March 28, 2010

Sunday All-Day Workshops 10:30 am - 3:30 pm

 

601- The Experience of Belonging: Finding Connection through Mindfulness

Tara Brach

Our most fundamental sense of well-being is derived from the conscious experience of belonging and connection--relatedness is essential to our survival. Yet, much of the confusion and suffering clients bring to our offices--such as their attachment to overwork, consumerism, and the spectrum of addictions--is rooted in their feeling of not being truly connected to anyone, including themselves. In this workshop, we’ll explore the use of various meditation traditions to help people feel compassion for themselves and give up trying to armor themselves against pain by controlling their experience. We’ll investigate the practice of the three Buddhist gateways, or refuges, for awakening from “the trance of separation and unworthiness”--the meditation on loving relationship, the meditation on moment-to-moment experience, and the meditation on awareness itself--and discuss their practical applications in therapy. Through these exercises, you’ll discover how Buddhist practice can help us deepen our connection to our own hearts and bodies, and come home to our truest nature.

Tara Brach, Ph.D., is the founder and senior teacher of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington. Her books include Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha and the forthcoming True Refuge: Three Gateways to a Fearless Heart.

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602 - It’s Not a No-Brainer: Integrating Neuroscience with Trauma Work

Lisa Ferentz

Trauma therapists often focus on the emotional and somatic aspects of healing, neglecting to consider the impact of trauma on brain processes. But a basic understanding of how trauma affects the brain can actually improve the therapist’s ability to do safe, effective clinical work. After a discussion of the fundamentals of trauma’s effects on neurobiology, participants in this workshop will learn how to translate this knowledge into concrete strategies for establishing a secure relationship with clients, preventing flashbacks and flooding, and enhancing the corrective emotional experience that’s at the core of trauma therapy. We’ll use our understanding of the brain to discuss specific treatment techniques, including how to keep clients grounded in their bodies and in the present, manage and modulate arousal, address cognitive distortions, and alter brain chemistry to improve affect. You’ll leave with an enhanced toolkit for trauma treatment.

Lisa Ferentz, L.C.S.W.-C., the founder and president of The Institute for Advanced Psychotherapy Training and Education, was voted the 2009 Social Worker of the Year by the Maryland Society for Clinical Social Work. She’s in private practice, specializing in trauma.

 

603 - Attachment Theory in Action

Daniel Hughes

Although attachment theory is widely accepted for its insights into early psychological development, therapists are rarely taught how to bring its insights into their day-to-day practice. Yet, an attachment-focused stance is a powerful tool in establishing a therapeutic bond with clients to help them regulate their affective state and begin rebuilding their capacity for satisfying relationships. In this workshop, you’ll learn how the attachment perspective can inform the use of language, posture, emotional mirroring, and emotionally rich questions to deepen the connection of family members with each other and enable the therapist to get “inside” their experience. Role plays and videos will demonstrate a range of attachment-based interventions.

Daniel Hughes, Ph.D., trains therapists in his attachment-focused methods of psychotherapy nationally and internationally. He’s the author of four books, including Attachment-Focused Parenting and Building the Bonds of Attachment.

 

604 - Neuro-Linguistic Programming: The Current State of the Art

Steve Andreas

More than 35 ago, NLP incorporated two fundamental insights into an entirely new approach to personal change: all human experience, thinking, and remembering is represented in the five sensory modalities and making changes in these sensory modalities--how people represent experience in their minds, independent of the actual content of the experience--can result in deep therapeutic change. In other words, what we take in is less important than how we take it in, so shifting the way clients represent experience rather than focusing on “the story” simplifies and speeds up therapy. Since making these discoveries, NLP has developed into a comprehensive approach to therapy with specific and detailed interventions for a wide range of problems. This workshop will start with an experiential introduction to the basic ideas of NLP. Then there’ll be demonstration and teaching of a wide variety of rapid, content-free interventions for anxiety, PTSD, anger, grief, guilt, shame, low motivation, and other problems that attendees suggest.

Steve Andreas, M.A., has been learning, teaching, and developing methods in Neuro-Linguistic Programming for 32 years. His books include Virginia Satir: The Patterns of Her Magic; Transforming Your Self: Becoming Who You Want to Be and Six Blind Elephants: Understanding Ourselves and Each Other.

 

605 - A Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy

Stan Tatkin

Distressed couples come into therapy when their repeated interactions create intense states of unpleasant emotional arousal--they literally “get on each other’s nerves” and experience a threat response in the presence of the other, resulting in distancing, avoidance, and sometimes violence.  In this workshop, you’ll learn an approach to couples therapy based on principles of mother-infant attachment, developmental neuroscience, and autonomic nervous system arousal.  We’ll discuss how to penetrate below the level of what they say and do to the fast-moving, implicit level of interpersonal neurobiology--how each partner unconsciously affects the other’s emotional arousal system.  You’ll learn how to identify couple types according to their childhood attachment patterns and we’ll explore various movement, touch, psychodrama, and other experiential interventions designed to uncover and repair attachment injuries and help both partners enhance their capacity for self-regulation.

Stan Tatkin, Psy.D., is associate clinical professor at the UCLA School of Medicine and the coauthor of the forthcoming book Love and War in Intimate Relationships: A Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy.

 

606 - Schema Therapy: Basics and Beyond

Wendy Behary

Many people grow up with maladaptive internal psychological schemas--pervasive, dysfunctional, and self-defeating themes or patterns regarding themselves and their relationships with others developed during childhood, which they keep repeating throughout life. Emerging in response to unmet needs in childhood, schemas lead to long-term, often damaging ways of responding to life circumstances. They’re particularly apparent in clients with borderline, narcissistic, and other chronic, debilitating symptoms. In this workshop, we’ll explore a therapy model that helps clients recognize triggering life events that activate these self-defeating behavioral patterns, as well as the underlying, childhood-based schemas. You’ll learn an approach to therapy that emphasizes the therapeutic relationship--with a special focus on adaptive re-parenting strategies, like empathic confrontation and limit-setting--as a clinical response to early unmet needs that enhances attunement, stability, safety, and support.

Wendy Behary, L.C.S.W., is the founder and director of The Cognitive Therapy Center of New Jersey and The New Jersey Institute for Schema Therapy. She’s the author of Disarming the Narcissist: Surviving and Thriving with the Self-Absorbed.

 

607 - The Power of the Breath: Neurophysiological Tools for Self-Regulation

Richard Brown and Patricia Gerbarg

There may be no clinical strategy as simple, effective, and useful as teaching clients soothing and healing breathing techniques. In fact, there’s now a large body of research demonstrating that a few easily learned breathing practices have powerful self-regulating effects that often quickly alleviate the symptoms of stress, insomnia, pain syndromes, anxiety disorders, and treatment-resistant PTSD without medication. In this workshop, we’ll review the neurophysiological research demonstrating the effectiveness of breathing techniques and their impact on cardiopulmonary function and the parasympathetic nervous system. You’ll learn a range of experiential breath-body-mind techniques, including “coherent” or “slowing down” breathing, Breath Moving, “ocean breathing”--a Yoga-based practice--and Open-Focus meditation. We’ll then explore a variety of strategies for integrating these tools into work with anxious and traumatized clients.

Richard  Brown, M.D., associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, is a certified teacher of Aikido, Qigong, Yoga, and meditation. He’s written more than 90 articles and book chapters on pharmacological and clinical studies in psychiatry.

Patricia Gerbarg, M.D., assistant clinical professor in psychiatry at New York Medical College, lectures extensively on psychoanalysis, trauma, and integrative psychiatry. Her research and writing focuses on treatments for PTSD.

 

608 - Finding the Chemistry: Sexual Styles in Long-Term Relationships

Barry McCarthy

The most common problems facing American couples--of all age groups, straight or gay, married or unmarried--are inhibited sexual desire and discrepancy of sexual desire. Unfortunately, most “remedies,” such as sharing sex fantasies, being verbally explicit during sex, using porn videos, just make the problem worse, adding embarrassment and hopelessness to an unhappy situation. In this workshop, we’ll discuss how committed couples can identify the sexual style that works best for them--complementary (roles are equal and flexible), traditional (one person initiates sex, the other intimacy), emotionally expressive (adventurous and erotic), and best friends (focusing on intimacy and spiritual partnership). We’ll then explore in detail how to help couples find sexual strategies that are congruent with their own preferred style, work with the specific vulnerabilities of each style that can subvert sexual desire, and identify different modes of arousal suited to different couples.

Barry McCarthy, Ph.D., has a diplomate in clinical psychology and practices at the Washington Psychological Center. He’s a professor of psychology at American University and author of Men’s Sexual Health and Discovering Your Couple Sexual Style.

 

609 - Treating Personality Disorders

Noel Larson

Clients with personality disorders--who are narcissistic, borderline, dependent, or antisocial--usually suffered from severe attachment disruptions in childhood, resulting in profound relationship difficulties that can make forming a therapeutic alliance and treatment itself a minefield for therapists. Yet, insights into these disorders from the fields of traumatology and neuroscience have revealed new considerations for treatment, including the critical role of brain-to-brain attunement and limbic resonance, that didn’t exist just 10 years ago. In this workshop, you’ll learn practical, effective interventions informed by neuroscience that help clients safely manage frightening symptoms, including violence and emotional meltdowns and develop healthier boundaries and a more differentiated sense of self, while enabling you to avoid the potential clinical traps that arise in this kind of work. The workshop will include demonstrations of interventions that you’ll then have the opportunity to try out in the session with other attendees.

Noel Larson, Ph.D., a psychologist, marriage and family therapist, and clinical social worker at Meta Resources, is the coauthor of Incestuous Families: An Ecological Approach to Understanding and Treatment.

 

610 - Uncoupling: A Somatic Approach to Distinguishing Past from Present

Nancy Napier

The quote “Neurons that fire together, wire together, and neurons that fire apart, wire apart” sums up why traumatic experiences can create neurological havoc, associating or dissociating responses and leading clients to overreact to current-life situations or not respond adequately to actual danger. In effect, the bodies of people who’ve been traumatized are set on “high alert” or “shut down,” and haven’t caught up with their present reality, leading to stereotyped, conditioned responses. Research and experience show that talk therapy alone can’t reregulate our nervous systems. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to use elements of Somatic Experiencing, a body-awareness approach, to help clients attend to their body sensations and learn to discriminate between physical and psychological reactions activated by the memory of difficult events, including traumas, and responses related to and emerging in the here and now. You’ll learn about and experience for yourself a method of carefully shifting between past and present mind-body experiences, which helps clients’ brains “update the file,” releasing them from the somatic associations of the past and generating a new, lived experiences in the present.

Nancy Napier, L.M.F.T., teaches Somatic Experiencing for the Foundation for Human Enrichment. She’s the author of Recreating Yourself, Getting Through the Day and Sacred Practices for Conscious Living.

 

611 - Motivating Clients with Substance-Use Problems

Allan Zuckoff

Therapists often assume that motivation to change is an all or nothing issue for clients who are abusing drugs or alcohol: they either have the motivation to change or don’t, and if they don’t, there’s no point in initiating treatment, which they’ll inevitably “fail.” In fact, most people, including those with substance-use problems, are ambivalent about change and, by exploring and resolving their ambivalence, you can enhance their motivation, even when you aren’t sure it’s there. In this workshop, you’ll discover how motivational interviewing allows you to build on therapeutic skills you already have to avoid unproductive confrontations and create a relationship of empathy and respect that reduces clients’ resistance and increases their willingness to talk honestly about their behavior. We’ll discuss, demonstrate, and practice ways of finding common ground with clients, articulating the discrepancy between their current behavior and their larger values and goals, and instilling a sense of personal responsibility and confidence in their own ability to change.

Allan Zuckoff, Ph.D., is a lecturer in psychology and psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, editor of the International Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers’ online MINT Bulletin, and coauthor of Improving Treatment Compliance.

 

612 - The Clinical Legacy of Virginia Satir

Susan Bregman

For 50 years, the legendary master therapist Virginia Satir developed original, ingenious, and powerful methods to help people identify and understand their own roots, forge deep connections with each other, and find emotional, somatic, and spiritual healing. Indeed, the current emphasis in our field on attachment theory, reframing, and mind-body awareness was prefigured in Satir’s therapeutic work. In this workshop, we’ll watch videos of Satir in action and practice her methods of using psychodrama, guided imagery, and sculpting techniques to create visual metaphors--including the “Self-Esteem Maintenance Kit,” “Rules for Life,” “Psychological Closet,” “Stages of Change and Family Sculpting,” and “Satir Meditations”--that reveal the hidden dynamics of family and community relationships. You’ll learn new ways to join quickly with clients, help them tap into core issues, and resolve problems that have lingered for years.

Susan Bregman, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in private practice in Maryland, is a past president of AAMFT Mid-Atlantic Division and an adjunct professor at Anne Arundel Community College.

 

613 - Unlocking the Emotional Brain: The Art and Science of the Clinical Breakthrough

Bruce Ecker and Sara Bridges

Clinicians feel their greatest satisfaction when clients experience a deep shift that frees them from ingrained emotional reactions and symptoms. But how often does that kind of life-changing shift actually occur in our practices?  In this workshop, you’ll see videotaped case excerpts and a live session demonstrating Coherence Therapy, an empathetic, experiential process that helps clients access and transform the core emotional schemas underlying a given symptom or problem, which can yield profound change regularly, often in just a few sessions. You’ll learn about the neuroscience of implicit memory, which explains why this clinical model can end entrenched negative reactions, revise old attachment patterns, and heal deep emotional wounds, and have an opportunity to practice the model step-by-step.

Bruce Ecker, M.A., L.M.F.T., is codirector of the Coherence Psychology Institute and coauthor of Depth Oriented Brief Therapy: How To Be Brief When You Were Trained To Be Deep, and Vice Versa.

Sara Bridges, Ph.D., is codirector of the Coherence Psychology Institute, associate professor at the University of Memphis, coeditor of the four-volume series Studies in Meaning, and president of the APA’s Society for Humanistic Psychology.

 

614 - Anger in an Age of Entitlement

Steven Stosny

If you’ve practiced for more than a decade, you’ve probably noticed more anger, impatience, contempt, hypercriticism, and sense of entitlement in your clients. Resentment emerges when we feel rejected, diminished, or disregarded by others. The feeling of threat to our basic self then triggers anger, which we justify as our entitlement. Even “lesser” forms of anger can damage our relationships and leave us feeling ashamed and diminished. Such unpleasant feelings can propel us right back into another anger/self-justification cycle. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to reverse this process through H.E.A.L.S, a self-help, guided-imagery tool that offers an alternative to reflexive venting and powerfully associates the trigger of anger with the vivid and immediate experience of what we most value in life and in ourselves--self compassion, and compassion for others--states of mind incompatible with either anger or the ego neediness that invites anger.

Steven Stosny, Ph.D., is the director of Compassion Power and author of You Don’t Have to Take It Anymore: How to Turn a Resentful, Angry or Emotionally Abusive Relationship into a Compassionate, Loving One and Love Without Hurt.

 

615 - Brainspotting: A Neurophysiological Tool for Quickly Processing Trauma

David Grand

Symptoms of trauma--including dissociation, numbing, chronic anxiety, psychosomatic pain, and flashbacks--often are difficult to resolve because the original traumatic memory or issue remains unprocessed and unavailable to the conscious mind. Brainspotting is a powerful, focused treatment method that works by identifying, processing, and releasing core neurophysiological sources of traumatic symptoms. By following a “Brainspot”--the eye position or movement associated with the activation of trauma-related brain mechanisms (in the limbic system, for example)--while clients mindfully attend to their emotional and somatic experiences, the therapist can release emotions that typically are out of reach of consciousness. Brainspotting is compatible with a range of therapeutic approaches, opening a “window” to clients’ neurophysiologically-based trauma responses, while enhancing the ability to engage them in a safe and trusting relationship.

David Grand, Ph.D., has trained more than 2,300 therapists internationally. He’s the author of Emotional Healing at Warp Speed: The Power of EMDR and the producer/director of the documentary Come Hell or High Water.

 

616 - The Essentials of Energy Psychology

Dawson Church and David Feinstein

A growing number of studies have shown that Energy Psychology interventions, based on stimulating acupuncture points, produce large and immediate improvements in both psychological and physical functioning. Energy interventions have been used successfully for specific phobias and other uncomplicated conditions, as well as for complex issues, such as PTSD, depression, cravings, physical pain, and autoimmune illnesses like fibromyalgia. This practical workshop provides a hands-on demonstration of a basic energy protocol that can be learned quickly. You’ll discover how to utilize the method at those junctures in therapy when the client’s stress level increases and how to use it to shift dysfunctional conditioning. Rather than a new form of psychotherapy, this intervention is a new tool that can turbocharge everything else in your clinical toolkit.

Dawson Church, Ph.D., the founder Soul Medicine Institute, is the author of  The Genie in Your Genes and the editor of the peer-reviewed journal Energy Psychology.

David Feinstein, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist whose five books on energy healing have each won a national award. He and his wife, Donna Eden, coauthored The Promise of Energy Psychology with EFT founder Gary Craig.

 

617 - What to Share and What Not to Share?: Making Wise Decisions about Self-Disclosure

Andrea Bloomgarden, Fran Gerstein, and Meredith Barber

The use of self-disclosure is a balancing act. In this workshop, we’ll explore who and what influences our attitudes about self-disclosure, examining the origins of personal self-disclosure tendencies in small-group discussions. Through role-plays and enactment of self-disclosure dilemmas and choices, we’ll explore self-disclosure options and results, considering nuanced and complex ways of thinking about the issues. We’ll review empirically supported guidelines and tools for good practice and engage in exercises using a Self-Disclosure Decision Making Worksheet that can help therapists make choices and evaluate the likely outcomes. Clips from the HBO series In Treatment will be shown, vividly demonstrating the effects of unwise self-disclosure by a therapist. Note: this workshop fulfills many state board requirements for training in ethics and risk management.

Andrea Bloomgarden, Ph.D., specializes in eating disorders, depression, and personality disorders.

Fran Gerstein, L.C.S.W., has supervised postgraduate social workers and coauthored several articles on eating disorders.

Meredith Barber, PsyD., previously at the Renfrew Center, has taught a graduate experiential group therapy class at Drexel University.

 

618 - Collective Wisdom: A Practical Approach to Working with Groups

Meghan O’Connell

If two heads are better than one, how come groups can go so wrong, so quickly, in so many different ways? This workshop will not only provide some answers, it’ll teach you how to transform group process so that each participant’s best self is evoked and collective creativity emerges. It’s designed for anyone who does therapy, consults with groups, or conducts meetings of any kind. You’ll learn how to circumvent left-brain habits, untangle language traps, and move through seemingly intractable challenges to a place of liberating insight and energy. You’ll leave with a new collection of tools and simple practices that you can use right away in groups, meetings, and your practice. Best of all, you’ll get a taste of the energetic rush that occurs when the rational, emotional, and spiritual insights of individuals integrate and shift the collective understanding to a new level.

