're stuck on.
I give you a specific strategic intervention for your next session and the reasoning behind it.
You apply the intervention in your next session with the client.
What colleagues say
"I've been a CBT practitioner for several years already, and still some cases made me feel like an impostor, a fish out of water, like I'm completely useless. All I did is nod, ask the default questions, give the worksheets, and hope for the best. The iAST case consultation gave me the tools I needed to help these clients instead of losing them."
"I am grateful for Shlomo for his insights. I've been a big fan of Haley's work, and having someone from his direct lineage guiding me through difficult cases has made all the difference in my private practice. Having a solid, field-tested plan for a session with a difficult couple is a huge advantage in my field. Highly recommend it."
