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WORKSHOP DESCRIPTIONS

Agenda | Workshop Descriptions | Location, Fees & CE Credits | Registration Form

Friday Morning Yoga Session: Ruthy Kaiser, MFT, RN
Start your day with a half hour practice of gentle yoga that will be suitable for all levels, including beginners. The session will also include brief guided meditation. No prior experience necessary. Please bring a mat or blanket and wear comfortable clothing. Please arrive early to find the room, settle in, and not disrupt the class in session.

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A) Transforming Patterns of Intergenerational Abuse
Rita DeMaria, Ph.D., LMFT

Overview: Often within the context of culture and community, patterns of attachment are transmitted from one generation to the next. Clients often perpetuate family legacies of insecure and unstable relationships, family violence, and abuse and individual trauma. In the most serious situations, patterns of control, aggression, abuse, and violence result in intimate couple violence, child abuse and neglect and emotional and behavioral problems. This workshop will review the literature on transmission of intergenerational patterns of violence with a focus on strategies for strengthening secure attachment. Clinical assessment and intervention with individuals and couples will be presented.

This workshop is designed to help you:

1. Provide an overview of intergenerational patterns of attachment;
2. Learn how to draw the boundary lines between anger, corporal punishment, abuse and violence;
3. Explore how couple relationships mediate transmission of intergenerational patterns;
4. Identify strategies for helping individuals and couples transform patterns of anger, abuse, and violence and mend broken relationship bonds.

Learning Methods: Interaction and lecture

 

B) The Principles and Practices of Spiritual Psychology
Leah Brecher-Cohn, LMFT, MA, MS

Overview: Our clients are doing their best to deal with a rapidly changing, stressful world, needing practical tools and techniques to overcome and make sense of their challenges. Therapists are being called upon to help. But can traditional psychology address the multi-layered issues of the 21st century?

Psychology is generally defined as "the science of mind and behavior," but that definition does not take into account the whole person. It leaves out a critical aspect of the human experience - the spiritual dimension. Everywhere we look there are books, films and conversations with spiritual themes, evidencing an increasing hunger for practices and applications of faith. There is a need to bring the spiritual dimension to the therapeutic setting.

Spiritual Psychology is the application of spiritual concepts and practices to psychological processes in order to heal unresolved issues and navigate more smoothly through life's challenges. In this workshop we will learn about spiritual psychology's application to ourselves and our work with clients. Through presentation, discussion, case examples, exercises, and reflection, we will become better equipped to support our clients in improving.

This workshop is designed to help you:

1. Understand Spiritual Psychology;
2. Understand the critical role of the therapist in Spiritual Psychology;
3. Experience Basic Skills and Practices of Spiritual Psychology;
4. Apply some of the Spiritual Psychology techniques to their own cases.

Learning Methods: Interaction and lecture

 

C) Reunification Therapy: A complicated Solution for the Complicated Problem of Post-Divorce Visitation Refusal
Michele Southworth, JD, LMFT & Priscilla Singleton, LCSW, LMFT

Overview: Sometimes a parent can lose contact with a child during the challenging and confusing process of separation and divorce. This is sometimes referred to as visitation refusal, and has also been described as "parent alienation," a term with a complex and controversial history. When this happens, it is devastating to the family, and the careful, prompt intervention of a team of professionals is the treatment of choice to decrease the likelihood of lifelong difficulties.

Practitioners who are asked to intervene in these cases often feel ill-prepared to deal with the intensity of emotion and the conflicting agendas that parents and children typically bring to these situations. This workshop will present a team treatment model for these cases which will give practitioners a place to start, and will identify resources that may be helpful in these cases. The workshop will consider the need for practitioner self-care in order to minimize the risk of professional burn-out, which can be significant when working with these cases.

This workshop is designed to help you:

1. Gain familiarity with the history of the controversy related to the term "parent alienation";
2. Develop a team treatment model that optimizes the possibility of restoring functioning relationships within the divorced family;
3. Learn about the necessary elements of self-care for the practitioner working with high conflict families of divorce, which promote therapist effectiveness and well-being.

Learning Methods: Interaction and lecture

 

D) Addiction and its Challenges
William Coffey, MSS, LCSW

Overview: Alcoholism and drug addiction affect not only the individual addict but also non-addicted family members. In the context of a relationship, the effects can be devastating, and in some cases irreversible. However, in all addicted relationships certain dynamics occur which create distance and feelings of insecurity. From an attachment theory perspective, it seems that the abuser has developed a 'secure' relationship with the substance (or behavior) shutting out the non-addicted family member who is left to wonder where they fit in the addict's life, as well as feeling unsafe.

This workshop is designed to help you:

1. Examine the various ways that the addiction affects the family using Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) concepts;
2. Discuss interventions to enable the family to achieve and maintain the new homeostasis that sobriety brings about in the family system.

Learning Methods: Interaction and lecture

 

E) The Healing Power of the Family: Turning pathological Patterns into Healing Power
Matthew Purinton, MSW, LSW

Overview: This workshop will explore the differences between the prevailing Biomedical Model and Mind-Body Systemic Models of therapy. Issues related to management of pain, loss, trauma and uncertainty will be examined within a framework of meaning. The difference between chronic illness and disability will be explored and its implications for identity formation will be examined. The ways in which the sick role impacts the various subsystems of the family will be articulated. Treatment options for helping clients with chronic pain that harnesses the mind-body connection will be experienced. Ways for integrating therapeutic elements like mindfulness into pain management for couple and family therapy will be demonstrated. A conceptual framework for understanding the psychosocial challenges of living with a disability will be explored. Real world applications of individually based interventions within a systemic framework will be discussed during this workshop.

This workshop is designed to help you:

1. Apply a systemic, family based model of therapy for chronic illness, disability, and psychosomatic diseases;
2. Learn the major components of the Biomedical and the Biopsychosocial models and understand their implications for the treatment of chronic illness, disability and psychosomatic disorders;
3. Utilize techniques demonstrated in the workshop to successfully intervene with clients dealing with pain;
4. Successfully predict obstacles for families dealing with medical issues;
5. Learn models of disability and how to break through preconceived notions of disability;
6. Work with clients to manage the ambiguous loss and trauma associated with disability;
7. Assist clients with breakthrough pain.

Learning Methods: Interaction and lecture

 

F) The Parenting Challenge: Parenting Adolescents with Broken Attachments
Angelle Richardson, Ph.D., LPC

Overview: This workshop will focus on adolescents who have broken attachments and have been through challenging situations, including: adopted adolescents, adolescents who have been in foster care and adolescents who have suffered losses. This workshop will teach clinicians how to assist parents in understanding their children's behavior, help parents navigate loss with their children, and identify ways to connect with their adolescents and improve communication.

This workshop is designed to help you:

1. Normalize adolescents' behavior for parents;
2. Identify ways to help navigate loss for adolescents;
3. Recognize ways to improve parent/child communication.

Learning Methods: Interaction and lecture

For more information on the 2011 Annual Conference, please contact Gina Neri, Marketing & Development Associate, at 215-382-6680 x3124.