Meghan O’Connell, M.B.A., is founder of Thought & Possibility, a strategic communications firm working exclusively with mission-driven organizations. Current clients include national associations, healthcare providers, visionary entrepreneurs, and the Psychotherapy Networker.

 

619 - Creativity in Couplehood

Sophie Slade and David Howarth

Many couples wanting to improve their relationship focus on working through conflicts, healing childhood pain, and becoming more intimate, but far fewer, perhaps, talk about enhancing the creativity in their connection. Even highly creative people can settle into a comfortable monotony in their intimate relationships, spiced up by the occasional fight to remind them they’re still alive and care about each other. This experiential workshop will offer couples some concepts, activities, and guidelines to stimulate them to see their relationship as a co-creative endeavour in which they develop and implement shared visions. This will be a fun day for couples to expand the possibilities, take risks, step into the shadow, support each others’ whackiness, and juice up their originality.

Sophie Slade, Ph.D., is a certified Imago Relationship Therapist. She and her husband, David Howarth, a semi-retired, self-employed electrician, renovator, and car-racing fan, have “known” each other for 37 years and been married for 27. Keeping the passion and possibilities alive in their relationship has taken them in unexpected directions.

 

620 - Whither Coaching?: Where It Came From and Where It’s Going

Ben Dean

About a decade ago, coaching broke onto the scene big time, and for good reason: this new approach represented an opportunity for therapists to move away from pathologizing and medicalizing clients to focus instead on helping them build on their strengths and inner resiliency. How has coaching fared? What’s worked, what hasn’t done so well? What represents the most promising future for coaching? In this workshop, we’ll explore these issues, review the different kinds of coaching “specialties”--life coaching, executive coaching, health coaching, conflict coaching, etc.--and how they resemble or differ from therapy, as well as consider the track record of each specialty and take a look at current developments in the field. We’ll pay particular attention to the necessarily entrepreneurial mindset of a successful coach, which requires a high level of comfort with marketing and business strategies.

Ben Dean, Ph.D., is a psychologist and founder of MentorCoach, a coach-training school for helping professionals. He’s the coauthor of Positive Psychology Coaching.

 

621 - The ParentCircle Experience: Conscious Parenting

David Flohr

As therapists, we’re supposed to know how to raise our own kids, but in today’s free-for-all society, we often feel as stymied by our children as our clients do about theirs. In this experiential workshop, we’ll explore a group-based approach to becoming better, more mindful parents and stewards of our children’s welfare. The participants will form a ParentCircle, or safe container, and several participants will volunteer to bring their own specific parenting challenges into the container, where the circle will guide them through a process to help them resolve their parenting goals and struggles. Interspersed with focused presentations about the key conceptual underpinnings of this model will be opportunities for self-study, live participation in a ParentCircle, and time for questions and general discussion. At the end of the day, you’ll have experienced the model directly and understood how it works, gained increased clarity about your personal parenting goals, and learned how to apply this model in your own clinical work.

David Flohr, Ph.D., is in private practice in Falls Church, Virginia, and is an advanced clinician in Imago Relationship Therapy.

 

622 - The Therapist’s Journey: The Road to Clinical Mastery

Michael Graziano

Becoming a mature therapist isn’t so much a question of meeting certain outwardly recognizable career milestones as an internal journey, marked by the therapist’s own developing awareness and experience of inner growth. In this experiential workshop, we’ll apply Erik Erickson’s Stages of Development to explore our own stage in our personal journeys. We’ll track various decisions therapists must confront and issues they must master as they “graduate” from stage to stage, examining different questions and challenges along the way. These include deciding on a type of practice that suits our personal strengths and professional goals--not only the kind of technique and client problems we wish to focus on, but the personal manner we wish to adopt. We’ll examine such issues as how to integrate personal and professional life, deal with typical crisis points in development, avoid burnout, and develop a blueprint for practice that will stand the test of time. The workshop is designed for therapists at all stages of their journey.

Michael Graziano, M.Ed., L.M.F.T., is the division director of the Family First program of the Child Guidance Resource Centers in Haverton, Pennsylvania, and is a senior faculty member of the Philadelphia Child and Family Therapy Training Center.

 

623 - Getting Mindful about Money: A Journey from Survival Mode to Thriving

Olivia Mellan

Never in our lifetimes have so many of us had to confront our dysfunctional attitudes about money or needed to make such fundamental changes in our financial habits. As a result, many of us find ourselves dealing with money issues more than ever before. This workshop is designed to offer a road map for exploring this emotion-laden territory. You’ll have an opportunity to see where you fit along the full spectrum of “money personalities”--overspender or a hoarder, money worrier or a worry avoider, risk taker or risk avoider. We’ll also look at the polarizing patterns about money that often characterize couples, discuss gender differences (both hard-wired and sociocultural) that affect many of our relationships, and explore the connection between current money attitudes and family-of-origin models. After participating in the Money Dialogue and other experiential exercises, you’ll leave with not only a fuller vision of your own financial habits and psychological relationship with money, but also a toolkit for helping your clients deepen their awareness of their own money issues.

Olivia Mellan, M.S., is a money coach, psychotherapist, and the author or coauthor of five books, including Money Harmony; Money Shy to Money Sure; and The Client Connection. Her column “The Psychology of Advice” appears monthly in Investment Advisor Magazine.

 

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., assistant director of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute and an instructor at Boston’s Trauma Center, is coauthor, with Pat Ogden, of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy in the forthcoming book Treating Complex Traumatic Stress Disorders.

Jay Efran, Ph.D., the moderator, is professor emeritus of psychology at Temple University and coauthor of Language, Structure and Change.

 

625 - Mindfulness and Baeyond: 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.

 

626 - The Future of Private Practice: A Day for Retooling Your Business Model

Lynn Grodzki, Casey Truffo, and Joe Bavonese

Moderator: Garry Cooper

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.

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.

Garry Cooper, L.C.S.W., the moderator, is the editor of the Networker’s “Clinician’s Digest.”

 

Download PDF Sunday Workshops here.

March 27, 2010

 

All-Day Workshops | Morning Only | Afternoon Only

Saturday All Day Workshops 11:00 am - 1 pm and 3 pm - 5:00 pm

 

401 501 - Harnessing Mindfulness, Part 1 and Part 2: Fitting the Practice to the Problem

Ronald Siegel

As mindfulness practice becomes an increasingly common adjunct to psychotherapy, therapists often regard it as a one-size-fits-all remedy. While there are, in fact, universal tendencies of mind that contribute to most psychopathologies (such as experiential avoidance) and core goals underlying all mindfulness practices (such as experiencing the present moment), there are many different forms of practice that can be specifically tailored to fit the dynamics of a wide variety of presenting problems. In this workshop, we’ll explore how to find the right fit between different mindfulness practices--moment-to-moment sensory awareness, loving kindness meditation, urge surfing, self-compassion--and a range of common presenting symptoms, including anxiety, depression, addictions, interpersonal struggles, and stress related disorders. You’ll leave armed with ways to enrich your experience of being a psychotherapist, along with a range of effective tools for improving your clients’ lives. (This session will continue with Workshop 501.)

Ronald Siegel, Psy.D., an assistant clinical professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School, is the author of The Mindfulness Solution: Everyday Practices for Everyday Problems and the coeditor of Mindfulness and Psychotherapy.

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402 502 - Tony and Dr. Melfi, Part 1 and Part 2: Therapy, Ethics, and The Sopranos

William Doherty

There can’t be many therapists in America who didn’t develop strong opinions about the complicated clinical relationship between HBO’s Mafia don Tony Soprano and his psychiatrist, Jennifer Melfi. Both the show and Dr. Melfi won awards from the American Psychoanalytic Association, and Tony’s treatment is the only fictional therapy to elicit a book-length commentary by a prominent psychiatrist. In this workshop, we’ll explore how The Sopranos presents the clinical and ethical complexities of treatment, as well as what we can learn from the drama about facing risks and blurring boundaries when we ourselves do therapy. We’ll consider the limits of traditional “values neutral” psychotherapy in a world of convoluted loyalties, hyperindividualism, and moral danger and explore ways to talk nonjudgmentally with clients about behavior that’s hurting others and themselves as we watch and discuss lots of clips. Note: this workshop fulfills many state board requirements for training in ethics and risk management. (This session will continue with Workshop 502.)

William Doherty, Ph.D. is a professor and director of the Citizen Professional Center at the University of Minnesota. His books include Take Back Your Marriage, Putting Family First, and Take Back Your Kids. His latest is Family Therapy, with Susan McDaniel.

 

403 503 - Race Matters, Part 1 and Part 2: Getting Beyond “Us” and “Them”

Kenneth V. Hardy and Richard Schwartz

In this grand age of globalism, everywhere in the world, including the United States, we keep witnessing explosion after explosion of people acting as angry, mutually suspicious, destructive tribes. In this workshop, two therapists from different racial backgrounds will explore how to change the dynamic at the heart of hatred and distrust for the “other.” We’ll discuss how using ourselves to build bridges between groups in conflict and working with the inner family of parts that carry aggression, group loyalty, and the experience of trauma can contribute to the possibilities of reconciliation. You’ll come away with a radically different view of what underlies racial and ethnic flare-ups, as well as tools for dealing with the intensity of “us” vs. “them” conflicts. (This session will continue with Workshop 503.)

Kenneth V. Hardy, Ph.D., is a professor of family therapy at Drexel University in Philadelphia and the director of the Eikenberg Institute for Relationships in New York City. His books include Minorities and Family Therapy and Re-visioning Family Therapy.

Richard Schwartz, Ph.D., is the originator of the Internal Family Systems Model. His books include Internal Family Systems Therapy and The Mosaic Mind: Empowering the Tormented Selves.

 

404 504 - Treating the Highly Resistant Client, Part 1 and Part 2: Techniques that Really Work

Clifton Mitchell

You know you’re facing resistance in a client when he/she invariably makes you feel insecure, incompetent, frustrated, hopeless, stressed, and burned out. But you’ve got to do something, since therapy won’t go anywhere unless you manage or alleviate the resistance. In this fast-paced, highly practical workshop, we’ll explore a cornucopia of innovative approaches and ideas--applicable to a wide array of clients, problems, and theoretical approaches--that prevent, avoid, and resolve resistance. You’ll learn innovative techniques that use the inherent power of language to circumvent the resistance of the client who always responds with “Yes, but . . . ,” or “I don’t know.” We’ll cover the most common resistance-fostering errors therapists make, the pitfalls of over-questioning, ways to overcome resistance by honoring it, how to deal with silence. We’ll also discuss how to set up goals that resistant clients can’t resist and explore the secret meanings of resistance. (This session will continue with Workshop 504.)

Clifton Mitchell, Ph.D. is a professor at East Tennessee State University, where he received the Teacher of the Year award in 2002. He’s the author of Effective Techniques for Dealing with Highly Resistant Clients.

 

405 505 - The Trials and Tribulations of Couples Therapy, Part 1 and Part 2: An Emotionally Focused Therapy Approach

Susan Johnson

Any experienced  couples therapist knows there are no one-session cures. This workshop will explore how Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) approaches the inevitable impasses and dead-ends therapists face when dealing with distressed couples, especially those who struggle with depression or the ongoing effects of trauma. We’ll explore three kinds of difficulties: the couple gets stuck (e.g. a blaming partner remains critical even when the other partner responds in new ways); there’s a block to secure attachment and positive interactions (e.g. shame fuels withdrawal); and therapist issues, such as discomfort with intense emotion, hamper progress. You’ll learn how to make therapeutic use of high emotion, deal with the traumatic history of one or both partners, time your interventions appropriately, understand the couple’s natural engagement rhythms, and create an atmosphere of trust, safety, and security in sessions with distraught partners. (This session will continue with Workshop 505.)

Susan Johnson, Ed.D., is a professor of psychology at the University of Ottawa, director of the Ottawa Couple and Family Institute, and distinguished research professor at Alliant University. Her latest book is Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love.

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406 506 - Beyond Trauma, Part 1 and Part 2: EMDR as a Broad-Based Psychotherapy

Deany Laliotis

While EMDR is widely used as a highly effective treatment for PTSD based on neutralizing past memories of trauma, few therapists recognize how powerful a tool it can be in helping clients reprocess difficult experiences--traumatic or not--that impede their clients’ ability to move forward with their lives. In this workshop, you’ll be introduced to an eight-phase information-processing model of EMDR for helping clients identify and reprocess significant childhood experiences and chronic patterns or themes that shadow their lives, hinder their emotional growth, and limit their ability to fully express their own identity. You’ll learn a practical clinical procedure for identifying the predominant themes in a person’s life that underlie their current difficulties and freeing them from attitudes that limit a fuller, more flexible experience of self. (This session will continue with Workshop 506.)

Deany Laliotis, L.I.C.S.W., is a trainer, clinical consultant, and practitioner of EMDR.  She’s on the faculty of EMDR Institute, Inc., and is the codirector of EMDR of Greater Washington. Her chapter on EMDR appears in Psychotherapist Revealed: Therapists Speak about Self-Disclosure in Psychotherapy.

 

407 507 - Working from the Inside Out, Part 1 and Part 2: How the Therapist’s Attachment Patterns Influence Therapy

David Wallin

We presumably all know that childhood-based attachment patterns deeply affect patients’ current relationships, including the one they have with us. But how often do we consider the influence on the therapeutic relationship of our own attachment history and vulnerabilities? In this workshop, we’ll use attachment research to clarify the impact, both for good and ill, of the therapist’s attachment patterns as they interlock with those of the patient, highlighting the reality that for the patient to heal, the therapist must also change. We’ll review the different attachment patterns that therapists generally fall into, discuss the use of self-monitoring questions, and explore how to capitalize on the paradox that the therapist’s own history--often marked by trauma--can be at once a source of impasse and insight. Using pencil and paper self-reports and experiential break-out groups, we’ll track the impact of our own attachment patterns on the work we do. (This session will continue with Workshop 507.)

David Wallin, Ph.D., is the author of Attachment in Psychotherapy and of “From the Inside Out: The Therapist’s Attachment Patterns as Sources of Insight and Impasse” in Clinical Pearls of Wisdom: 21 Leading Therapists Offer Their Key Insights.

 

408 508 - Treating Combat Zone Trauma, Part 1 and Part 2: The Veterans’ Resiliency Model

Laurie Leitch and Elaine Miller-Karas

As many as 20 percent of  service people who’ve been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan meet criteria for PTSD, and 25 percent screen positive for depression--rates that are expected to rise as this population ages--so many therapists can expect to treat these veterans and their families. In this workshop, we’ll explore the Veterans’ Resiliency Model (VSM), a skills-based, biological approach to working with combat-zone trauma. When the focus is on biology, rather than on psychology, the shame and secrecy veterans often feel diminishes. We’ll review the seven skills of VRM that help clients track their own physiological reactions and develop sensory resources that promote a greater sense of inner safety and well-being, and help restore the capacity for nervous system self-regulation. You’ll leave knowing the neuroscientific underpinnings of VRM, why biological intervention is such a valuable tool, and how to use this intervention in both an individual and group setting. (This session will continue with Workshop 508.)

Laurie Leitch, Ph.D., and Elaine Miller-Karas, L.C.S.W., are the cofounders and codirectors of the Trauma Resource Institute, which offers national and international training in the brief stabilization therapies Trauma Resiliency Model, Veterans’ Resiliency Model, and Community Resilience Model.

 

409 509 - The Power of When, Part 1 and Part 2: Rhythm and Timing in Life and Psychotherapy

Rubin Naiman

What we do is important, but when we do it--our sensitivity to the ubiquitous rhythms of life--is equally critical. We already know that many health challenges, including recurrent depressions, cardiac arrhythmias, and sleep disorders, reflect disruptions in our natural rhythms. In this workshop, we’ll go beyond simple notions of biorhythms to discover the new science and art of circadian healing, which takes into account how everything from the oscillations of energy in our brain hemispheres to lunar calendrical tides shapes the flow of consciousness. We’ll examine the implications of rhythms for cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and medication aspects of psychotherapy as a basis for understanding practical strategies for healthy re-attunement. Through slides, discussions, and special exercises, you’ll learn how to fine-tune your rhythmic awareness and cultivate rhyme-fulness--a mindfulness of rhythms. (This session will continue with Workshop 509.)

Rubin Naiman, Ph.D., is the sleep and dream specialist and clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of Arizonas Center for Integrative Medicine. His publications include Healing Night, The Sleep Advisor and Healthy Sleep (with Andrew Weil).

 

410 510 - Group Therapy for the Networking Age, Part 1 and Part 2

Jude Treder-Wolff

Many people come into therapy because they feel alienated, unfocused, and stressed out living in a society that’s high on work demands and low on community and family ties. Group therapy is uniquely suited to helping people develop better social, problem-solving, and parenting skills, along with a greater sense of self-direction, more resilience to stress, and a stronger sense of personal empowerment. In this workshop, we’ll describe three distinct frames for starting time-limited psychotherapy groups, which can be adapted to both treatment and nonclinical settings. You’ll learn how to use applied improvisation, role playing, and interactive theater techniques to rapidly unite groups around common concerns, heighten awareness of resources and social networks, and bolster individual group members’ sense of personal agency. We’ll also discuss ideas and resources for free or low-cost ways to initiate, lead, and market groups to targeted communities. (This session will continue with Workshop 510.)

Jude Treder-Wolff, L.C.S.W., previously newsletter editor for the American Society of Group Psychotherapy, writes the e-newsletter Lives in Progress. She’s the author of Possible Futures: Creative Thinking for the Speed of Life.

 

All-Day Workshops | Morning Only | Afternoon Only

 

Saturday Morning Workshops 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.

 

411 - Two People, One Brain: A Social-Neuroscience Perspective on Couples Therapy

Daniel Siegel and Jette Simon

Moderator: Richard Simon

Traditionally, we’ve thought about neurobiology as one brain operating in one skull driving the emotions and cognitive processes of one individual. In fact, we all contain multitudes--our brains are predominantly social and regulate each other. Nowhere is this more obvious than in couples, who regularly behave as if they shared one brain, particularly when they’re in crisis. In this session, we’ll look closely at the practical implications of social neuroscience for enhancing the ability of couples to actually pay attention (without defensiveness) to each other, and gradually build a framework for intimacy. We’ll look closely at videos of couples work to explore how different interventions may actually affect the brain. There’ll be plenty of opportunity to share your own ideas, challenge us, and help make this a spirited, enlightening conversation.

