Thursday:

Special Pre-Conference Workshop on Ethics

Know Your Boundaries: Ethical Issues in 21st-Century Practice
Mary Jo Barrett

9:30am - 12pm and 1pm - 5pm, Workshop 127

It takes a lot of energy to establish and maintain ethical boundaries in therapy. When clinicians have expended too much of their energy and are suffering from compassion fatigue, they’re much more vulnerable to boundary confusion in their relationships with clients. In this workshop, we’ll discuss the importance of self-reflection, peer supervision, sharing concerns with colleagues, and establishing and maintaining clear boundary guidelines. We’ll focus particularly on self-care, with participants developing a plan for their own personal and professional well-being, to keep them grounded, mindful, and confident so that compassion fatigue becomes much less of an issue as a trigger for boundary problems. Note: This workshop fulfills many state board requirements for training in ethics and risk management.

Mary Jo Barrett, M.S.W., is director of the Center for Contextual Change and teaches at the University of Chicago. She’s the author of Systemic Treatment of Incest and Treating Incest: A Multiple Systems Perspective.

Special Pre-Conference Workshop on Practice Building

Starting Out: Facing the Challenges of Beginning Your Career
Lynn Grodzki

9:30am - 12pm and 1pm - 5pm, Workshop 128

You’re just beginning your career as a therapist and you’ve started seeing clients, but all kinds of questions and problems arise day to day that were never addressed in graduate school. Where can you go for guidance? In this all-day workshop, we’ll come together to explore the range of baffling professional issues faced by beginning therapists trying to chart their career path. You’ll get advice on how to simplify your most difficult cases, retain clients longer, and stay calm and grounded when sessions get tough. We’ll explain the basics of clinical supervision—what kinds of questions supervisors ask and what they look for— so you’ll know what to pay attention to when you assess your own work. We’ll also reveal the secrets and strategies of building a successful private practice, even in today’s economic climate. The workshop is designed to create a safe atmosphere for sharing your situation, brainstorming with others, and making some new and lasting connections that will enable you to build your own professional community of colleagues.

Lynn Grodzki, L.C.S.W., is a Master Certified Coach and the author of five books on practice building. Her latest is Crisis-Proof Your Practice: How to Survive and Thrive in an Uncertain Economy.

Welcoming Event

Daniel Leven
Finding the Pulse: An Experience of Self and Community
8:00 p.m., Regency Ballroom

Join movement teacher and group facilitator Daniel Leven as he uses music, dance, and group interaction to heighten your sense of connection with other attendees and sharpen your own personal vision for the conference. Here’s your chance to bring into focus the breakthroughs that will most revitalize you personally and professionally.

An instructor at Kripalu Center, Canyon Ranch, and the Omega Institute for the past 30 years, Daniel Leven is the founder of Rhythms-Yoga and Dance Center and the Leven Institute for Expressive Movement, which offers training programs integrating body psychotherapy, the expressive arts, and dance.

Friday:

Morning Keynote

Daniel Goleman
Ecological Intelligence
9:00 a.m., Regency Ballroom

Through his groundbreaking books, Emotional Intelligence, Primal Leadership, and Social Intelligence, psychologist and science journalist Daniel Goleman has educated millions of people around the world about the crucial role of acquiring emotional skills as well as cognitive abilities in becoming a truly competent human being. Inspired by his work, an emotional-literacy movement has transformed the daily operations and enhanced the vision of thousands of schools, corporations, and other institutions around the world. Citing his latest book, Ecological Intelligence, Time magazine named Goleman’s focus on expanding awareness of the worldwide impact of our daily habits of consumption as one of “10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now.” In his keynote, Goleman will explore the role therapists can play in developing a broader, deeper consciousness of the complex ecology of life on this planet.

