Bidding Farewell: Grateful for the Journey and Love

It is with both gratitude and regret that I announce my decision to step down from facilitating workshops for CASAT Learning. Partnering with CASAT has been among the most fulfilling experiences in my 50-year clinical career. Normal aging and recent medical issues are contributing factors.

Writing this post and saying goodbye to the professional staff who supported me, and the many participants who attended my Continuing Education workshops, is emotionally difficult. I will deeply miss the support and professional camaraderie that develops from the sharing of ideas and experiences. You are my colleagues and my friends, and I treasure the time we have had together.

The process of aging has been an interesting experience. (The Grateful Dead said it perfectly: “What a Strange Trip it’s Been.”) During the past 15 years, I found myself in what I have characterized as a “Legacy Stage.” My focus gradually transitioned into a passion for sharing what I have learned from my clients. I facilitated dozens of continuing education workshops for CASAT and various agencies, taught university classes, presented at conferences, offered free consultations for therapists, recorded a podcast for CASAT Conversations with a follow up narrative on the Catalyst Blog, and wrote a book: Brief Therapy for Clients with Challenging or Unique Issues: A Clinician’s Guide to Enhancing Outcomes, Routledge Publishing, 2023.

Those of you who have attended my workshops or have known me as a Private Practice Therapist and Research Site Clinical Supervisor would remember me as the guy who abhorred client blaming and believed that “there are no throwaway clients.”

During the last thirty years of my clinical practice, my focus was on working with clients that other clinicians had characterized as difficult, challenging, or “resistant.” I believed that it was the therapist’s responsibility to engage even the most reluctant clients, and build a collaborative, client-need driven process to facilitate authentic, lasting change. I partnered with potential referral sources for clients who were mandated or coerced to treatment, court ordered, or discharged early by other therapists, and contracted or accepted “side employment” with programs that served those populations.

At the time of referral, many of those clients were feeling hopeless, disparaged, misunderstood, and distrustful of the referral source and therapy. Yet I was able to engage nearly every client as a customer over therapy, identify their “agenda”—what they really wanted—and complete a collaborative therapeutic process to discharge. So, I had to write a book about decades with amazing clients who overcame adversity, and the tools, strategies, metaphors, words or “word substitutes,” and processes that worked for them.

My life’s work was rewarding, but it was not a solo journey. Any accomplishments can be attributed to a collaboration with many incredible people. It was my good fortune to have had brilliant mentors whose cutting-edge ideas and commitment to good outcomes helped me to shape my clinical philosophy and master solution process skills.

Several practice associates were there to support my work and help me to debrief whenI was feeling overwhelmed or burdened. There were others along the way who believed in me, gave me a chance, and opened the door for me to advance my career. My clients were great teachers who inspired me with their strength, courage, and resilience. And my family, patiently and with love, supported me through all the ups and downs.

I leave you with some resources as part of my commitment to continuing education and CASAT Learning, CASAT Conversations, and the Catalyst Blog. It is my hope that the links provided below will prove useful, as it brings me some solace to share them with you.

I send you my love and best wishes for the future,

Saul

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