Daniel Siegel, M.D., is associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine. His latest book is Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation.

Jette Simon, Lic., a clinical psychologist who conducts basic and advanced training programs in Imago Relationship Therapy, is the author of Imago: The Therapy of Love.

Richard Simon, Ph.D., the moderator, is the editor of the Psychotherapy Networker magazine.

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412 - Quieting Your Inner Trash-Talker: A Neuro-Linguistic Approach

Steve Andreas

Nearly all of us experience negative self-talk at times--reminding us of past failures, torturing us with self-criticism and abuse, or describing frightening futures. However, some people live with these mean inner voices full time. It seems intuitive that the best solution would be to completely eliminate these voices, but a state of inner silence would create catatonic immobility, and trying to stop them altogether usually makes them even worse. It isn’t what the voices say but how they say it--loudly, derisively, abusively, insistently--that’s such a trigger for depression, anxiety, and low-self esteem. In this workshop, instead of focusing on the content of the voices, you’ll learn and practice a variety of NLP techniques that rapidly change the volume, tonality, tempo, and location of a voice, so it loses its negative power and can even make you laugh!

Steve Andreas, M.A., has been learning, teaching, and developing methods in Neuro-Linguistic Programming for 32 years. His books include Virginia Satir: The Patterns of Her Magic; Transforming Your Self: Becoming Who You Want to Be and Six Blind Elephants: Understanding Ourselves and Each Other.

 

413 - The “Bungee Family” Becomes the New Normal

Martha Straus

In just one generation, the old up-and-out, child-rearing contract, designed to last about 18 years until the now-adult child left home for good, has given way to the “bungee family”: young adults and their boomer parents, mutually attached and living together for a while longer, often a long while. Is this a sign of family failure and dysfunction and enmeshment run amok or a profound paradigm shift that encourages loving ties between generations, strengthens family life, and actually improves the transition from youth to adulthood? In this workshop, we’ll explore the economic and social realities behind this shift, the different manifestations of the bungee family, its difficulties and rewards, and the role therapists can play in helping these families make the most of what may possibly be the permanent new “look” for American families.

Martha Straus, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Clinical Psychology at Antioch University New England and adjunct instructor in psychiatry at Dartmouth Medical School, is the author of Adolescent Girls in Crisis: Intervention and Hope.

 

414 - The Addictive Family: The Legacy of Trauma

Claudia Black

People who suffer from trauma haven’t always had catastrophic experiences. In fact, being part of a family system seriously affected by the addiction of one or more members constitutes a genuine, chronic form of trauma. In this workshop, we’ll identify and explore how addiction influences relationships and roles within families, contributing to the development of post-traumatic symptoms in nonaddicted members. You’ll learn how to help clients “read” and understand the family script that fuels the generational repetition of addiction and other disorders in family members. We’ll review a range of interventions, including written exercises, checklists, structured dialogues, and meditations on healing and recovery. You’ll learn how to strengthen such foundational skills as self-validation, establishing boundaries, identifying needs, and expressing feelings, all of which help partners, parents, and adolescent or adult children prevent or overcome chronic trauma.

Claudia Black, Ph.D., an addictions and codependency expert, is senior clinical and family services provider for the Las Vegas Recovery Center. Her books include It Will Never Happen to Me: Growing Up with Addiction as Youngsters, Adolescents, Adults.

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415 - The Enlightened Web-Surfer: Using the Internet Mindfully

John Grohol

We’ve heard a lot about the destructive potential of the Internet, but, in reality, it’s just a powerful tool that can be used well or used badly--like television or the automobile. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to use the Internet in a positive, enlightened, “mindful” (or simply a more intelligent) way. We’ll discuss how you can improve your search strategies to find more of what you’re looking for, locate online sites of particular value to you and your clients, understand and analyze your online profile and persona (did you even know you had one?), and avoid common time-wasters and energy sinkholes. You’ll discover how to find self-help, journaling, and mood-tracking tools for your clients and how to use social-networking options like Facebook, LinkedIn, and the mysterious Twitter to create more practice opportunities and greater interaction with your clients.

John Grohol, Psy. D., is the founder of PsychCentral.com, a popular consumer mental health site that’s been online since 1995. He’s the treasurer for the Society for Participatory Medicine and serves on the editorial board of the journal CyberPsychology & Behavior.

 

416 - Using Yoga in Therapy

Amy Weintraub

Mindfulness can be a powerful aid to therapy and has deservedly become a popular clinical tool. But if your client’s mind is spiraling into depression or anxiety, accompanied by a constant roar of negative self-talk, trying to watch the breath or observe the mind may be impossible, and the failed attempt to do so may make him/her feel even worse. In this workshop, we’ll discuss an evidence-based, medication-free yogic approach for clinical settings that uses breathing techniques to clear the mind, calm anxiety, elevate mood, and help focus the brain for ready access to feeling states. You’ll learn yogic breathing, mudras (hand gestures), and visual imagery that heighten the ability of the parasympathetic nervous system to soothe body and mind and regulate the stress response. We’ll focus on techniques specifically oriented toward depression, anxiety, and anxiety disorders like obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Amy Weintraub, M.F.A., ERYT500, is the author of Yoga for Depression and founder of the LifeForce Yoga Healing Institute. She’s a leader in the field of yoga and mental health and offers certification trainings for mental health professionals.

 

417 - Hypnosis and Mindfulness: Enhancing Your Clients’ Capacity for Self-Focus

Michael Yapko

Although mindfulness practice has become all the rage among therapists these days, some anxious, depressed, distracted, or volatile clients may lack sufficient skills at self-regulation to actually do it. Hypnosis, guided imagery, visualizations, and other focusing techniques have been used successfully for decades to calm, soothe, and ground clients, enhancing their ability to “take in” various clinical approaches. In this workshop, we’ll deconstruct the subtle differences between these different focusing strategies to identify their therapeutically relevant components, and discuss the different ways they organize inner emotional and cognitive experience. You’ll learn how to construct meaningful interventions by integrating these various methods in innovative ways to improve clients’ emotional self-regulation, clinical responsiveness, and self-efficacy. We’ll also explore the nature of suggestion, information processing, and the therapeutic use of dissociation and association in treatment.

Michael Yapko, Ph.D., is internationally recognized for his work in the strategic treatment of depression. His books include Hypnosis and Treating Depression: Applications in Clinical Practice and Depression Is Contagious.

 

418 - Engaging Traumatized Children

Fiona True and Catherine Lewis

Often children who’ve suffered “relational trauma” as a result of a bitter, contested divorce, domestic violence, sexual abuse, or parental alcoholism have had their sense of safety, security, and personal agency so violated that they seem unreachable. Mixed loyalty bonds, anger, and suspicion of welfare agencies, court personnel, and therapists may silence them, preventing any progress in therapy. In this workshop, we’ll discuss an approach combining family and individual sessions that addresses children’s anxieties, elicits and respects their concerns, and helps them feel more comfortable sharing their thoughts and feelings with family members. You’ll learn how to use the “decision dialogue” that gives the child a greater sense of personal control and safely promotes connections with the caregivers. Not only will you come away with tools to empower children and validate their experiences--getting therapy with them back on track--but you’ll learn how to strengthen relational bonds within the family.

Fiona True, L.M.S.W., a faculty member of the Ackerman Institute for the Family, is codirector of the institute’s Center for Children and Relational Trauma and associate director of community and international training.

Catherine Lewis, L.C.S.W., M.S., director of community and international training at the Ackerman Institute, is a member of the institute’s Center for Relational Trauma.

 

419 - Keeping Memory Alive: Strategies for Positive Aging

Robert Hill

As our population ages, we can expect to see more “senior clients” in our offices, many of whom will be freaking out about losing their memories. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to help such clients sort out the difference between normal, age-related cognitive impairment and what could be more serious conditions. You’ll receive an assessment toolkit for identifying clients’ cognitive strengths, weaknesses, and ability to cope with memory challenges that result from aging, and learn strategies for keeping clients’ mental capacities as sharp as possible. For situations in which memory has begun to fail, we’ll discuss how to apply approaches drawn from Positive Psychology to help clients forgive themselves for getting old, recognize their limitations with equanimity, gracefully accept help when necessary, and find emotional and intellectual fulfillment in life even if they’re no longer 25, 45, or even 65.

Robert Hill, Ph.D., A.B.P.P., has studied aging internationally through a Fulbright Fellowship at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, where he wrote Positive Aging: A Guide for Mental Health Professionals and Consumers.

 

420 - The Keys to Connecting with Clients: The First Five Minutes

Dan Short

Whether a client who’s scheduled the first appointment returns for a second greatly depends on the strength of connection made during the earliest moments of therapy. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to recognize subtle clues from the first few minutes of direct interaction that reveal how a client needs to be treated in order to feel comfortable, understood, and satisfied with the newly forming relationship. You’ll find out how to quickly assess whether the client will respond well to various formats, such as skill building or self-disclosure, intellectual analysis or emotional catharsis. We’ll discuss how to quickly connect with people who are otherwise difficult to reach because of excessive anxiety, depression, suspicion, or anger. You’ll leave the workshop equipped to continue learning about clients’ needs and preferences with an instrument for clients to fill out at the end of each session that reliably indicates their most and least helpful therapy experiences.

Dan Short, Ph.D., is internationally recognized for his work in Ericksonian hypnosis. He’s written extensively on brief therapy and is the lead author of Hope and Resiliency: Understanding the Psychotherapeutic Strategies of Milton H. Erickson, M.D.

 

421 - Dealing with Life-Changing Illness: A Mind-Body Approach to Resilience

Joan Klagsbrun

As the median age in this country increases, more of us will face chronic or life-threatening illnesses, which we experience not just as physical disorders, but as assaults on every other aspect of our lives. Building resilience during illness can reduce our suffering and significantly improve our ability to heal. In this workshop, you’ll hear what clients and significant others need most at each phase of their journey. We’ll explore a diverse repertoire of mind-body self-calming practices, such as Mindfulness and Clearing a Space, that help clients achieve mastery over debilitating fear and worry and enhance their capacity for savoring life. You’ll learn how to teach clients to weed out relationships that are draining or stressful, engage honestly with significant others, and concentrate on the connections that matter most and enhance their sense of well-being. We’ll also review self-care strategies for therapists treating clients with serious illness.

Joan Klagsbrun, Ph.D., a psychologist in private practice in the Boston area and an adjunct faculty member at Lesley University, has been teaching Focusing internationally for more than 30 years.

 

422 - What’s So Bad about Porn?: Helping Couples in Conflict about the Use of Pornography

Tammy Nelson and Joe Kort

Even though Internet porn has become ubiquitous in our society, many of us (including therapists) still tend to view its use as a symptom of sexual addiction or deviancy, a form of marital infidelity, and/or a serious threat to the relationship. But there are multiple reasons that people use porn, and it can have many meanings. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to help couples face and weather the immediate crisis when a spouse discovers that the other spouse (usually the man) is secretly using pornography. We’ll explore how to help couples depathologize the issue and investigate what it means in terms of three basic reasons most men seek it out, as well as potential problems associated with each. We’ll talk about helping the spouses develop empathy and validation for each other and, finally, create a more differentiated sex life together, which balances shared intimacy and privacy.

Tammy Nelson, M.S., is the founder and executive director of the Center for Healing. She’s the author of Getting the Sex You Want and What’s Eating You?

Joe Kort, L.M.S.W., specializes in individual, couples, and group psychotherapy for gay and straight clients. He’s a certified Imago Relationship therapist and the author of Gay Affirmative Therapy for the Straight Clinician: The Essential Guide.

 

423 - The “Lone Ranger” Syndrome

Noel Larson

Some women surmount histories of terrible childhood abuse by forging identities around outward success--in academics, sports, careers, leadership, or social life--but still have difficulty forming genuinely close relationships and feel empty and defective inside. Outwardly highly independent and completely in charge of their lives, they’re inclined to rescue others “lone ranger” style (they tend to have caseloads rather than friends). They ambivalently yearn for intimate connections, but can’t tolerate feelings of vulnerability and are threatened by closeness. In this workshop, we’ll discuss an approach that gradually helps them modulate their fear of therapy itself, resolve their ambivalence about proximity and closeness, heighten their awareness of emotions (increasing their tolerance for feeling them in lieu of dissociation), open up their trauma template from childhood, and enhance their capacity for relationship. You’ll also learn how to help clients rework their personal relationships to accommodate the changes they’re making in their lives.

Noel Larson, Ph.D., a psychologist, marriage and family therapist, and clinical social worker at Meta Resources, is the coauthor of Incestuous Families: An Ecological Approach to Understanding and Treatment.

 

424 - Between Pink and Blue: Exploring Gender Fluidity

Jean Malpas

Gender, gender identity (the two aren’t necessarily the same), and sexual orientation are far more complex than many of us were raised to believe; categories once thought permanent and boundaries impermeable have proven to be neither. In this workshop, we’ll explore the concept of gender fluidity and the ways in which we make it acceptable or not. Drawing on clinical tapes, movies, presentations, and discussion, you’ll learn how to help children, adults, and families clarify and accept the meaning of their own gender and sexual orientation. We’ll identify how our well-meaning assumptions as clinicians may actually constrict not only the growth of our clients, but our own personal and clinical development. We’ll also discuss the interpersonal implications and potential healing power for the family of embracing a gender-nonconforming child, spouse, or family member.

Jean Malpas, L.M.F.T., is a faculty member of the Ackerman Institute for the Family. His publications include “From Otherness to Alliance: Transgender Couples in Therapy” in Interventions with Families of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender People.

 

425 - Helping Kids and Adolescents with Asperger’s Syndrome

Diane Yapko

Kids with Asperger’s syndrome (AS) are typically of average or above-average intelligence, but don’t have the basic social skills or automatic ability to pick up on the implicit interpersonal cues that their peers just “get” intuitively. In this workshop, we’ll explore a strength-based approach to teaching AS kids the concrete skills they need to engage in ordinary conversations, understand other peoples’ perspectives, distinguish between different relational contexts, and respond appropriately in different social situations. You’ll learn how to help these kids recognize their own internal states of anxiety, anger, or agitation and how to regulate their tendency to impulsivity. We’ll focus on specific strategies, such as how to use drawings, cartoons, comic strips, conversational and sensory exercises, and social “maps” to give AS clients a “cookbook” of situations and appropriate responses.

Diane Yapko, M.A., is a licensed speech-language pathologist who specializes in working with children with developmental disorders. She’s the author of Understanding Autism Spectrum Disorders: Frequently Asked Questions.

 

426 - Rages, the Angry Brain, and the Fight for Survival

Ronald Potter-Efron

Rages are best understood as a combination of strong anger and great fear. They’re dangerous because the brain shifts into survival mode, sometimes even inducing periods of dissociative “blind rage.” In this workshop, we’ll explore four different rage states: impotent rages, the result of someone’s inability to take effective action during critical situations; survival rages, in which the person feels as if he or she is fighting to stay alive; shame-based rages, where the issue is the survival of one’s personal identity; and abandonment rages, the goal of which is to prevent the loss of necessary social supports. You’ll learn which brain mechanisms relate to raging and explore treatment approaches for each rage condition.

Ronald Potter-Efron, Ph.D., is a clinical psychotherapist, co-owner of First Things First Counseling and Consulting, and director of its Anger Management Center. He’s the author of Shame, Guilt, and Alcoholism and of Angry All the Time.

 

427 - The Self-Harming Adolescent

Matthew Selekman

Adolescent self-harming behavior is one of the most perplexing and intimidating issues therapists face, particularly when it accompanies--as it almost always does--bulimia, substance abuse, sexually risky behaviors, negative peer group pressure, and/or family crises. In fact, self-injury has become the 21^st-century self-soothing drug of choice for lots of kids--the only way they know how to numb out emotional pain. In this workshop, we’ll focus on engaging these often highly resistant kids and teaching them alternative strategies, like using mindfulness meditation, expressive writing, and music for soothing themselves and feeling safe, so they needn’t resort to self-injury. In addition, we’ll describe how to help parents prevent and constructively handle self-injury by listening to, validating, and physically soothing their kids (including creating “chill-out rooms” for stressed adolescents), and how to help parents keep cool when self-injury does occur.

Matthew Selekman, M.S.W., codirector of Partners for Collaborative Solutions, is the author of Working with Self-Harming Adolescents: A Collaborative, Strengths-Based Therapy Approach and Pathways to Change: Brief Therapy with Difficult Adolescents.

 

428 - Bringing Narcissists into Relationship

Wendy Behary

Narcissists--notoriously arrogant, condescending, lacking empathy, emotionally detached--often seem incapable of genuine relationship with anyone, therapists included. So how can we summon compassion for narcissists and engage them in treatment when they’re more likely to attack than cooperate with us? In this workshop, we’ll explore a method of empathic confrontation to gain and keep leverage in therapy, tolerate our own fear in the face of our client’s intimidation, avoid power struggles, maintain compassion through curiosity, and help the client begin to understand and change his or her own emotional and behavioral patterns. This integrated approach incorporates cognitive restructuring, attachment and reparenting work, behavioral-skills training, and experiential techniques.

Wendy Behary, L.C.S.W., is the founder and director of The Cognitive Therapy Center of New Jersey and The New Jersey Institute for Schema Therapy. She’s the author of Disarming the Narcissist: Surviving and Thriving with the Self-Absorbed.

 

429 - Understanding and Treating Learning Disabilities

Larry Silver

Learning disabilities are neurologically based and can have significant impact on a child or adolescent’s academic performance. However, it’s important to understand that learning disabilities don’t affect school performance exclusively--they have an impact on other aspects of children’s lives as well, affecting their success in relating to peers, participating in sports, and successfully managing activities at home. In this workshop, we’ll explore learning disabilities in depth, focusing on their impact on family life, peer interactions, and social skills. You’ll learn how to help children and adolescents build on their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses. We’ll also discuss how to recognize and treat disabilities and conditions that often are joined with learning disabilities, including language disabilities, sensory processing disorder, AD/HD, depression, anger control, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Larry Silver, M.D., is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical Center. He’s the author of The Misunderstood Child: A Guide for Parents of Children with Learning Disabilities, now in its fourth edition, and is coeditor of The Educator’s Guide to Mental Health Issues in the Classroom.

 

All-Day Workshops | Morning Only | Afternoon Only

 

Saturday Afternoon Workshops 3:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

 

511 - Understanding Temperament: An Overlooked Issue in Clinical Practice

Ron Taffel and Jerome Kagan

Despite decades of scientific findings that temperament plays a critical role in the psychology of children and teens, many therapists still don’t know how to translate these findings into therapy with kids. In this dialogue, a pioneering researcher on child temperament and a leading child psychologist will describe ways to assess the clinically relevant dimensions of temperament and use this information to create therapeutic traction and movement. We’ll explore how therapists can draw upon an understanding of temperament to motivate uninvolved or resistant parents, treat serious acting-out and behavioral disorders, and teach parents how to better engage their children’s interaction styles. You’ll learn how to recognize temperament types, even when they’re obscured by family dynamics, pop culture, and adolescent hormones.