Luncheon Address

Ron Taffel
Challenge and Hope: The Paradoxes of the Post-Boomer Family
1:15 p.m., Regency Ballroom

Using both his in-the-trenches experience as a clinician and his gifts as a keen social observer, Ron Taffel has become one of our foremost commentators on the profound transformation of childhood, adolescence, and family life over the past three decades. The author of numerous books for parents and professionals, including The Second Family, Breaking Through to Teens, and, most recently, Childhood Unbound: Saving Our Kids’ Best Selves, Taffel has offered a distinctive vision of how warp-speed cultural changes have rendered obsolete much of the traditional therapeutic wisdom about working with kids today. In his lunchtime address, he’ll talk about the many bewildering paradoxes of 21st-century families, and how to rise to the challenge of helping ourselves stay authoritative with both kids and parents who are unwilling to accept old-think definitions of communication and hierarchy. Approved for one hour of CE credit.

Dinner Address

Natalie Goldberg
The Practice of Creativity: Reawakening to the Mystery of Life
7:00 p.m., Regency Ballroom

Poet, teacher, artist, and Zen practitioner, Natalie Goldberg skyrocketed to fame more than 20 years ago with her classic, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, arguably the most popular book ever written about the craft and art of writing. In hundreds of workshops during the past 25 years, she’s earned a reputation for her ability to help participants discover the creative spark and original voice within themselves. In her dinner talk, she’ll reflect on the connection between spiritual practice and creativity, using her own writing and art to explore how each of us can create practices that “reawaken us to the mystery of our own life.” Approved for one hour of CE credit.

Saturday:

Morning Keynote

Daniel Siegel
The Neurobiology of “We”
9:00 a.m., Regency Ballroom

Ever since his path-breaking book The Developing Mind first introduced the concepts of interpersonal neurobiology to the therapy field, psychiatrist, therapist, and researcher Daniel Siegel has entranced readers and audiences alike with his tour de force synthesis of neurobiology, developmental psychology, cognitive science, attachment research, mindfulness, and complexity theory. In his latest books, Mindsight and The Mindful Therapist, he’s offered a deeply personal exploration of how Western neuroscience, Eastern meditative traditions, and psychological insight can be integrated to help us rewire our own brains and expand our experience of human connection. In his keynote, “The Neurobiology of ‘We,’” he’ll examine the far-reaching impact of interpersonal neurobiology, not only for the field of psychotherapy, but for an individualistic culture struggling to reconcile itself with the fundamental human need for community.

Luncheon Address

Jerome Kagan
Human Nature and the Possibilities of Change
1:15 p.m., Regency Ballroom

A towering figure in the field of developmental psychology, Jerome Kagan has fundamentally shifted our understanding of human nature through his groundbreaking research on inborn temperament, personality, and the interaction of biology and psychology. A masterful writer, his many books, including The Long Shadow of Temperament, Galen’s Prophecy, What Is Emotion, and An Argument for Mind, weave together a complex tapestry from the many strands that make up human personality, morality, and spirituality—biology, nurture, experience, economic factors, and social influence. In his lunchtime presentation, he’ll talk about the implications for psychotherapy of our emerging understanding of the interplay between the deep biological roots of many temperamental dispositions and the impact of the social environment. Approved for one hour of CE credit.

Dinner Address

Barbara Ehrenreich
Bright-Sided: Positive Psychology in Context
7:00 p.m., Regency Ballroom

Acclaimed for penetrating insight, hilarious wit, and a great ear for the telling anecdote, Barbara Ehrenreich is widely recognized as perhaps the leading progressive journalist writing in America today. In 13 books, several of them bestsellers, including Nickel and Dimed, Bait and Switch, Fear of Falling, andThis Land Is Their Land, she’s vividly chronicled the central social, economic, and cultural issues of our times--corporate greed, poverty and unemployment, growing economic inequality. In her evening talk, she’ll address the subject of her latest book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, examining the cultural mindset that, she proposes, has much to do with our current economic and social woes. Approved for one hour of CE credit.

