Early in my clinical training, I started to notice that regardless of their age, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status, my clients presented with very similar qualities.  They were smart, creative, artistic, empathic, and exhibited a deep understanding and concern for the human condition.  However, they were not functioning well in most areas of their life (e.g., school, social, home).  Some of them were showing risky behaviors in their early teens such as violence, cannabis use, promiscuous sex, petty theft, and more serious criminal activity.  Some even exhibited behaviors that could be considered antisocial, and at times their charts mentioned possible hallucinations.  At the agencies where I worked, it was not uncommon for me to inherit cases of 15-year-olds that had been receiving therapy since they were very young. 

When I spoke with their parents, teachers, social workers, probation officers, pediatricians, occupational therapist, psychiatrists, and past therapists to get their insights pertaining to my clients, they shared their frustrations with the child’s negative behavior and inability to change.  When I asked them about the child’s strengths, about what it was like to be in the presence of the child, and about what might be going on inside the child’s internal world; their responses did not reflect an intersubjective understanding or curiosity for what could be going on with these children aside from the standard judgment of the child being “treatment resistant.”

Somewhere around 2013, I started to realize that something was not right with the traditional psychotherapeutic approach that was being used to treat children.  What was causing these very smart, creative, empathic, intuitive, personable, and sophisticated youth to have so many social, behavioral, emotional, and learning challenges which at times resulted in self-destruction?  Why were they being criticized, judged, threatened, punished, and at times bullied by the adults that were supposed to provide the support and care that they needed? What were we missing?  Why could we not understand them?  Were they an abomination or were they special in some way that was foreign to us?  Were the traditional counseling and psychiatry assumptions getting in the way of these children receiving the developmental support they needed?