Ron Taffel, Ph.D., is chairman of the board of the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy in New York. His latest book is Childhood Unbound: Saving Our Kids’ Best Selves.

Jerome Kagan, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Harvard University, has done groundbreaking work on temperament. His books include The Nature of the Child; The Long Shadow of Temperament; and the forthcoming The Temperamental Thread.

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512 - A CBT Approach to Personality Disorders

Judith Beck

Personality disorders are often considered too pervasive, long-standing, severe, and complex to respond well to cognitive behavioral therapy. But when modified appropriately, CBT has empirically demonstrated its effectiveness at challenging the core negative beliefs, dysfunctional coping strategies, and entrenched behavioral patterns typical of clients with personality disorders. In this workshop, you will learn a three-stage, structured approach for conceptualizing Axis II clients and planning treatment, developing and maintaining a strong therapeutic alliance, working at both the intellectual and emotional levels, achieving therapeutic goals--such as reducing high emotional arousal, altering dysfunctional cognitions, and changing core beliefs--and consolidating gains.

Judith Beck, Ph.D., is director of the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research and associate professor of psychology in psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. Her books include Cognitive Therapy for Challenging Problems.

 

513 - The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity

Esther Perel

Sexual infidelity is generally regarded as a symptom of a failing relationship, and the revelation of an affair often undermines the foundations of trust and connection for the couple. But affairs aren’t always the poison pill they appear to be. In this workshop, we’ll discuss the complexities of marriage, sex, intimacy, and monogamy in couples from a multicultural, nonjudgmental perspective. We’ll explore the motivations behind affairs and their possible meanings in different relationships, both heterosexual and gay. We’ll examine the benefits and costs of truth-telling and transparency, how couples can rebuild trust and intimacy, and why affairs can actually stabilize a marriage. We’ll also focus on how our own assumptions, values, and personal experiences can influence our therapeutic work. You’ll leave with a more nuanced approach for working with extramarital relations--past or present, fantasized or real.

Esther Perel, M.A., author of the international bestseller Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence, is the recipient of the 2009 book award from the Society for Sex Therapy and Research. She’s on the faculty of the International Trauma Studies Program and has a private practice in New York City.

 

514 - Treating Complicated Grief

Ashley Davis Bush

As clinicians, we often feel helpless in the face of a client’s profound loss and extreme suffering. What can we say and how can we help them “move on” when we can see that they’re inconsolable and obsessed with their sorrow--even months and years afterward? In this workshop, we’ll examine the nature of grief, both “normal” and “complicated.” We’ll look at how to treat the more challenging cases and how grief can evolve over time. You’ll learn specific clinical tools and techniques based on the Transcending Loss model and filtered through a lens of Eastern spirituality that provide healing on physical, psychological, and spiritual levels, even many years after a loss.

Ashley Davis Bush, L.C.S.W., cofounder of Transitions & Loss Counseling in Epping, New Hampshire, is the author of Transcending Loss and Claim Your Inner Grown-Up.

 

515 - Making Couples Therapy Stick

Steven Stosny and Pat Love

Couples who make astonishing progress in therapy often quickly revert to the same, old negative interactions once they’re out of therapy. Why? Neurological research suggests that ingrained habits never die, they merely hibernate, so once therapy has ended, couples are again triggered by old cues to resume old conflicts. It’s possible, however, to inoculate couples during therapy against relapse. In this workshop, you’ll learn a number of practical, easy, and highly effective relapse-prevention techniques that you can build into any model of couples therapy. We’ll discuss how to help couples implement a “fire-extinguisher” effect in their daily routine--visible reminders of what they learned in therapy that prevent tiny sparks from turning into major blazes--how to practice small rituals that carry symbolic positive meaning for their relationship, and how to use the power of habituation to structure into their marriage daily habits that reinforce love and affection.

Steven Stosny, Ph.D. is the director of Compassion Power and author of You Don’t Have to Take It Anymore: How to Turn a Resentful, Angry or Emotionally Abusive Relationship into a Compassionate, Loving One.

Pat Love, Ed.D., a relationship consultant, is the author of The Truth About Love and the coauthor of Hot Monogamy and How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking about It.

 

516 - The Healing Power of a Child’s Imagination

Charlotte Reznick

A child’s imagination is a powerful weapon against anxiety, sadness, anger, fear, grief, conflict, and failure--if he or she knows how to make the most of it. In this experiential workshop, we’ll discuss ways of helping children use their imaginations to overcome fears, deal with insomnia and other bedtime issues, cope with death and divorce, handle anger or frustration, get along with siblings, and achieve school success. You’ll learn nine imaginative healing tools that children can use to access their own innate wisdom and intuition, including special breathing techniques, finding an inner peaceful place, meeting wise animals and personal wizards to act as guides, and using color and energy for healing. With these tools, children will be better able to understand themselves, feel safe, nurture their creativity, and make healthy life decisions.

Charlotte Reznick, Ph.D., an educational psychologist, is associate clinical professor of psychology at UCLA. She’s the author of The Power of Your Child’s Imagination: How to Transform Stress and Anxiety into Joy and Success.

 

 

517 - Approaching Life’s End

Froma Walsh

Facing the loss of a loved one and our own mortality are among life’s most profound challenges. Unexpected, traumatic, and complicated losses can shatter lives and relationships, fueling depression, substance abuse, destructive behavior, and cutoffs. Yet, research shows that confronting loss and death can yield unexpected personal growth and relational transformation. This workshop will offer practice guidelines for dealing with end-of-life concerns, including what to do in the face of a spiritual crisis and how to draw out beliefs about an afterlife. We’ll discuss complicated bereavement in estranged relationships, when death is sudden, untimely, or violent, or when grief isn’t considered “normal,” as when a cherished pet dies. Case examples will highlight the power of transcendent beliefs in drawing meaning from the tragedy, the need to seek purpose in life after the loss, and how to help those who’ve suffered loss find the courage to continue to live and love as fully as possible.

Froma Walsh, Ph.D., is cofounder of the Chicago Center for Family Health and is the Mose and Sylvia Firestone Professor in the School of Social Service Administration and Department of Psychiatry, University of Chicago. Her books include Living Beyond Loss: Death in the Family.

 

518 - The Joys of Good Enough Sex

Barry McCarthy

If you thought that romantic, passionate, and mutually idealizing couples in the early stages of their relationship have the best sex, you’d be wrong. In fact, research shows that couples who’ve been together at least 10 years regularly report greater desire, pleasure, and satisfaction than their younger cohorts. In this workshop, we’ll explore what our understanding of long-married couples can teach us about balancing autonomy and marital togetherness, eroticism and intimacy in younger couples. You’ll learn how to help couples make the necessary transition from the romantic/passionate sex phase of their relationship to a unique, personal, realistic sexual style of their own. We’ll also discuss how to help young couples learn a variable, flexible model of “Good Enough Sex” to inoculate them against sexual problems and disappointments as they age, as well as how to help women to develop their own sexual voices and men to learn to value intimacy.

Barry McCarthy, Ph.D., has a diplomate in clinical psychology and practices at the Washington Psychological Center. He’s a professor of psychology at American University and author of Men’s Sexual Health and Discovering Your Couple Sexual Style.

 

519 - The Way of Boys: Understanding the Hurdles

Anthony Rao

Today boys are being quickly and prematurely diagnosed with serious disorders such as AD/HD, Asperger’s syndrome, bipolar disorder, antisocial tendencies, oppositional defiant disorder at alarming rates and increasingly younger ages. But the real problem may be simply that “difficult” boys are experiencing a temporary mismatch between their early developmental style and our rigid educational, social, and parental expectations. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to distinguish between passing developmental glitches and genuine disorders. You’ll also learn how a cognitive-behavioral model can inform your work with aggressive, oppositional, hyperactive, and learning-challenged young boys. Through case examples and discussion, we’ll explore strategies for helping your clients achieve better behavior management and for helping their parents improve their parenting skills. The goal of this therapeutic approach is to let healthy development take its course and move challenging young boys ahead without relying solely on medication.

Anthony Rao, Ph.D., who’s been an instructor and trainer at Harvard Medical School, is now director of Behavioral Solutions in Lexington, Massachusetts. He’s the author of The Way of Boys: Raising Healthy Boys in a Complex and Challenging World.

 

520 - Ending the Vulnerability-Conflict Cycle: A Road Map for Couples Therapy

Michele Scheinkman

When troubled couples arrive in therapy, they’re almost always caught in reactive cycles that they can’t control and can’t escape. In this workshop, we’ll explore the ways in which partners’ individual vulnerabilities can interlock to generate difficult impasses. We’ll begin by looking at how to create a “holding environment” to help couples contain their anxiety and escalation, and then consider a multi-level approach that allows therapists to proceed sequentially through different dimensions of the presenting problem, from how partners communicate to their personal histories and unexpressed emotions. We’ll focus on practical ways to help couples move beyond their reactivity and become capable of talking about their vulnerabilities, needs, and yearnings. You’ll learn how to transform stalemates related to intimacy, sexuality, and jealousy, and how to facilitate negotiations that can yield a better emotional fit between the partners.

Michele Scheinkman, L.C.S.W., is a faculty member of the Ackerman Institute for the Family. Her most recent article is “The Multi-Level Approach: A Road Map to Couples Therapy.”

 

521 - Treating Complex Trauma in Children and Adolescents

Martha Straus

Children and adolescents who have endured complex trauma--insecure and unstable attachments, domestic violence, abuse, neglect, multiple placements, etc.--are often affected neurologically, cognitively, physically, emotionally, behaviorally, socially, and spiritually. Our most anxious, terrifying, complicated, and mystifying clients, they overwhelm family members and other caregivers and, if untreated, grow up to fill our hospitals and jails, often passing along their damaged legacy to the next generation. In this highly practical workshop, we’ll describe dozens of effective interventions that break this vicious pattern in these young clients by fostering resilience, competence, creativity, social skills, and the capacity for commitment and connection. You’ll learn how to build teams that can offer multiple attachment relationships that regulate affect, reduce anxiety, improve executive functioning, decrease dissociative coping, unmask agendas, and develop coherent narratives with these troubled, deeply wounded young people.

Martha Straus, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Clinical Psychology at Antioch University New England and adjunct instructor in psychiatry at Dartmouth Medical School, is the author of Adolescent Girls in Crisis: Intervention and Hope.

 

522 - From One, Many: Creating Multiple Streams of Income

Casey Truffo

In these tough economic times, many therapists are obsessively asking themselves, “How can I get more clients to fill more hours?” when the real question should be, “How do I do meaningful clinical work and sustain a good income, regardless of the economy?” In other words, how can you use your hard-won skills to do rewarding therapeutic work that transcends the traditional “one-hour, one-client” model, remains fun, and generates a steady income?  In this workshop, you’ll learn how to build multiple streams of income by taking advantage of web technologies to create a virtual “shopping center” of clinically-based information products--audio recordings, e-books on the web, e-courses, teleseminars, CDs, and DVDs--in ascending order of depth and cost. You’ll learn eight easy steps to help you create such a multiple-stream therapy business, including how to identify a niche for yourself, develop the kind of materials people want and need, and keep them coming back for more.

Casey Truffo, M.F.T., is a marketing coach who offers free audios, articles, and teleclasses to help therapists market their private practices. Her publications include Be a Wealthy Therapist: Finally, You Can Make a Living While Making a Difference.

 

523 - Last Chance Couple’s Therapy

Peter Fraenkel

A badly broken marriage, in which both spouses show high levels of mutual anger and disdain and low levels of patience, good will, or hope and one or both spouses may not even really want things to get better doesn’t seem to hold much promise for clinical salvation. It’s possible, however, to turn even the most hopeless marriages around. In this workshop, we’ll explore how to engage reluctant partners in therapy without making them feel trapped in an unhappy future. You’ll learn ways to restore hope when couples seem about to give up, how to offer fresh perspectives on chronic struggles that revitalize interest in the possibility of change, and strategies for restarting passion and pleasure. Although we’ll focus on four major types of Last Chance Couples, the theory and practices of this approach will apply to couples at any level of distress.

Peter Fraenkel, Ph.D., is associate professor of psychology at the City University of New York and director of the Ackerman Institute’s Center for Work and the Family. He’s written extensively on work/family balance and is the coauthor of The Relational Trauma of Incest.

 

524 - Treating the Multi-Addicted Client

Mark Schwartz

It’s old news that many people suffering from addictions--chemical and alcohol dependency, eating disorders, sex addiction--are often using addictive substances or objects as a way of soothing anxiety and other strong or unpleasant emotions. What isn’t so well understood is that early attachment injuries are often at the root of the addictive behavior. These clients never learned to regulate their own affect or to get comfort from relationships, leaving them highly susceptible to multiple addictions for self-soothing. In fact, 75 percent of addicted clients suffer from multiple addictions, largely as a result of disrupted, avoidant, disorganized, or traumatic attachments in early childhood. In this workshop, we’ll explore an approach combining Internal Family Systems and other methods that helps clients reprocess their core negative beliefs, learn to integrate different parts of themselves, and enhance their capacity to form a strong inner attachment to the self, as well as to others.

Mark Schwartz, Sc.D., is the director of the Castlewood Treatment Center for Eating Disorders and Trauma and an adjunct professor in psychiatry and neurology at St. Louis University School of Medicine.

 

525 - Daddy’s Little Girl No More: Bridging the Gap between Fathers and Daughters

John Brendler and Cara Brendler

Fathers and their daughters often grow distant, even estranged, from one each other once daughters can no longer relate to their fathers as “daddy’s little girl.” In this workshop, a father and daughter--both family therapists--will describe difficult family entanglements that can produce awkward, strained, at times even destructive interactions between fathers and daughters at critical developmental transitions. Through discussion of clinical vignettes and videotapes, you’ll learn to recognize how patterns of estrangement develop and manifest themselves--overcontrolling fathers and rebelling daughters, for example-- ways of circumventing impasses, and techniques for expanding the range of father-daughter interactions. We’ll also discuss how therapists can become more attuned to covert father-daughter communication and develop a clinically effective balance between nurturing and challenging such clients, even during moments of conflict.

John Brendler, M.S.W., is the former associate clinical director of the Child and Family Inpatient Service of the Philadelphia Child Guidance Center and coauthor of Madness, Chaos, and Violence: Therapy with Families at the Brink.

Cara Brendler, L.C.S.W., is on the faculty of the Minuchin Center for the Family.

She specializes in working with families, couples, adolescents, and young adults, and has expertise in women’s issues.

 

526 - What Does It Mean to Belong?: Helping Clients Find Social Connectedness

Kathleen Brehony

In spite of overwhelming empirical evidence that human beings need deep and abiding connections with others for physical, psychological, and spiritual health, therapists too often ignore social disconnection and lack of a sense of belonging as primary factors in what brings clients to therapy. In this workshop, we’ll discuss what it means to belong in terms of “concentric rings” of connection: the inner circle of family, loved ones, and intimate friends; a middle circle of “friends for a season or reason,” who bond around events or places; acquaintances at work or in the neighborhood; and society at large. You’ll learn how to help clients create “sociograms” to map and evaluate their present state of connectedness and coach them to build more fulfilling social lives by learning better people skills, participating in community activities, and taking promising acquaintances to the next “ring” of connection.

Kathlenn Brehony, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and life coach in Manteo, North Carolina, is the author of the bestsellers Awakening at Midlife; Ordinary Grace; and After the Darkest Hour. She’s the coauthor of Chanting: Discovering Spirit in Sound.

 

527 - Rediscovering Beginner’s Mind: From Burnout to Renewal

David Treadway

Whether burnout manifests as numbness, disconnection, difficult countertransference, or heightened reactivity, every clinician knows what it’s like to lose the spark of connection and joy in our calling. This workshop will address burnout prevention in both our professional and personal lives. We’ll trace the link between the mixed blessing for many of us of growing up as caregivers in our families of origin and our vulnerability to burnout when our identity as caregiver is challenged. You’ll learn new burnout-prevention strategies, such as “directed letter writing,” “the soft-boiled egg meditation,” and the “you’re not it” mantra for addressing the sometimes overwhelming feeling of helplessness in our work and restoring balance in our lives. Bring your beginner’s mind and sense of humor.

David Treadway, Ph.D., is director of the Treadway Training Institute. He’s the author of Home Before Dark: First Year with Cancer and Intimacy, Change, and Other Therapeutic Mysteries: Stories of Clinicians and Clients. Earlier books include Dead Reckoning: A Therapist Confronts His Own Grief.

 

528 - A Conspiracy of Silence: Caregiving Issues with Aging Parents

Barry J. Jacobs

When a medical crisis occurs involving an aging parent or disabled spouse, a conspiracy of silence frequently results. Spouses, adult children, and siblings often avoid important discussions about medical options, end-of-life decisions, and financial and caregiving complications from fear of offending their loved ones, overturning family routines, and committing themselves to sacrifices they’d rather not make. In this workshop, we’ll review the essential family conversations that are key to resolving these complicated, touchy, but vital issues, including the changed balance of giving and receiving, financial issues, end-of-life wishes, and questions of shared and/or individual duties and responsibilities. We’ll outline ways of engaging and employing the family’s sense of mission and spiritual values to frame emotionally charged but trust-enhancing conversations between adult children and their failing parents, between ill and well spouses, and among contentious siblings.

Barry J. Jacobs, Psy.D., is the director of behavioral sciences for the Crozer-Keystone Family Medicine Residency Program, author of The Emotional Survival Guide for Caregivers, and editor of the “In Sickness and Health” column for APA’s Families, Systems & Health.

 

529 - The Fine Art of Making Distinctions: Harnessing the Power of Clear Thinking

Diane Yapko and Michael Yapko

Many people end up in therapy because they can’t distinguish between real and imagined threats, between what they think and what they feel, between what they want and what they need, between the past and the present. As a result, they often tend to make their problems worse. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to challenge their globalized feelings of depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and chronic expectations of failure and calamity. We’ll review discrimination strategies for clients--a series of steps to follow in thinking through responses to situations that’ll help them discriminate between appropriate, rational responses and knee-jerk, long-standing emotional/somatic reactions. We’ll identify dozens of distinctions that adults and children must make daily and provide a “flow of steps”--useful questions that’ll help people come to realistic, useful responses.

Diane Yapko, M.A., is a licensed speech-language pathologist who specializes in populations with developmental disorders. She’s the author of Understanding Autism Spectrum Disorders: Frequently Asked Questions.