Sunday:

Morning Keynote

Tara Brach
True Refuge: Three Gateways to a Fearless Heart
9:00 a.m., Regency Ballroom

A leading teacher of Buddhist meditation and a clinical psychologist, Tara Brach is nationally known for her skill in bridging Western psychological knowledge with Eastern spiritual practices. The author of Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha, she’ll address our collective predilection for taking false refuge in the range of common cultural distractions—addictions, constant busyness, our preoccupations with “getting ahead,” mourning for our dwindling 401Ks—that spring from our fundamental lack of emotional and spiritual connection. She’ll also explore how therapy can offer not only a sense of a safe container, but also an experience that takes people beyond their everyday trance to a discovery of their true Buddha nature.

Clinical Round Table: #624

Psychotherapy and the Brain: Are We Entering a New Era?
Rick Hanson, Sebern Fisher, and Janina Fisher
Moderator: Jay Efran

Over the past 20 years, an astonishing number of concepts and findings about neurobiology have penetrated into every corner of our field. How has brain science advanced psychotherapy? Are we beginning a new era in which brain science is opening up a new paradigm for clinical practice? What are the most practical changes that brain science has brought about in treatment approaches, and what are they likely to be in the future? This session is designed not only to offer a perspective on how far we’ve come, but also to illuminate what we can look forward to in the marriage between therapy and brain science.

Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is the author of Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom. Sebern Fisher, M.A., practices neurofeedback and consults with Bessel van der Kolk in the Trauma Center’s implementation of neurofeedback. Janina Fisher, Ph.D., is assistant director of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute and an instructor at Boston’s Trauma Center. Jay Efran, Ph.D., the moderator, is professor emeritus of psychology at Temple University and coauthor of Language, Structure and Change.

Clinical Round Table: #625

Mindfulness and Beyond: How Meditative Traditions Are Shaping Practice
Richard Schwartz, Sonja Batten, and Karen Kissel Wegela
Moderator: David Treadway

Over the last decade or so, the term mindfulness has become almost omnipresent in our field. What hasn’t been sufficiently explored are some of the important distinctions between the traditional spiritual disciplines of mindfulness and the science and art of psychological treatment. In this panel, three therapists will describe their own perspectives on mindfulness: how they use it in therapy, what cautions should always be kept in mind when using it, and the role of the therapist’s own mindfulness practice in the effective use of this tool in clinical work. You’re invited to bring your own questions and comments into the discussion.

Richard Schwartz, Ph.D., is the author of five books, including Internal Family Systems Therapy. Sonja Batten, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist who’s researched mindfulness-based therapies and traumatic stress extensively. Karen Kissel Wegela, Ph.D., has taught at Naropa University for 29 years and is the author of The Courage to Be Present. David Treadway, Ph.D., the moderator, is the author of Home Before Dark: A Family Portrait of Cancer and Healing.

Business Round Table: #626

The Future of Private Practice: A Day for Retooling Your Business Model
Lynn Grodzki, Casey Truffo, and Joe Bavonese

With pervasive economic insecurity and a shrinking client base, there’s some question about whether private practice can even survive in its current form. Whatever their individual “take” on the current situation, all three panelists argue that, in the future, therapists will have to change the way they think about their work and how to attract clients. Lynn Grodzki says that you can succeed at private practice, even in this market, by developing entrepreneurial skills and finding a winning niche for yourself. Casey Truffo reminds us of developing a “multiple streams of therapy income” mindset. Joe Bavonese argues the key is marketing your practice on the Internet and making the most of the new social media technologies. There’ll be lots of lively discussion and plenty of opportunity to get answers to your most pressing questions. Note: This workshop does not qualify for continuing education for psychologists.

Lynn Grodzki, L.C.S.W., M.C.C., is a master coach and the author of Crisis-Proof Your Practice. Casey Truffo, M.F.T., is a marketing coach for therapy practices and the author of Be a Wealthy Therapist. Joe Bavonese, Ph.D., is the cofounder of Uncommon Practices, a business training organization for therapists.