What is The Seven Challenges?
The Seven Challenges® is a comprehensive counseling program that incorporates work on alcohol and other drug problems. It is designed to motivate clients, whether they are in the adult or adolescent version, to evaluate their lives, consider changes they may wish to make, and then succeed in implementing the desired changes. It supports them in taking power over their own lives.
In The Seven Challenges program, people address their drug problems, their co-occurring life skill deficits, and their situational and psychological problems. Although counselors in the program provide a structure for groups and a framework for individual sessions, the content of each session is exceptionally flexible, in response to the immediate needs of the client. It is not pre-scripted.
The Seven Challenges uses an approach called “Mastery CounselingTM,” which helps people look at what is happening in their lives. They learn to recognize what is going well and what is problematic. Whatever is not going well, or as well as they would like it to be going, is identified as an “issue.” In Seven Challenges sessions, counselors teach people to work on their issues. As they do their work, the “challenge process” is used to help them make thoughtful decisions, including about drugs.
We do not fit clients, whether young people or adults, into our program; rather, we wrap the program around the concerns of the people we serve.
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The Hopestream podcast episode 211
Leap of Power is Available Now
Click Here for Leap of Power Excerpt
Leap of Power is based on evidence that people are strong and capable, and can take charge of their own lives, including their use of alcohol and other drugs. It supports readers in respectfully evaluating the impact of drugs on their lives, without judgment and put-downs of any sort, and without an agenda of telling them how to behave.
Readers who have a drug problem and want to make changes will find help in evaluating their options and detailed guidance on how to succeed with either setting new limits or quitting. Readers who are uncertain whether or not they have a drug problem will find help in making their own determination about the matter.
This book is used by organizations that are trained to facilitate The Seven Challenges sessions for adults. Even counselors who have not been trained in The Seven Challenges will find Leap of Power to be helpful by adding another empowering and helpful voice to the counseling room.