Michael Yapko, Ph.D., is internationally recognized for his work in the strategic treatment of depression. His latest book is Depression Is Contagious. Others include Hypnosis and Treating Depression and Hand-Me-Down Blues: Overcoming Depression in Families.

 

Download PDF Saturday Workshops here.

March 26, 2010

 

All-Day Workshops | Morning Only | Afternoon Only

 

Friday All Day Workshops 11 am - 1 pm and 3 pm - 5 pm

 

201 301 - Treating the New American Family, Part 1 and Part 2: Negotiating the Paradoxes of Modern Parenting

Ron Taffel and Martha Straus

Today’s post-boomer parents and their children typically are the products of the same lifestyle experiences, and the rules that once defined parent-child relationships--top-down hierarchy, unquestioned parental authority, clear boundaries--are increasingly irrelevant. Yet, children still need authoritative leadership in the form of parental guidance and love. Using case examples, we’ll offer an approach that balances contemporary chaos with positive interdependence and stunning disrespect with mutual empathy. You’ll learn concrete tools to get high-risk, attention-deprived kids and parents to listen to and learn from each other, build genuine resilience in troubled kids without phony praise, and lower the level of aggression in fragmented homes. We’ll focus on identifying a child’s natural listening, conversational, and learning style and using them as guidelines to create meaningful limits and communication that fosters autonomy. (This session will continue with Workshop 301.)

Ron Taffel, Ph.D., is chairman of the board of the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy in New York. His latest book is Childhood Unbound: Saving Our Kids’ Best Selves.

Martha Straus, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Clinical Psychology at Antioch University New England and adjunct instructor in psychiatry at Dartmouth Medical School, is the author of Adolescent Girls in Crisis: Intervention and Hope.

 

202 302 - Rethinking PTSD, Part 1 and Part 2: A Blueprint for Treating Complex Trauma

Mary Jo Barrett

Trauma experts now distinguish between PTSD as a reaction to a single traumatic event and complex trauma as a far deeper, more pervasive phenomenon rooted in a person’s developmental and early-attachment history. In this workshop, we’ll discuss a practical, three-stage model that provides clear principles for gathering information, structuring treatment, and matching interventions to a client’s specific needs. You’ll learn if, when, and how to integrate techniques like Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), Thought Field Therapy (TFT), and yoga centered therapy into your work with a particular client. Because early attachment disruption and/or betrayal are so important in the histories of these clients, we’ll also explore the crucial importance of the therapist-client relationship in treatment. (This session will continue with Workshop 302.)

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.

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203 303 - Beyond Pills, Part 1 and Part 2: Effective Psychotherapy with Depressive Clients

Michael Yapko

Although the pharmaceutical industry and medical establishment insist otherwise, there’s very little evidence that depression is a primarily a medical illness, best treated with medications. On the contrary, the latest research clearly demonstrates that depression is caused more by social factors and negative interpersonal patterns than individual biochemistry. In this workshop, we’ll discuss the many ways that therapy can help change the physical, mental, emotional, and social patterns that cause and maintain depression. You’ll learn well-researched strategies for dealing with sleep disturbance, reducing anxiety, changing attributional thinking, and targeting dysfunctional behavior and thoughts. We’ll explore how to strike a balance between being supportive and gently challenging clients and the importance of assigning homework that gives regular practice in depression-fighting skills. (This session will continue with Workshop 303.)

Michael Yapko, Ph.D., is internationally recognized for his work in the strategic treatment of depression. His latest book is Depression Is Contagious. Others include Hypnosis and Treating Depression and Hand-Me-Down Blues: Overcoming Depression in Families.

 

204 304 - Mindfulness for Two, Part 1 and Part 2: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in Practice

Kelly Wilson

Ever discover yourself not really listening to a client? Ever find yourself getting caught in self-defeating patterns in sessions? In this workshop, you’ll learn how to develop a richer understanding of your clients and a more openhearted and deeply present way of engaging them using the principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Through the day you’ll learn the six fundamental processes or qualities of attention defined by ACT: purposeful focus in the present moment; witnessing and accepting even unacceptable thoughts; recognizing without fusing or being limited by the story; bringing a sense of meta-consciousness to your self-awareness; recognizing the deepest values you hold and wish to live by; and reorienting yourself toward the values that mean the most. You’ll leave knowing how to create a greater vitality within the therapeutic encounter (This session will continue with Workshop 304.)

Kelly Wilson, Ph.D., is associate professor of psychology at the University of Mississippi. His numerous publications include Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Mindfulness for Two.

 

205 305 - The I in the Storm, Part 1 and Part 2: Healing in an Age of Extremism

Richard Schwartz

We live in scary times filled with economic meltdown, terrorism, global warming, and crime. No matter what their presenting problems, our clients’ feelings of stress, grief, powerlessness, and despair will undoubtedly be dialed up in this atmosphere of generalized fear and loathing. In this workshop, we’ll discuss Internal Family Systems, a model that explains how people try to protect their most vulnerable and frightened inner “parts” by exiling them to unconsciousness and responding to perceived threats with fury, impulsiveness, and aggression. You’ll experience that deep within ourselves, beneath these frightened and reactive parts, is a calmer, wiser Self--a core of equanimity, openheartedness and inner leadership, with the power to lead, heal, and integrate all the others. We’ll explore the clinical relevance of this model and you’ll learn how to help even your most agitated clients find their own inner source of strength that can generate genuine empathy and compassion for self and others. (This session will continue with Workshop 305.)

Richard Schwartz, Ph.D., is director of the Center for Self Leadership and the originator of the Internal Family Systems Model. His books include Internal Family Systems Therapy and The Mosaic Mind: Empowering the Tormented Selves.

 

206 306 - Men in Therapy, Part 1 and Part 2: Mending the Broken Mirror

David Wexler

Many men think therapy just isn’t a “guy thing.” Unfortunately, therapists generally have reinforced this perception by being slow to recognize the distinct strengths and defenses that men exhibit and bring to relationships. In this workshop, we’ll use a self-psychology perspective to focus on the common “broken mirror” phenomenon in men: their unmet needs for external validation and affirmation, particularly from women, and feelings of failure, incompetence, and rage when they don’t get them. We’ll discuss how to help men learn to recognize and label internal states and deal with their tendency to become emotionally flooded in the face of “unmasculine” feelings. You’ll learn how to empathize with men in ways they can accept (honoring their courage for seeking help, for example), make use of male-friendly metaphors, and provide a therapeutic mirroring experience that helps them become more grounded in genuine, realistic self-respect. (This session will continue with Workshop 306.)

David Wexler, Ph.D., executive director of the Relationship Training Institute, is the author of five books, including Men in Therapy: New Approaches for Effective Treatment and When Good Men Behave Badly: Change Your Behavior, Change Your Relationship.

 

207 307 - Getting to the Heart of  Persistent Pain, Part 1 and Part 2

Maggie Phillips

More than half of all individuals over the age of 50, and many others at younger ages, suffer from chronic pain, which standard medical approaches--including drugs, physical therapy, surgery, acupuncture, and biofeedback--may actually worsen. In this workshop, we’ll explore the latest research on the psycho-neurobiology of pain, a complex intermingling of physiological factors, unresolved psychological trauma, and toxic emotions, which often underlie and maintain pain. You’ll learn a toolkit of easily learned, mind-body techniques and skills (mindfulness, breathing techniques, “Heart Math” or heart-rhythm control, energy psychology, Somatic Experiencing, and others). These approaches help clients discover the source of their pain, self-regulate, reduce their vulnerability, find greater inner resiliency, and change the life conditions causing their pain in the first place. (This session will continue with Workshop 307.)

Maggie Phillips, Ph.D., director of the California Institute of Clinical Hypnosis, is the author of Reversing Chronic Pain. Other books include Healing the Divided Self and Finding the Energy to Heal.

 

208 308 - Magic Moments in Couples Therapy, Part 1 and Part 2

Pat Love and Eva Berlander

Positive emotion is the marker for the salience that’s essential to trigger change in couples who are emotionally wired to expect conflict and disappointment. In this workshop, you’ll learn a method for helping couples find “limbic resonance” together--experience profound moments of emotional connection in sessions--which actually begins to rewire their brains to expect and attract more such positive experiences from each other. We’ll discuss how to create contracts with couples that force both of them to articulate what they want and also reveal the emotional blocks standing in their way. You’ll learn how to structure dialogues and exercises that can create relationship-altering moments in therapy, as well as homework techniques that increase the probability that these changes can be maintained outside the session. (This session will continue with Workshop 308.)

Pat Love, Ed.D., a relationship consultant and licensed marriage and family therapist, is the author of The Truth About Love and the coauthor of Hot Monogamy and How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking about It.

Eva Berlander, a certified Imago Relationship Therapist, presents workshops internationally, inspiring couples to see conflicts as opportunities. She and Pat Love have produced the DVD Magic Moments.

 

209 309 - Buddha’s Brain, Part 1 and Part 2: The Practical Neuroscience of Mindfulness

Rick Hanson

Today’s unprecedented meeting of modern brain science and ancient contemplative wisdom offers therapists powerful new tools for changing the neural wiring and neurochemistry of the brain--thus soothing the mind and making us less susceptible to a host of emotional and physical problems. In this workshop, we’ll focus on how to use contemplative neuroscience in three down-to-earth ways: to help clients become more mindful, to weave positive experiences into the fabric of the brain and self, and to stimulate and strengthen the three neural circuits of empathy. You’ll also learn how to adapt mindfulness training to the specific temperament of each client. Throughout there’ll be practical examples and experiential activities you can use in your practice, and handouts to adapt as client materials. (This session will continue with Workshop 309.)

Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a neuropsychologist with a keen interest in the concepts and skills found at the intersection of psychology, neurology, and Buddhism. His new book is Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom.

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210 310 - Interrupting the Anxiety Cycle, Part 1 and Part 2

Danie Beaulieu

Anxiety is perhaps the number-one presenting problem in therapy, as well as one of the most difficult to address, since anxiety about anything can invade the client’s entire life, becoming anxiety about everything. To interrupt this endless loop, you must be able to distinguish between the many different sources of anxiety and address each as it arises. In this workshop, we’ll discuss how to distinguish between the distinct sources of anxiety--cognitive (thoughts or beliefs), biological (inherited temperament, hormonal disruption), situational (as with phobias), existential (a sense of meaninglessness)--and appropriately address each one. You’ll learn a variety of multi-sensorial techniques that make use of enactments and physical props (paper, rubber bands, modeling clay, marbles, old cassette tapes) to help clients give shape and concreteness to otherwise amorphous anxieties, take some physical action to address the anxiety, and gain some control over it and freedom from it. (This session will continue with Workshop 310.)

Danie Beaulieu, Ph.D., is the founder of Academie Impact, a training institute, publisher, and producer of therapeutic aids. Her books include Impact Techniques for Therapists, Impact Techniques in the Classroom, and Eye Movement Integration: The Comprehensive Guide.

 

211 311 - Brain to Brain, Part 1 and Part 2: The Therapist as Neurobiological Regulator

Janina Fisher

Instead of experiencing therapy as a haven of safety and peace, traumatized and attachment-disordered clients often bring into sessions ingrained somatic reactions of hypervigilance, alarm, and vulnerability that make it too threatening for them to form any real connection with a therapist. In this workshop, we’ll discuss an approach based on attachment and neurobiology research that integrates body-centered therapy with talk therapy to help clients regulate and soothe their emotional and physical reactions. You’ll discover how to become more attuned to your own body’s response to challenging clients and then how to use “somatic” interventions--posture, physical distance or closeness, facial expression, voice tone, affect--to help clients rewire their brains and enhance their capacity to tolerate intimacy. You’ll also learn a range of sensorimotor interventions that help clients reach out, set limits, or distance themselves appropriately without the need for words. (This session will continue with Workshop 311.)

Janina Fisher, Ph.D., assistant director of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute and an instructor at Boston’s Trauma Center, is coauthor, with Pat Ogden, of “Sensorimotor Psychotherapy” in the forthcoming book Treating Complex Traumatic Stress Disorders.

 

212 312 - Compassion and Self-Compassion, Part 1 and Part 2

Christopher Germer

Therapy sometimes has been given a bad name for encouraging people to wallow in their pain. Yet, it’s precisely because life is heartbreaking that our profession has persisted, even thrived, in the past century. Often our most healing gift to clients is our ability to convey deep compassion for their suffering and help them experience compassion for themselves, while coming to recognize that pain is an inevitable and inescapable aspect of being human. In this workshop, we’ll explore Self-Compassion as a form of mindfulness that helps our clients avoid the shame, self-criticism, defensiveness, and denial that often exacerbate the problems that brought them to therapy. You’ll learn how to use Self-Compassion as a clinician to stay fully present with clients who are in great distress without getting emotionally swept away yourself. We’ll focus on techniques for stilling the mind, calmly but compassionately witnessing our clients’ pain, and fully embracing the sorrows of life without being overwhelmed by them. (This session will continue with Workshop 312.)

Christopher Germer, Ph.D., a clinical instructor in psychology at Harvard Medical School and faculty member of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy, is the coeditor of Mindfulness and Psychotherapy and author of Mindful Path to Self-Compassion.

 

All-Day Workshops | Morning Only | Afternoon Only

 

Friday Morning Workshops 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.

 

213 - The New Consciousness: Perspectives on Therapy, Education, and Spirituality

Daniel Siegel and Daniel Goleman

It seems obvious that human consciousness--still stuck with the automatic survival instincts of our Stone Age ancestors--must now evolve very, very quickly if we wish to meet the many social and ecological challenges we face. But there are also signs that we may be on the cusp of a new, more communal, awareness--a new sense of our connection with each other and with our planet. What role, if any, can therapists play in shaping the emergence of this new consciousness? This conversation will feature two thinkers who’ve been path-breaking explorers in this area, expanding our emerging understanding of the connection between psychology and brain functioning. We hope you’ll also bring your own thoughts and ideas to this exploration of how social neuroscience opens up new perspectives on education, therapy, and spirituality.

Daniel Siegel, M.D., is associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the author of the landmark book The Developing Mind: Toward a Neurobiology of Interpersonal Experience.

Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., is the author of the international bestsellers Emotional Intelligence, Working with Emotional Intelligence, and most recently, Ecological Intelligence.

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214 - The Other Side of Sex Addiction — Treating the Partner

Claudia Black

People who act out sexually--multiple affairs, online pornography addiction, voyeurism, cybersex--leave their partners reeling in fear, rage, shame, isolation, and helplessness. In this workshop, we’ll explore a three-stage treatment that helps betrayed partners recognize the connection between the past and present, lessen reactivity, and build coping skills. You’ll learn techniques that enable such clients to identify core beliefs and develop skills that will help them build a strong, resilient, independent identity. You’ll receive guidelines for assisting clients in creating a foundation from which to make healthy choices for themselves and their families. We’ll also review related issues, including disclosure to children, the parameters of therapeutic separations from addicted partners, and health issues related to the emotional devastation of being repeatedly betrayed and the anxiety generated by the ultimate question: “How can I ever trust again?”

Claudia Black, Ph.D., an addictions and codependency expert, is senior clinical and family services provider for the Las Vegas Recovery Center.  Her latest book is Deceived: Facing Sexual Betrayal, Lies and Secrets.

 

215 - CBT for Anxious Kids: Making It User-Friendly

Aureen Pinto Wagner

There’s no doubt that cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) helps most children and adolescents with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, the most common mental health problems diagnosed in youngsters. Yet, even though research shows CBT works with as much as 80 percent of this population, it’s not often used. Why? Most therapists don’t have the expertise to use it effectively with children, and most children lack the maturity, motivation, and willingness to make it work. In this workshop, we’ll explore an empirically sound, effective application of CBT techniques for kids with separation anxiety, generalized anxiety, phobias, social anxiety, and OCD, which is specifically tailored to reach them at their developmental level. From clinical vignettes, video clips, experiential exercises, and visual tools, you’ll learn creative, child-friendly strategies for developing gradual-exposure hierarchies and how to work with parents so they help their youngsters conquer their fears.

Aureen Pinto Wagner, Ph.D., is clinical associate professor of neurology at the University of Rochester. Her books include Treatment of OCD in Children and Adolescents: A Professional’s Kit and Worried No More: Help and Hope for Anxious Children.

 

216 - The Ecology of Sex: Achieving Differentiation Through the Four Points of Balance

David Schnarch

Low or mismatched sexual desire is both the most common sexual problem couples face--including normal, healthy couples--and the most difficult problem to treat. Desire problems are so difficult to treat because they reflect each partner’s level of emotional and psychological development. In this workshop, we’ll explore the connection between a couple’s sexual relationship and the Four Points of Balance, a framework for understanding each partner’s level of psychological differentiation. We’ll examine how solidity and flexibility of self, quietness of mind, calmness of heart, capacity for grounded responses and meaningful resilience all influence the experience of sexual sharing. You’ll learn a simple but highly effective somato-sensory approach that helps partners reduce their automatic emotional reactivity, enhance their sexual connection, and become more differentiated, grown-up adults.

David Schnarch, Ph.D., is director of the Crucible Institute in Evergreen, Colorado. His latest books include Intimacy & Desire: Awaken the Passion in Your Relationship and Passionate Marriage: Keeping Love & Intimacy Alive in Emotionally Committed Relationships.

 

217 - Cultural Equity in Action

Rhea Almeida, Pilar Hernandez-Wolfe, and Carolyn Tubbs

In well-meaning pursuit of cultural and ethnic sensitivity--often called “cultural competence”--the therapy field has sometimes slipped into overarching generalizations about different cultures and ethnicities, which too easily degenerate into stereotypes and even subtly reinforce old prejudices. In this workshop, we’ll explore therapeutic solutions based on “cultural equity,” which helps clients draw on multiple influences and experiences--from their specific culture, class, race, gender, family, and community--to discover a broader, deeper sense of their own identity than the diagnostic one often assigned to them by mainstream mental health institutions. We’ll examine “deinstitutionalized” forms of healing, using innovative, community-oriented approaches to empower clients and nourish their sense of personal wholeness and wellbeing.

Rhea Almeida, Ph.D., founder and director of the Institute for Family Services, is coauthor of Transformative Family Therapy and editor of Transformations of Gender and Race.

Pilar Hernandez-Wolfe, Ph.D., is associate professor and director of the Clinical Community Counseling Program at Johns Hopkins University.

Carolyn Tubbs, Ph.D., is associate professor in the Couple and Family Therapy Program at Drexel University.

 

218 - Beyond Good-Bye: A New Approach to Grief Work

Robert Neimeyer

Death doesn’t end a relationship. In this workshop, we’ll explore a new way of doing grief work that helps the bereaved person say good-bye to one aspect of the relationship with a departed loved one, while learning to acknowledge the continuing bond with the deceased and begin a different kind of ongoing, emotional connection. You’ll learn a blend of experiential, meaning-making exercises--such as restorative retellings of the “event story” of the death, reviewing the “life imprint” of the deceased on the client’s own life, “revisiting” procedures to reanimate dialogue with the loved one, and using dreams and virtual dream stories--to explore the old relationship and reconstruct a new one. Using clinical videos, technical demonstrations, and experiential exercises, we’ll explore ways to help clients reaffirm a world of meaning that can transcend the physical loss of a loved one.

Robert Neimeyer, Ph.D., is in the department of psychology at the University of Memphis and is the author of 24 books, including Meaning Reconstruction and the Experience of Loss and Lessons in Loss.

 

219 - The Heart of Therapy

Patrick Dougherty

If we believe the research that the therapeutic relationship is the most important variable for positive outcomes, then cultivating an attitude of loving kindness and openheartedness to our clients is much more than a touchy-feely adornment to the techniques that presumably do the real work of therapy. In this workshop, we’ll explore a Taoist approach that involves a few simple breathing and imagery techniques that can allow us to better maintain our emotional balance and let our heart’s energy flow out to our clients without getting emotionally caught up in their suffering. You’ll also learn how to teach these same methods to your clients, so that they, too, can become less focused on self and more connected with others.

Patrick Dougherty, M.A., is a licensed psychologist who’s been in private practice for more than 30 years. He’s been teaching Qigong for over 14 years, and is the author of Qigong in Psychotherapy: You Can Do So Much By Doing So Little and the forthcoming A Whole-Hearted Embrace: Finding Love at the Center of Everything.

 

220 - Food for Thought: Eating Disorders and Trauma

Lisa Ferentz

Most treatment approaches for eating disorders focus on eating management, calorie counting, and food diaries. They have a high failure rate. No wonder clinicians are often hesitant to work with eating-disordered clients. This workshop introduces a depathologized approach that looks at eating disorders as clients’ attempts to enact, restory, and resolve traumatic experiences they can’t articulate. Through case studies, clients’ journals, and artwork, we’ll explore how bingeing, anorexia, and bulimia are actually dialogues born of unspeakable experiences. You’ll learn about the metaphoric implications of each symptom: bingers build a shield for their bodies, anorectics communicate feelings of invisibility, bulimics try to rid themselves of the intolerable. You’ll leave with specific, creative treatment strategies designed to help clients find their voices and develop alternative, safe ways to resolve trauma and rebuild their lives.

Lisa Ferentz, L.C.S.W.-C., the founder and president of The Institute for Advanced Psychotherapy Training and Education, was voted the 2009 Social Worker of the Year by the Maryland Society for Clinical Social Work. She’s in private practice, specializing in trauma.

 

221 - A Mind-Body Approach for Traumatized Vets

James Gordon

An astonishingly large number of soldiers suffer, or will suffer, from the traumatizing effects of direct involvement in war--the VA anticipates that the rate of PTSD among Iraq troops will reach 35 percent--along with severe anxiety and depression, but many hesitate to get treatment out of shame at having to admit to severe emotional difficulties. In this workshop, you’ll learn about a comprehensive model of mind-body healing that offers troops and veterans a supportive, nonstigmatizing approach that’s been demonstrated to be highly successful in several large trials with traumatized populations. This approach is easily learned and applied, provides a powerful supportive structure for military personnel and their families, and includes specific techniques directly addressing symptoms of PTSD, depression, and anxiety. We’ll have time to discuss how to integrate elements of this model in your own work with any traumatized adults and children, both within and outside the military.

James Gordon, M.D., the founder and director of The Center for Mind-Body Medicine and a professor of psychiatry and family medicine at Georgetown Medical School, is the author of Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven Stage Journey Out of Depression.

 

222 - Infidelity and . . . Forgiveness?

Janis Abrahms Spring

It’s now virtually an article of clinical faith that forgiveness is a good thing, even when a partner has been unfaithful, but is this always true? How do we forgive someone who isn’t sorry? Are some interpersonal injuries simply unforgivable? This practical workshop will offer a radical model for helping hurt partners move beyond the trauma of infidelity and other interpersonal injuries and heal, with or without forgiving the offender. You’ll learn concrete strategies for helping hurt partners overcome their bitter preoccupation with the betrayal and their own feelings of shame, clarify for themselves what went wrong, and make peace with the past, without necessarily taking the step of forgiving if the offender is unrepentant. We’ll also discuss exactly what unfaithful partners and others must do to restore trust and intimacy, including bearing witness to the pain, apologizing nondefensively, and taking a fair share of responsibility for the injury.

Janis Abrahms Spring, Ph.D., is the author of the award-winning After the Affair; How Can I Forgive You?; and The Courage to Forgive, The Freedom Not To. Her latest book is Life with Pop: Lessons on Caring for an Aging Parent.

 

223 - Working with Oppressed Clients: Understanding the Habits of Survival

Kenneth V. Hardy

Therapists working with poor or marginalized clients often assume that developing a therapeutic alliance is inevitable because they have good intentions. So why do poor clients often remain angry and resistant to them? This workshop will reveal the importance of understanding the habits of survival of poor and marginalized clients, which include resistance and anger. We’ll explore four specific styles of survival, including the Warrior (committed to a fighting response no matter the circumstance) and the Feigned Subservient (who uses one-down, passive-aggressive tactics to avoid becoming a potential target). We’ll discuss why these aren’t pathologies, but coping mechanisms. You’ll gain skills for shifting clients from a narrow repertoire of survival habits to strategies that better serve their goals.

Kenneth V. Hardy, Ph.D., is a professor of family therapy at Drexel University in Philadelphia and the director of the Eikenberg Institute for Relationships in New York City. His books include Minorities and Family Therapy; Teens Who Hurt; and Re-visioning Family Therapy.

 

224 - “Bad” Behavior in School: Effective Interventions with Oppositional and Defiant Kids

James Levine

Harried teachers and counselors often resort to standardized behavioral interventions with oppositional, defiant, disruptive, and impulsive kids, incorporating a cascade of rewards and punishments without giving enough time to learning why these kids misbehave in the first place and what might motivate them to stop. Endless and unproductive power struggles often result. But once a reasonable hypothesis has been made about the child’s motivation, cognitive-behavioral techniques and traditional relationship-building strategies can be used that help even the most challenging youngster. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to engage the child in agreeing to an effective behavioral contract, frame the requirements for change, enlist the cooperation of teachers, parents, and schoolmates in a collaborative effort, and devise clear, practical, appropriate, and attractive rewards.

James Levine, Ph.D., is the founder and director of James Levine & Associates, a multidisciplinary consulting and psychotherapy company in western Massachusetts that employs 30 clinicians and consults with more than 50 school districts. A paperback edition of his Learning from Behavior was recently published.

 

225 - The Missing Piece: Helping Clients with Asperger’s Find Connection

Richard Howlin

To go through life with Asperger’s syndrome (AS) as an adult is like repeatedly walking onto a stage and being the only actor who doesn’t know the script. Often of normal or high-analytic intelligence and capable of emotional connection, people with AS can lack the social and executive skills necessary to successfully negotiate the world of interpersonal relationships, or even to live independently. In this workshop, we’ll discuss an interpersonal, neurobiology-based approach for adolescents and adults founded on the assumption that AS is an extreme learning style characterized by “analytic dominance,” which offers strengths at the same time it presents significant social and adaptive challenges. You’ll learn how to use direct instructional techniques, help clients understand the connection between their brains and behavior, increase their motivation to change, and improve their communication and social skills. We’ll discuss the key role of family members and significant others in treatment. We’ll also review how to evaluate AS from various perspectives, including learning style, developmental neurobiology, and social aptitude.

Richard Howlin, Dip. Psych., Ph.D., is a clinical developmental psychologist and director of the Chelsea Center in Chelsea, Michigan, where he specializes in the treatment of Asperger’s syndrome.

 

226 - The Power of Ritual

Evan Imber-Black

Since ancient times, people have drawn strength from the power of ritual to mark important life transitions, create community bonds, celebrate sacred occasions, and focus emotions. In an age when so many traditional family rituals have ceased to have the same emotional pull they once did, this experiential workshop will demonstrate how therapists can draw on the power of ritual to help clients. We’ll discuss how ritual time and space can heal losses, enhance relationships, and celebrate life and how symbols and symbolic enactment can alter our consciousness and make us receptive to new experience. We’ll also examine the special challenges of dealing with family holiday rituals in troubled or conflicted families.

Evan Imber-Black, Ph.D., is director of the Center for Families and Health at the Ackerman Institute for the Family and the editor of Family Process. She’s authored, coauthored, and edited numerous books, including Rituals in Families & Family Therapy and The Secret Life of Families.

 

227 - It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over: Marital Reconciliation in the Divorce Process

William Doherty

The conventional wisdom in therapy is that once a couple has begun legal divorce proceedings, there’s no more point in doing marital therapy--just divorce counseling and mediation. But new research in Minnesota has shown that couples express lots of ambivalence and longing for reconciliation even while on their way to divorce court, although therapists don’t seem to be paying attention. In this workshop, we’ll examine our own values, attitudes, and ambivalence about encouraging couples at this late date to try again. You’ll learn how to hold the hope for demoralized couples, use rapid interventions to resuscitate dying relationships, and mobilize community resources to help, because therapy alone isn’t enough. Warning: this work isn’t for the timid!

William Doherty, Ph.D. is a professor and director of the Citizen Professional Center at the University of Minnesota. His books include Take Back Your Marriage, Putting Family First, and Take Back Your Kids. His latest is Family Therapy, with Susan McDaniel.

 

228 - “That Was Fun!”: Disarming Oppositional Kids with Play

Matthew Selekman

Explosive, aggressive, oppositional, disruptive, and self-destructive kids can strike fear into the heart of the most experienced therapist. But the brain behind that defiant, pugnacious young face is most likely bursting with imagination and invention. If you can tap into that creative energy, the child will become your ally rather than your (and everybody else’s) enemy. In this workshop, we’ll discuss a collaborative, brief, family-based model of therapy that draws on the spirit of play in kids and their families to begin cooperatively reshaping their relationships. You’ll learn how to craft powerful therapeutic questions that elicit kids’ particular expertise and imaginative powers (“What would Harry Potter do, if he were faced with your situation?”), as well as how to use family play and art therapy experiments to uncover untold family stories and co-create compelling future realities.

Matthew Selekman, M.S.W., codirector of Partners for Collaborative Solutions, is the author of Working with Self-Harming Adolescents: A Collaborative, Strengths-Based Therapy Approach and Pathways to Change: Brief Therapy with Difficult Adolescents.

 

229 - Therapy as Improvisation

Robert Taibbi

As much as any command of theory, getting good at being a therapist is all about effective improvisation--embracing risk, making bold choices, trusting ourselves and others, discovering by doing. We must be willing to give up the script in our heads and step outside our comfort zones if we are to truly help our clients live more creatively. In this workshop, we’ll explore an interactive, spontaneous, and energizing way of doing therapy. Through role play and case examples, you’ll see how the rules of improv can serve as a map for rethinking and reinvigorating your clinical work. You’ll learn how to trust your intuitions (without losing your common sense), focus on what’s not in the room, make therapy more playful, and create and use the ideal voice. Instead of falling into your well-worn habits and explanations, you, along with your clients, will become more open to impromptu, unpremeditated action, reaction, and discovery.

Robert Taibbi, M.S.W., who has 35 years of clinical experience, is the author of Doing Couple Therapy: Craft and Creativity in Work with Intimate Partners. He’s a former member of the improv troupe The Improfessionals.

 

230 - Working with AD/HD

Diane Yapko

Medications are often the first and only line of treatment for kids with AD/HD, which is too bad, because these young clients can often benefit much more from a nonmedical, collaborative approach. In this workshop, you’ll learn about a range of highly effective interventions involving families and teachers that are geared to the specific age and school level of the child/adolescent. Since AD/HD kids tend to be easily distracted, impulsive, fidgety, and lacking in concentration, we’ll discuss sensory and visual exercises that help them become more relaxed and focused, as well as visual learning strategies, the use of inherently motivating rewards, and ways of expanding black and white thinking. We’ll also talk about helping families and teachers tailor their own expectations to reduce frustration (theirs and the kids’), respond with greater flexibility, and help children develop their own repertoire of social skills.

Diane Yapko, M.A., is a licensed speech-language pathologist who specializes in working with children with developmental disorders. She’s the author of Understanding Autism Spectrum Disorders: Frequently Asked Questions.

 

All-Day Workshops | Morning Only | Afternoon Only

 

Friday Afternoon Workshops 3:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

 

313 - The Art and the Science of Creativity

Daniel Siegel and Natalie Goldberg

As passive spectators overwhelmed by the constant deluge of words and images on Internet, TV, and movie screens, mountains of books, journals, and magazines, advertising everywhere our eyes fall, we can feel our own creativity shriveling up from pure exhaustion. How do we deflect the roaring waterfall of external clatter so that we can open ourselves to the soft, hidden voices of our imagination? How can our expanding knowledge of our brains help us better access our capacities for inspiration and original thought? In this free-ranging conversation between an expert on the brain and the author of one of the most widely read books ever published about writing and creativity, we’ll explore how to better connect to our inner sources of creative vitality. Participants are encouraged to bring fast-writing pens and notebooks.

Daniel Siegel, M.D., associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, is the author of the landmark book The Developing Mind. His latest book is Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation.

Natalie Goldberg, writer, poet, teacher, and painter, is the author of the classic book on creativity Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. She’s recently completed the documentary Tangled Up In Bob, about Bob Dylan’s childhood.

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314 - Divorcing Well

Ashley Davis Bush

Although 50 percent of all marriages end in divorce, the process of getting divorced is still imbued with feelings of shame, failure, mutual antagonism, and the certainty that one or the other party must be fully to blame. But sometimes divorce is the best, healthiest choice for a couple and, if handled well, can be a relatively peaceful, even positive, experience. In this workshop, we’ll explore a six-stage model, based on Western psychology and Eastern spiritual practices, that helps divorcing couples understand the stages of bereavement and transcendence, as well as discover their “inner grown-up” to go through the divorce process as calmly and respectfully as possible.

Ashley Davis Bush, L.C.S.W., cofounder of Transitions & Loss Counseling in Epping, New Hampshire, is the author of Transcending Loss and Claim Your Inner Grown-Up.

 

315 - Incest: The Most Fundamental Betrayal

Christine Courtois

In a sense, all cases of severe, chronic child sexual abuse and neglect at the hands of a trusted adult in a preexisting relationship--whether by a family member, a clergyperson, teacher, or other adult known to the child--are forms of incest. All share the same profoundly harmful components: betrayal of love and trust, misuse of power and authority, and manipulation of the child’s mind (“this is really good for you”). In this workshop, the presenter will focus on the complex traumatic stress disorders that typically result from incest and offer practical treatment strategies directed toward symptom stabilization, affect regulation, ego enhancement, interpersonal skills development, and overall functioning. The importance of the therapeutic relationship to treatment will be stressed.

Christine Courtois, Ph.D., cofounded and was the clinical and training director for 16 years of The Center: Post Traumatic Disorders Program in Washington, D.C. She’s the author of the newly revised Healing the Incest Wound: Adult Survivors in Therapy and coeditor of Treating Complex Traumatic Stress Disorders: An Evidence-Based Guide.

 

316 - Five Steps to Letting Your Clients Become Your Teachers

Barry Duncan

Whether we’re novices still not entirely sure of our way around a consulting room or expert practitioners with decades of clinical experience, we all face the challenge of learning from our clinical experiences, rather than merely repeating them. In this workshop, you’ll learning methods for collaborating more effectively with your clients and producing change faster, regardless of what approach you use. We’ll focus on how to track your cases systematically and develop an early-warning system about potential problems before they derail therapy.  But most important, we’ll explore a pragmatic, five-step method for accelerating your development as a therapist, invigorating your work, expanding your theoretical breadth, and dramatically improving your outcomes.

Barry Duncan, Psy.D., is director of the Heart and Soul of Change Project and author or coauthor of 15 books, including The Heart and Soul of Change, 2nd edition,

The Heroic Client, and the newly published On Becoming a Better Therapist.

 

317 - Money Matters: Understanding Financial Trauma

Vanessa Jackson

Although the economic implosion of the past two or three years has caused grave harm to many of our clients, most therapists still aren’t prepared to deal with the emotional issues triggered by the financial turmoil. Clients often don’t mention their financial vulnerability, even though it’s the hidden issue behind their presenting problems, such as anxiety, depression, marital conflict, feelings of inadequacy and personal failure. In this workshop, we’ll explore personal narratives of class, money, loss, and poverty and focus on how to discuss clients’ family money stories in our clinical work. You’ll learn specific strategies for uncovering invisible financial traumas and practical steps for helping clients tap into their inner emotional strength, maintain their sense of emotional equilibrium, and make rational decisions in the face of economic hardship.

Vanessa Jackson, L.C.S.W., a therapist in private practice in Atlanta, Georgia, is the author of “Robbing Peter to Pay Paul: Reflections on Feminist Therapy with Low-wage Earning Women” in Psychotherapy with Women.

 

318 - Tapping Spiritual Resources for Healing and Resilience

Froma Walsh

As neurobiological research now documents, spiritual beliefs and practices have a profound influence on healing and resilience, particularly after trauma, loss, or severe life changes. Therapy at its best can open spiritual wellsprings for our clients, yet many of us lack training for integrating spirituality with our clinical work and feel uncomfortable doing it. This workshop will draw on multi-faith perspectives to explore respectful ways of opening up more soulful conversations with our clients without overstepping boundaries. Practice guidelines and case examples will help you learn to recognize and address spiritual distress that blocks healing and positive growth. We’ll consider ways for clients and therapists to find spiritual nourishment and connection both within and outside religion, including contemplative practices, being in nature, focusing on intimate bonds, opening up to the arts, and compassionate service/social action.

Froma Walsh, Ph.D., is cofounder of the Chicago Center for Family Health and is the Mose and Sylvia Firestone Professor in the School of Social Service Administration and Department of Psychiatry, University of Chicago. Her latest book is Spiritual Resources in Family Therapy.

 

319 - The New Monogamy: Desire and Fidelity in the New Millennium

Tammy Nelson

Therapists today report seeing an increasing number of committed couples, one or both of whom have outside sexual partners. Often neither partner wants to separate and both appear willing to negotiate monogamy in new ways, redefining fidelity. Are these couples just fooling themselves by thinking that they can have both genuine intimacy and outside sexual partners, or do we need to reexamine some of our attitudes about infidelity and relationship boundaries? Can we help couples survive affairs without the demoralization that comes with infidelity? In this workshop, we’ll discuss monogamy from a multicultural, historical, nonjudgmental perspective, reviewing the history of open marriage and polyamory, along with currently evolving rules about sexuality in marriage. We’ll explore the continuum of monogamy that most couples fall on, which isn’t the black and white scale that’s considered normal. You’ll learn how to talk with couples about the meaning of an affair in a way that can provide an opportunity for them to end their “old” marriage and begin a new, revitalized marriage.

Tammy Nelson, M.S., is the founder and executive director of the Center for Healing. She’s the author of Getting the Sex You Want and What’s Eating You?

 

320 - “The Mind Is What the Brain Does”: Integrating Neurofeedback into Your Practice

Sebern Fisher

Certain neurologically-based conditions--severe PTSD, Asperger’s, reactive attachment disorder, mood and personality disorders, chronic pain, and sleep disorders--are so entrenched in the brain’s neuronal firing patterns that even the most brilliant and perceptive psychotherapy will have only a modest impact, if any. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to integrate brain-wave training (neurofeedback) into your practice in order to change the rhythmic neuronal firing patterns that maintain stubborn symptoms, which talk therapy can’t touch. Drawing on case vignettes, a review of the research and science of neurofeedback, and a discussion of the brain circuitry of fear, we’ll focus on how to use neurofeedback to help clients learn to regulate their most deeply entrenched affective patterns.

Sebern Fisher, M.A., practices neurofeedback and psychodynamic psychotherapy in Northampton, Massachusetts. As the clinical director of a facility for severely disturbed adolescents, she was the first therapist to implement Dialectical Behavior Therapy in a residential program. She consults with Bessel van der Kolk in the Trauma Center’s implementation of neurofeedback.

 

321 - The Citizen Therapist: Becoming a Community Change Agent

William Doherty

As therapists, we believe deeply in the human capacity for self-healing and constructive change. As concerned citizens, we see that the world beyond our offices is in desperate need of both. We’d like to get out there and help, but don’t know what to do or how to get involved. We lack practical models for action that don’t require us to be rich and famous or have the time and wherewithal to jet off to international disaster sites. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to recognize how your clinical interests intersect with important public issues and how to use your skills to engage in social and political action. We’ll discuss an explicit model for catalyzing community action and hear about individual therapists who’ve connected with nonprofit organizations and expanded their work into the public sphere--while keeping their day jobs.

William Doherty, Ph.D. is a professor and director of the Citizen Professional Center at the University of Minnesota. His books include Take Back Your Marriage, Putting Family First, and Take Back Your Kids. His latest is Family Therapy, with Susan McDaniel.

 

322 - AD/HD and ADD in Kids and Grown-Ups: Using Common Sense

Lawrence Diller

Sometimes it seems that the majority of boys in America, and not a few adults, “have” AD/HD, and that many of the people you know (your children, your colleagues, you) are taking Ritalin, Adderall, or some equivalent medication. The illegal use of prescription stimulants for “cognitive enhancement” is also a growing phenomenon on college campuses. Medication isn’t the same as offering genuine engagement to children, or recognizing the difference between biologic/neurological causal factors and an unsuccessful “fit” between the child’s personality/temperament and social/educational expectations. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to identify the most likely causes of AD/HD and ADD, distinguish between genuine disorders and lifestyle mismatches, and make wise, effective, ethical decisions about treatment. We’ll explore effective non-drug interventions that make medications unnecessary. We’ll also discuss the dangers and potential dead-ends linked to the self-prescribed use of stimulants for “power studying.”

Lawrence Diller, M.D., is the author of Running on Ritalin and Should I Medicate My Child?, along with numerous articles on child behavior and treatment.

 

323 - Too Close for Comfort?: The Mother-Daughter Bond in the 21^st-Century

Linda Perlman Gordon and Susan Morris Shaffer

At no time in recent history have mothers and their young-adult daughters had so much in common--education, workplace experience, politics, fitness, fashion, music. Sometimes they seem more like best friends than members of two different generations, much less parent and child. Remarkably, there’s still no road map to help mothers and adult daughters negotiate their complex relationships that combine so many eternal elements of the old dynamics of this bond with social realities unlike any that have ever existed before. In this workshop, we’ll explore the sociological forces that have had such a striking impact on mother-daughter relationships, discuss the pitfalls of mothers and daughters becoming best friends, and provide tools for helping them develop mutually supportive relationships with realistic boundaries.

Linda Perlman Gordon, M.Ed., L.C.S.W., who was voted one of the top area mental health professionals in the July 2009 Washingtonian Magazine, is the coauthor of Too Close for Comfort.

Susan Morris Shaffer is executive director of the Maryland State Parental Information and Resource Center and coauthor of Too Close for Comfort.

 

324 - Emptying the Nest: Launching Young Adults

Brad Sachs

Family therapists increasingly find themselves working with young adults who, for various reasons, seem unable to take the necessary steps toward healthy self-sufficiency and remain unhappily entangled with and dependent upon their parents. Naturally, this situation creates significant friction and conflict, which can hobble growth on the part of both generations. In this workshop, we’ll explore a clinical framework for understanding the intrapsychic and family-based dynamics that typically interfere with the ability of parents and young adults to mature and evolve. You’ll become acquainted with practical strategies designed to ameliorate family tension, promote the autonomy and self-assurance of struggling young adults, and enable parents to grow into the next stage of their individual and marital lives. This workshop will be both didactic and interactive, so participants are invited to bring along case material for group discussion.

Brad Sachs, Ph.D., is the author of The Good Enough Child: How to Have an Imperfect Family and Be Perfectly Satisfied; The Good Enough Teen: Raising Adolescents with Love and Acceptance; and the forthcoming Emptying the Nest: Launching Young Adults Towards Success and Self-Reliance.

 

325 - Cries and Whispers: Unlocking Family Secrets

Evan Imber-Black

Secrets can be like ghosts haunting a family--a veiled threat that can’t quite be seen or confronted. We keep secret the things we’re ashamed of and the things we fear we can’t face. Working with clients to make decisions about revealing secrets requires an appreciation for the complex process necessary to determine the timing and appropriateness of disclosure. In this session, we’ll distinguish healthy privacy from toxic secrecy and discuss the systemic issues that should guide a clinicians approach to family secrets. We’ll then explore a multisystemic model of secrecy and openness that will enable you to make an individualized judgment about each secret you may encounter in your clinical work.

Evan Imber-Black, Ph.D., is director of the Center for Families and Health at the Ackerman Institute for the Family and the editor of Family Process. She’s authored, coauthored, and edited numerous books, including Rituals in Families & Family Therapy and The Secret Life of Families.

 

326 - Working with Gay & Lesbian Couples

Joe Kort

As a straight clinician, it’s important to be gay informed, more than just gay-friendly. It’s especially important to recognize the differences between the relationship dynamics of gay male and female couples. In this workshop, we’ll compare the distinct differences in relationship dynamics and problem areas that arise for gay men and for lesbians: responsible sexual practices and the need for more connectedness among gay male couples and diminished sexual desire and the need for separateness among lesbians are just a few. You’ll leave with specific interventions and assessment tools that promote gay-affirmative couples therapy.

Joe Kort, L.M.S.W., specializes in individual, couples, and group psychotherapy for gay and straight clients. He’s a certified Imago Relationship therapist and the author of Gay Affirmative Therapy for the Straight Clinician: The Essential Guide.

 

327 - Carrying the Hope: Helping Families Deal with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Alexandra Solomon

A diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in a child can be a harrowing ordeal for families, forcing them to deal with overwhelming practical, financial, and emotional challenges as they negotiate the confusing choices between conflicting treatment philosophies. In this workshop, you’ll learn why therapists are particularly well suited to guide parents through the chronic stress of raising an ASD child by helping them understand the different forms of the disorder, sort through treatment alternatives, and sustain a strong, resilient marriage. We’ll explore the Defeat Autism Now! (DAN!) treatment model, which is focused on repairing the ASD child’s damaged immune and digestive systems, and the Relationship Development Intervention (RDI) model, which is focused on remediating the core deficits of autism by increasing dynamic intelligence. We’ll then discuss how to help families cope with the grief, upheaval, and sheer hard work of living with an ASD child.

Alexandra Solomon, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist at the Family Institute at Northwestern University and clinical lecturer in the Master of Science in Family Therapy Program at Northwestern. Her son has been diagnosed with ASD.

 

328 - Domestic Violence: New Directions in Treatment

Ronald Potter-Efron

For many years, the theory of patriarchal domination--violent men resort to violence to gain or maintain control over females--was thought to explain male aggression against their partners. Gradually, as this explanation has shown itself to be too narrowly focused, more nuanced and multidimensional clinical perspectives on male violence have emerged. In this workshop, we’ll explore the many factors contributing to male violence, beyond a need to dominate women, including overwhelming stress (from poverty and unemployment, for example), substance addictions, childhood attachment deficits, a history of trauma, lack of emotional control, and brain injuries. We’ll discuss how to use a multimodal treatment approach that includes individual therapy along with couples, family, and group counseling, and how to balance safety concerns with the appropriate couples counseling when both partners engage in mutually instigated domestic violence.

Ronald Potter-Efron, Ph.D., is a clinical psychotherapist, co-owner of First Things First Counseling and Consulting, and director of its Anger Management Center. He’s the author of Shame, Guilt, and Alcoholism and of Angry All the Time.

 

329 - Play Therapy for Grown-Ups

Peter Fraenkel

The tools of play therapy--toys, music, art, and other nonverbal media--typically are reserved for work with children. But both research and clinical experience indicates that talk therapy with adults often can become boring, predictable, and unproductive. Recent brain studies indicate that incorporating play and music result in more “whole-brain” responses, evoking the spontaneity and creativity in clients that can result in dramatic symptom reduction. This workshop will introduce novel ways to use objects of play to break up adults’ habitual self-sabotaging behaviors, repetitious couple’s conflict, and chronic symptoms of anxiety and depression. You’ll learn at least three specific techniques for using toys and other objects to interrupt obsessive, anxious rumination and a step-by-step approach to using music to engage psychologically inaccessible clients in a profound and healing emotional experience.

Peter Fraenkel, Ph.D., is associate professor of psychology at the City University of New York and director of the Ackerman Institute’s Center for Work and the Family. He’s written extensively on work/family balance and is the coauthor of The Relational Trauma of Incest.

 

330 - Ain’t Dead Yet: Maintaining Clinical Excellence in the Public Sector

David Waters and Gene Cash

As financial cutbacks slash the budgets of wraparound and foster-care-prevention agencies, good, clinically-oriented programs aimed at the poorest and most challenging families seem to get pushed further toward bare-bones case management. How do we maintain clinical excellence as we help families in urgent need when the financial pressures are pushing us to the wall? In this workshop, the presenters will demonstrate a model for teaching sophisticated clinical work to young therapists and maintaining a high standard of clinical care, even in the toughest times. The key to creating significant change with very troubled families is the rapid, accurate recognition of maladaptive patterns, both related to family functioning and thought processes. We’ll demonstrate a strongly structured approach built around the concept “See It, Name It, Change It,” which teaches pattern recognition and pattern reversal. Teaching and supervision strategies will be shown, with the ultimate goal of strengthening young therapists’ skill in creating lasting change.

David Waters, Ph.D., is a professor of family medicine, psychiatric medicine, and psychology at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Gene Cash, M.S.W., is clinical director of the Greater Richmond Area League of Therapists, which offers intensive in-home, outpatient, group, and individual therapy programs.

 

Download PDF Friday Workshops here.

March 25, 2010

Thursday All Day Workshops 9:30 am - 12 pm and 1 pm - 5 pm

 

101 - From Play to Revelation: Defeating the Hobgoblins of Everyday Life

Jude Treder-Wolff and Wells Hanley

We all know that the excitement of life depends on our capacity to embrace the dynamic unfolding of spontaneous events. Yet, many of us spend our days trying to control everything that occurs. In this workshop, we’ll learn how to use Theater Games--improvisations of comedy, music, storytelling, and drama--to generate a “state of play” in which we’ll suspend our need to know what’s going to happen next. We’ll use the “language” of music, story, comedy, and dramatic action to explore alternatives to workaday reality. You might, for example, create a deathbed scene for the Relentless Inner Critic or compose an original Country Western tune called “Insurance Billing Is Killing Me.” You’ll learn how to tap into your inner impresario to discover how the flat, discouraging, and defeating aspects of your daily life can become a source not only of play and good humor, but of genuine revelation.

Jude Treder-Wolff, L.C.S.W., writes the e-newsletter Lives in Progress. She’s the author of Possible Futures: Creative Thinking for the Speed of Life.

Wells Hanley, M.A., a freelance musician, has performed at festivals like the Montreux Jazz Festival and the Spoleto Music Festival. He’s appeared and/or recorded with Betty Carter, Wynton Marsalis, and many others.

 

102 - Opening to the Heart of Healing

Maggie Phillips

According to recent neuroscience research, the heart seems to act as if it had a “mind” of its own and has an energy field more than 60 times stronger than that of the brain. Not only does it send many more messages to the brain than the brain sends back to the heart, but heart-rate variability is considered the most dependable gauge of inner emotional states. This experiential workshop will offer a variety of approaches, including Heart Math tools, breathing techniques, mindfulness practice, and energy psychology, to stimulate heartfelt positive emotions, like love, compassion, and gratitude, and create “hearth healthy” states of inner coherence and harmony. We’ll explore and practice effective methods for the rapid regulation of chronic toxic emotions often related to trauma that generate stress reactions, compromise the immune system, and strain heart health. You’ll come away with an enhanced capacity for becoming a more mindful therapist and for helping yourself and your clients resolve traumatic stress and achieve neural integration through heart-centered awareness.

Maggie Phillips, Ph.D., director of the California Institute of Clinical Hypnosis, is the author of Reversing Chronic Pain. Other books include Healing the Divided Self and Finding the Energy to Heal.

 

103 - A Day for Mindfulness

Anh-Huong Nguyen and Thu Nguyen

Mindfulness meditation can help us reduce stress, manage pain, and expand our capacity to joyfully embrace life in the here and now. Led by teachers ordained by Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, this workshop will introduce you to the art of mindful living through the technique of conscious breathing. Via individual and group exercises, you’ll devote the day to getting in touch with your inherent capacities for inner expensiveness, healing, and renewal. Dress comfortably and bring a mat and/or blanket for the total-body-relaxation period. Please bring your lunch or preorder a box lunch on the Registration Form, so we can practice mindful eating together at lunchtime.

Anh-Huong Nguyen, M.S., a student of Thich Nhat Hanh for 30 years, has translated several of his books into English, including The Diamond that Cuts Through Illusion. She and her husband Thu Nguyen, were among the first students ordained as Dharma teachers by Thich Nhat Hanh.

Thu Nguyen, Ph.D., is a cofounder with his wife of the Mindfulness Practice Center of Fairfax in Oakton, Virginia.

 

104 - The Joy of Dance

Richard Gonzalez

The expansive experience of dance has accompanied rituals of birth, weddings, funerals, religious occasions, and significant communal events from time immemorial. It enhances the joy of triumph, consoles and contributes to recovery during times of sadness and loss. In this workshop, we’ll use dance to awaken our bodies and spirits and help us feel more part of the community of fellow humans. Dancing to Afro-Caribbean music, we’ll explore free, unscripted movements that’ll get your heart beating, attune you to the joyful dancer within, and liberate you from inhibitions that you may have carried since childhood. Whether you’re convinced you can’t dance and have two left feet or are an experienced dancer, you’ll leave feeling revitalized, exhilarated, and euphoric.

Richard Gonzalez, an interpreter, choreographer, musician, and performer, is nationally recognized as a master teacher of Afro-Caribbean folkloric and contemporary dance. He was a student of the renowned Alvin Ailey Dance Theater and Steps Dance Center.

 

105 - Awaken the Writer Within

Katy Butler

Do you have a story to tell, but hold back out of fear? In this workshop, you’ll learn to free your writing hand from your self-editing (and self-censoring) brain. In the morning, we’ll do focused, rapid, pen-to-paper exercises designed to outfox, outrun, tame, and even befriend your inner critic. In the afternoon, we’ll share our budding work in a safe, creative sanctuary and begin to shape promising starts into short stories, poems, Op-Ed pieces, personal essays, or the beginnings of articles. Break up the inner logjams, melt the ice floes, and be prepared for amazement at the quality and quantity of the work you produce. Bring a big spiral-bound notebook and plenty of free-flowing pens.

Katy Butler, features editor of the Psychotherapy Networker, has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and More magazine, among other publications. She regularly teaches memoir writing at the Esalen Institute.

 

106 - Eating and Awareness

Jean Kristeller

Bringing a state of mindful awareness to the sensations of hunger, taste, fullness, and satisfaction, and to the feelings that trigger hunger, can transform our relationship to food from one of continual struggle to one characterized by pleasure, gratification, and contentment. Coupled with the selection of healthy, nourishing foods, mindful awareness can contribute to weight loss, improved mood, and a more balanced approach to eating. In this workshop, we’ll explore the Mindfulness-Based Eating Awareness Treatment (MB-EAT), a research-supported program that’s helped people experiencing a wide variety of eating issues. You’ll learn how to become aware of the difference between emotional and physical hunger, how to bring conscious choice to eating patterns, and how to become more attuned to the sensory pleasures of eating (as opposed to overeating mindlessly). You’ll also have an opportunity to practice four mindful-eating techniques that will transform your own experience with food.

Jean Kristeller, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology and director of the Center for the Study of Health, Religion and Spirituality at Indiana State University.  She’s used meditation-based interventions for eating disorders and obesity for more than 20 years.

 

107 - Awakening Your Body Wisdom

Daniel Leven

As long as our bodies are working alright, we tend to regard them as loyal servants, expected to do our bidding without complaint. But our bodies deserve much more than that. They have their own wisdom, their own stories to tell us that we need to hear. In this workshop you’ll learn to relate to your own body as an ally and friend, to regard body experience--including tension, discomfort, and pain--as messages that you need to heed and respect. You’ll experientially explore the emotional body, which lives in and through your physical body, learn the language it speaks in the sensations it sends, and respond with compassion and appreciation for its gifts. You’ll be guided through a process that synthesizes mindfulness and a sense of the body with the expressive arts, including drawing, moving, and journaling. At the end of the workshop, you’ll experience both an expanded awareness of your physical senses and gratitude for the rich wisdom your body can provide.

Daniel Leven, R.S.M.T., is founder and director of the Leven Institute for Expressive Movement, where he trains practitioners in mind-body healing and wellness.

 

108 - Focusing: Contacting Your Creative Flow

Joan Klagsbrun

Each of us has within ourselves a wellspring of creativity and an intuitive feeling for “what works” in any imaginative endeavor, but many of us lack the knowledge of how to tap into it. In this workshop, you’ll learn the Focusing method developed by psychologist Eugene Gendlin that helps you find this natural source of creative vitality by experiencing your “felt sense” of an issue, situation, or experience: messages or knowledge held in your body’s deeper self. We’ll apply Focusing to different expressive modalities (writing, art, movement) to access the body’s innate wisdom, creative intelligence, and inner stores of vitality. We’ll address blocks to our creative expression, like writer’s block and procrastination, and explore ways to clear them. Finally, we’ll discuss techniques for getting unstuck by transforming the inner critic into a trusted friend.

Joan Klagsbrun, Ph.D., a psychologist in private practice in the Boston area and an adjunct faculty member at Lesley University, has been teaching Focusing internationally for more than 30 years.

 

109 - Brain Upgrade

Paula Oleska

How can you improve mental tasks like reading and comprehension, memory, focus, and organization, as well as reduce stress, without tedious memory exercises or endless crossword puzzles? Based on research at the cutting edge of neuroscience, the Brain Upgrade uses targeted “smart” exercises--a combination of physical movements and sensory stimulation--to improve coordination among your thinking, feeling, and action brain centers, including the right and left hemispheres. Almost immediately, you’ll experience improvements not only in your thinking capacity, but in your ability to handle emotions. You’ll leave this workshop better understanding how information is processed in the brain and knowing how to do a dozen activities that coordinate different brain areas. You’ll also know a new technique for modulating emotions and changing ingrained habits.

Paula Oleska, M.A., is known internationally as a lecturer, teacher, and pioneering practitioner of new approaches to brain development. She’s the author of Memory Moves and The Wisdom of Anger.

 

110 - Therapist, Heal--and Celebrate--Thyself!

James Gordon

Roughly 2,300 years ago, Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, was already reminding his students that they couldn’t heal others if they weren’t at the same time restoring their own equilibrium, clarity, and inner harmony. Like our clients, we must face life’s difficulties while celebrating the capacity for joy, peace, and inner wisdom we hold within ourselves. In this workshop, you’ll explore your own untapped gifts for self-healing as you discover the steps in your own journey to greater health and contentment. You’ll learn a wide range of mind-body techniques--meditations, guided imagery, movement and dance, drawing and written dialogue--to mobilize your imagination, reconnect with your body, and awaken your spiritual self. You’ll leave with a new understanding of your clients, not as sufferers from a disease or disorder, but as fellow travelers on a journey to health.

James Gordon, M.D., the founder and director of The Center for Mind-Body Medicine and a professor of psychiatry and family medicine at Georgetown Medical School, is the author of Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven Stage Journey Out of Depression.

 

111 - Finding Your Voice

Dana LaCroix

Singing, one of the most primal forms of human communication, has been used since the dawn of history to mark life’s milestones, overcome challenges, accompany rituals, and bridge the gap between the physical and spiritual worlds. Many of us yearn to express ourselves in song, yet, in our time, singing has come to be regarded as the sacrosanct territory of the professionally trained. In this workshop, you’ll have the opportunity to find your own singing voice in a safe, supportive environment where uninhibited musical self-expression is the goal. Through the use of breathing exercises, traditional work songs, gospel music, musical theater games, and the exploration of rhythm, you’ll have an opportunity to sing, shout, laugh, improvise, and experience the thrill of lifting your voice and blending with others in a communal celebration of song.

Dana LaCroix, is a professional singer, songwriter, and critically acclaimed recording and touring artist. She’s written songs for feature films, been director of music at the New Drama School in Copenhagen, Denmark, and worked as a vocal coach at the Danish Academy of Music.

 

112 - Paint Your Vision

David Daniels

Learn to express your personal vision in watercolors. This hands-on workshop will introduce basic watercolor techniques to help you tap into and enjoy your creative energies. Grounded in the belief that anyone can paint, this daylong experience will give you the enthusiasm, self-confidence, and know-how to continue painting for a lifetime. Participants are encouraged, but not required, to bring photos or other images for inspiration.

David Daniels, M.A., is resident watercolor instructor for the Smithsonian Institution and an instructor at the National Museum of American Art. He’s on the art faculty of Montgomery College, Rockville, Maryland. His work has been featured in “Best of Watercolor Composition” in American Artist magazine.

 

113 - Older but Healthier: Cultivating Physical Well-Being in Middle Age (and Beyond)

Kelly Dorfman

We all know we’re supposed to eat better, exercise more, stimulate our brains, take the right kind of vitamins, yada, yada, but most of us can’t afford to hire personal trainers and chefs or take the time to study the ever-more-towering healthy lifestyle literature. In this workshop, you’ll get a one-day crash course on the effects of nutrition, exercise, and supplements on our bodies and minds, as well as a chance to create a personal blueprint that optimizes your genetic potential and keep your brain and body strong and healthy into advanced old age. In the morning, we’ll review the scientific research on the relationship between diet, mood, and energy, as well as how to use diet and nutrients to get healthier and smarter. In the afternoon, we’ll break into small groups to formulate individual strategies that address the issues important to you--weight, strength, flexibility, hormone balance--with food, supplements, and exercise. You’ll leave with a clear, flexible, individualized, and appealing plan for staying healthy for life.

Kelly Dorfman, M.S., is a medical intuitive who utilizes her 25 years of experience in her work as a nationally-known clinical nutritionist and health-program planner. Her specialty is strategy-development for complex medical problems.

 

114 - Centering: Back to the Basics of our Nature with Clay

David Flohr

Clay is elemental--the raw substrate of creation, the dense, earthy matter from which our human form emerged. Touching, smoothing, molding its damp, heavy solidity puts us in touch with something primal about ourselves and our existence. In this workshop, we’ll explore our creativity through the medium of clay, accompanied by guided visualizations, and group-based experiential processes. We’ll begin by calling forth “child energies,” emphasizing simplicity and spontaneity, then explore the direct sensation of the clay in silence and later with music. We’ll work around a potter’s wheel, hand-build clay shapes, and work with polymer clay. During the day, we’ll have two “centering circles” during which participants take turns “stepping into the center” to share their experience, while the circle “holds the space” through witnessing and mirroring. Throughout the workshop, we’ll move between the energy of the circle and the still, primal substance of clay as it responds and changes shape with our touch.

David Flohr, Ph.D., is in private practice in Falls Church, Virginia, and is an advanced clinician in Imago Relationship Therapy.

 

115 - The Tao of Improv

Robert Taibbi

If it’s true that all the world’s a stage, it’s also true that our roles are always unscripted. Life is all about improvising--about working with what life hands us, and even more so in these times of rapid and sudden change. We need to make bold choices, yet always be ready and willing to surrender our plans and adapt. In this experiential workshop, you’ll learn the process, principles, and skills of comedic improv. You’ll have day-long opportunities to create scenes, work in a team, and think on your feet. You’ll have loads of fun, laugh a lot, and learn to trust. Most of all, you’ll discover that there really are no mistakes and that wonderful parts of you are living just outside your comfort zone. Dress comfortably and come prepared for adventure.

Robert Taibbi, M.S.W., who has 36 years of clinical experience, is the author of Doing Family Therapy and Doing Couple Therapy. He provides clinical trainings nationally and is a former member of the improv troupe The Improfessionals.

 

116 - The Waking Dream

Rubin Naiman

Could it be that dreaming isn’t merely “the royal road to the unconscious,” as Freud called it, but the actual territory? Maybe dreams aren’t cloaked messages from our deeper self, but direct experiences of it. In fact, dreaming doesn’t just happen during nightly REM periods--it takes place throughout the waking day. This waking dream is a universal human phenomenon--a wondrous and accessible form of perception that reveals the sacredness behind all things. Through multimedia presentations, movement, guided imagery, and even a bit of liberating madness, this workshop will gently guide you through a personal experience of the waking dream and expand your awareness in a way that can recontextualize ordinary life events. These techniques aren’t meant to radically change your life, but rather to gently shift your attitude toward it.

Rubin Naiman, Ph.D., is the sleep and dream specialist and clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of Arizonas Center for Integrative Medicine. His publications include Healing Night, The Sleep Advisor and Healthy Sleep (with Andrew Weil).

 

117 - The Joys of Social Networking

Marina London and Michael Klaybor

You know there are a lot of new social-media technologies out there and suspect you really must learn them, but it’s just all too overwhelming. Help is here! If you can power-up a laptop, surf the Internet, and send an e-mail, you can easily learn to use these and other platforms to make new contacts, influence people, and increase your professional visibility. In this workshop, we’ll review--from a therapist’s perspective--the current social media, including Web 2.0, and the most important platforms--Twitter, Skype, Ning, blogging, etc. You’ll get hands-on practice at setting up a blog and leave the workshop having posted your first one! You’ll also learn how to set up an effective and professional Twitter presence. We’ll discuss the ethical, legal, and practice guidelines for these activities as well. Participants who want to learn how to Twitter and blog must bring their own laptops and be able to connect to the Internet.

Marina London, M.S.S.W., is the author of iWebU, a weekly blog about the Internet and new media for technophobic mental health professionals.

Michael Klaybor, Ed.D., a professional counselor for more than 25 years, has developed an online treatment program for women with high-risk pregnancies.

 

118 - The World of Magic

Jay Efran

Have you ever wanted to be able to keep other people spellbound? Here’s your chance. In this workshop, using everyday objects and easily assembled props, you’ll learn some of the secrets of practicing magic that have delighted people of all ages for thousands of years. The presenter, a magician and therapist, will discuss the principles of magic and explain how and why people willingly suspend their powers of observation and analysis in favor of enchantment. By the end of the day, you’ll have learned a series of mind-boggling magic effects for connecting with clients and young people, spicing up lectures, entertaining family and friends, and--who knows?--acquiring bewitching new clinical powers!

Jay Efran, Ph.D., is professor emeritus of psychology at Temple University. He’s coauthor of Language, Structure and Change: Frameworks of Meaning in Psychotherapy and The Tao of Sobriety: Helping You Recover from Alcohol and Drug Addiction.

 

119 - Embracing Our Polarities: A Day of Yoga

Amy Weintraub

In the West, we tend to think of Yoga as a routine of physical postures with perhaps some breathing exercises thrown in. But Yoga offers a profoundly rich tradition of practices engaging mind and body that help us fully open ourselves to life, whatever it may bring, embracing its complexities and contradictions as well as its glories. In this day-long workshop, we’ll practice ancient meditative forms of Yoga and Yogic self-inquiry that help us explore the dualities of existence. We’ll practice a mood-balancing Yoga meditation that takes us gently back and forth between negative and positive, hot and cold, comfort and discomfort, expanding the mind and opening the heart to accept and embrace nature’s inherent polarities. We’ll incorporate a variety of calming, meditative practices, physical warm-ups, and stretches, along with mantras and breathing exercises, that’ll leave us feeling more calm and grounded as well as more spacious and expansive, ready to welcome whatever comes our way with confidence and acceptance.

Amy Weintraub, M.F.A., ERYT500, is the author of Yoga for Depression and founder of the LifeForce Yoga Healing Institute. She’s a leader in the field of yoga and mental health and offers certification trainings for mental health professionals.

 

120 - Feng Shui from the Heart

Barry Gordon

Our physical surroundings exert a powerful influence on our sense of well-being and inner harmony, but most of us don’t know ways to improve the space around us. In this workshop, we’ll explore how our environment interacts with our intentions and discover how to adjust it both to create harmony in ourselves and open up possibilities in our lives. You’ll learn basic Feng Shui rules and how to apply them to the floor plan of your house. You’ll practice a simple Feng Shui meditation to increase your intuitive appreciation of your environment. You’ll also learn a ritual to clear negative energies from any location, and practice it by clearing your home at a distance through your floor plan. If you’d like the presenter to analyze your floor plan, provide an overhead transparency of it, and he’ll randomly choose three to discuss.

Barry Gordon, co-owner of the BTB Feng Shui Masters Training Program, has been an international Feng Shui practitioner and educator since 1984. Following a near-death experience in Vietnam, he’s explored shamanic work, spiritual practice, therapy, and esoteric studies for 30-plus years.

 

121 - Breathing into Full Aliveness

Jessica Dibb and Jim Morningstar

Breathing is the first and last act of our lives and our most important physiological function, but few of us know how to breathe in a way that improves our physical health, emotional well-being, and spiritual awareness, let alone how to share that knowledge with clients. In this workshop, we’ll practice breathing techniques and take a profound inner journey that relieves stress, promotes a healthier lifestyle, relieves chronic emotional pain, and encourages spiritual awakening. You’ll learn how to do belly-oriented breathing, which tones the parasympathetic nervous system, and heart-centered breathing, which affects the sympathetic nervous system and can heal the body at a deep level. This day of breathing will create a radical transformation for you as you experience how to use therapeutic integrative Breathwork to treat panic attacks, anxiety, traumatic stress, and other disorders in your clients not reached by more cognitive therapies.

Jessica Dibb is the founder and spiritual director of Inspiration Community, a nondenominational consciousness school that promotes personal, relational, and planetary wellness. She’s a coordinator of the International Breathwork Training Alliance.

Jim Morningstar, Ph.D., is director of Transformations Incorporated and a coordinator of International Breathwork Training Alliance. He’s the author of Breathing in Light and Love and Spiritual Psychology.

 

122 - The Eye of the Soul: Experiencing Nature through Photography

Dick Anderson

Evocative photographs create a bridge between the outside world and our inner life journey. In this workshop, we’ll explore our relationship to the world of nature through photography. We’ll begin with a brief orientation, discussing sample photographs not just as records of specific surroundings but as statements about the photographer’s essential character and world view. Then each of us will spend a solitary, meditative morning in Rock Creek Park just outside the conference hotel. Our goal will be to capture the essence of our inner experience of this natural setting in a single photograph. After lunch we’ll gather to share our images with each other--not to critique them, but to appreciate the remarkable variety of human experience they represent. Bring your digital camera with your USB cable, a laptop computer if you wish to share your images electronically, and appropriate outdoor clothing rain or sunshine.

Dick Anderson, M.A., president of AdVentures and StockPhotoVentures.com, is a wilderness photographer who’s canoed and trekked extensively in the wilds of northern Canada and Alaska. He’s the creative consultant for the Psychotherapy Networker.

 

123 - A Day of QiGong

Patrick Dougherty

Qigong, an ancient Chinese mindfulness practice derived from Taoist traditions, is an elegantly simple, but powerful, way of balancing one’s energy to reduce stress, promote health, slow aging, and enhance emotional well-being. The regular practice of Qigong unblocks the flow of energy though the body, which helps treat and prevent many illnesses. At a deeper level, the practice offers greater engagement and more profound connection with all life. In this workshop, you’ll learn the simple movements, visualizations, and breathing exercises of this tradition from a Western psychotherapist who teaches Qigong and is himself the student of a Qigong master. When practiced regularly, these movements can be an antidote to emotional fatigue, burnout, anxiety, depression, and physical ailments. By helping you balance your own energy, practicing Qigong makes you more acutely aware when others are out of balance, which can enhance your therapeutic alliance.

Patrick Dougherty, M.A., is a licensed psychologist who’s been in private practice for more than 30 years. He’s been teaching Qigong for over 14 years, and is the author of Qigong in Psychotherapy: You Can Do So Much By Doing So Little and the forthcoming A Whole-Hearted Embrace: Finding Love at the Center of Everything.

 

124 - The Journey to Oneness: The Four Levels of Consciousness

Rudolph Bauer

In the world’s contemplative traditions, the spiritual journey involves an expansion of consciousness from everyday experience to a broader awareness of oneness with the universe. In this day-long experiential workshop on meditation, we’ll explore the stages of this journey, beginning with a heightened appreciation of “standard issue” thinking, sensation, and fantasy. From there, we’ll focus on the fundamental meditative awareness that we’re not our thoughts and feelings. We’ll proceed to an “awareness of awareness,” in which we give up our life’s storyline and experience no longer being fused with our normal identities, but rather experience the field of awareness as our own self. We’ll even explore the fourth, and rarest, level: the sense of pure awareness or pure radiant void, a mystical state achieved at the highest levels of Tibetan Buddhism. While achieving the final state may be a long shot in this one-day workshop, you’ll experience a rich and profound voyage to the edges of your current state of awareness.

Rudolph Bauer, Ph.D., director of the Gestalt Therapy Training Center in Washington, D.C., and codirector of the Washington Center for Consciousness Studies, has published extensively on existential psychotherapy and studied with many Tibetan Dzogchen and Chinese Qigong masters.

 

125 - The Creative Challenges of the Midlife Crisis

Kathleen Brehony

Whether it happens at age 35, 45, 55, or even later, there may come a time in life when we find ourselves questioning everything we thought we knew about who we are and what we want out of life. In this experiential workshop, we’ll explore the psychological, physical, relational, and professional angst that can threaten to tear down our carefully constructed houses of identity. You’ll learn why this often painful period can be an opportunity to reclaim parts of your lost identity and do some of the real growing up that you may have postponed for years. You’ll leave with five strategic tools for successfully navigating this difficult and promising state of being: Building Containers; Dreamwork; Creativity; the Life of the Spirit; and Living in the Body. We’ll also examine inspiring examples of individuals who succeeded in using the midlife transition to reclaim their authentic selves and live with deeper peace and greater passion.

Kathlenn Brehony, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and life coach in Manteo, North Carolina, is the author of the bestsellers Awakening at Midlife; Ordinary Grace; and After the Darkest Hour.

 

126 - Getting Unstuck: Energy Psychology as a Pathway to Creative Flow

Dawson Church and David Feinstein

Are there intentions you’ve held for years that never seem to manifest? Are there patterns in your life that keep repeating despite all the therapy and personal-growth techniques you’ve tried? In this experiential, hands-on workshop, we’ll play freely with the techniques of Energy Psychology to help you unblock the creative flow you intuitively sense is possible in your life. Combining individual work in your chair, the power of the group’s dynamics, and onstage demonstrations, you’ll be able to focus on any area you wish--from irrational fears, anger, and guilt to obstacles to success, interpersonal difficulties, or anxiety about the future.

Dawson Church, Ph.D., the founder Soul Medicine Institute, is the author of The Genie in Your Genes and the editor of the peer-reviewed journal Energy Psychology.

David Feinstein, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist whose five books on energy healing have each won a national award. He and his wife, Donna Eden, coauthored The Promise of Energy Psychology with EFT founder Gary Craig.

 

127 - Ethical Issues in 21^st Century Practice

Mary Jo Barrett

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.

 

128 - Beginning Your Career

Lynn Grodzki

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.

 

Download PDF Thursday Workshops here.