WSPP will be having a slightly reduced, Four Fridays 2020-2021 program. (Membership dues will be proportionally reduced to $100, and will include free registration for the Four Friday seminars).
The programs will be via Zoom. Some seminars will include virtual breakout groups to provide more experiential learning and opportunities for connecting with each other. We have a terrific program lined up.
Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes: A Polyvagal Guide to Navigating the Nervous System Theory
September 25, 2020, 9:30am-12:30pm
Deborah A. Dana, LICSW
Note: This seminar counts toward the CE Licensure requirements for Trauma.
Please note that a recording of the seminar will be available for WSPP members who attend the Sept 25 seminar. Non-members are welcome to join in order to access this recording and get free access to the our other Friday seminars.
The time for the September 25th Seminar has been changed to 9:30am – 12:30pm. Given this change we are extending registration (new registrations or cancellations) to noon on Wednesday, 9/23. You must provide an accurate email address to us to ensure that you receive the Zoom link to this presentation. The Zoom link will come directly from Deb Dana. If you haven’t already registered, it’s not too late. Please email our Membership Chairperson Jenny Craig (email Jenny Craig) with your name and email address and let her know that you’re mailing in your registration. The registration form is here and the membership form is here.
Description:
The autonomic nervous system is at the heart of daily living, powerfully shaping our experiences of safety and influencing our capacity for connection. What begins with our biology becomes the story that shapes our days. Polyvagal Theory provides a guide to the autonomic circuits that underlie behaviors and beliefs and an understanding of the body- to- brain pathways that give birth to our personal stories of safety and survival.
Guided by Polyvagal Theory, we have a deep understanding of the ways experience shapes the nervous system and of the pathways that lead to healing. We now know that trauma interrupts the development of autonomic regulation and sidetracks building the circuitry of safe connection. Polyvagal Theory provides a new approach to working with the characteristic post-traumatic patterns of hyperarousal, hypervigilance, disconnection, and numbing and strategies to reliably lead our clients into the autonomically regulated state of safety that is necessary for successful trauma treatment.
In this workshop you will learn the language of the nervous system, map your own autonomic pathways, and discover how to become a regulating resource for others.
Special Follow-Up October 2nd Consultation Session with Deborah Dana, LCSW
10:00 am-12:00 noon
Limited to 16, NOW FULL
Learning Objectives (bearing in mind take-home applicability for participants’ practices):
At the conclusion of this presentation, participants will be able to:
- Utilize the Personal Profile Map to describe the autonomic hierarchy
- Explain how neuroception shapes behavior
- Discuss how to use the co-regulating pathways of the Social Engagement System to send cues of safety
Presenter Bio:
Deborah A. Dana, LCSW is a clinician and consultant specializing in working with complex trauma. She is a consultant to the Traumatic Stress Research Consortium in the Kinsey Institute, clinical advisor to Khiron Clinics, and an advisor to Unyte. She developed the Rhythm of Regulation Clinical Training Series and lectures internationally on ways Polyvagal Theory informs work with trauma survivors. Deb is the author of The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation, Polyvagal Exercises for Safety and Connection: 50 Client-Centered Practices, co-editor of Clinical Applications of the Polyvagal Theory: The Emergence of Polyvagal-Informed Therapies, and creator of the Polyvagal Flip Chart.
Bears, Otters, Daddies, Twinks: Modern Gay Identities and Sexualities
November 13, 2020, 9:30am – 12:30pm
Michael A. Giordano, LICSW, AASECT
Note: This seminar counts toward CE’s in LGBTQ and Cultural Competence.
Description:
PrEP. TasP. Top. Bottom. Truple. Bears. Same Gender Loving. Scruff. Grindr. Daddy. Boy. Queer.
Are you familiar with these terms? If not, don’t feel bad about it. Most therapists have experience working with gay men, but some find themselves wanting for a bit more information. This workshop will take a deeper dive into the identities formed around sexual orientation as well as how some gay men explore and experience their sexuality and relationships. We will discuss terminology and concepts, while also exploring some, perhaps, unconscious biases you may have as a therapist. Using a sexual health assessment tool, you will learn how to assess your biases and, perhaps, open up your therapeutic perspective. Come prepared to talk, ask questions, and discuss.
Learning Objectives (bearing in mind take-home applicability for participants’ practices):
At the conclusion of this presentation, participants will be able to:
- Articulate what PrEP & TasP are and the benefits of each.
- Describe how internal biases around gay/queer men’s sexual expression can be identified and challenged.
- Utilize the principles of sexual health to evaluate biases regarding gay men’s sexual expressions.
Presenter Bio:
Based in Washington, DC, Michael Giordano is a Clinical Social Worker and AASECT certified sex therapist. While serving a wide range of clients and their concerns, his main interests are gender identity, trauma, and sex therapy. He is a member of several professional organizations, including the Greater Washington Society of Clinical Social Work and the Community-Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities (CARAS). Mike particularly enjoys presenting to colleagues on ethics and bias-examination, as it appeals to the social justice aspect of his social work training. Mike is also an avid yogi, comic book geek, and harried dad. www.WhatIHearYouSaying.com, Mike.Giordano.MSW@gmail.com
Express Yourself: Tales from Internal Attachment Models
Friday, January 22, 2021, 11:30am – 2:30pm
Sue Marriott, LCSW, CGP
Registration Deadline is January 18th. Everyone will receive an individually encrypted Zoom link (coming from SecureVideo). We need to have your name and correct email address so we can send these individualized links. This takes time, so we are setting a deadline of registration by January 22, to ensure adequate time to send out individualized links. (Seminar links will come from SecureVideo account of Lynn Hamerling. It will not say WSPP in the email subject line).
Description:
“Come on girls
You believe in love
‘Cause I’ve got something to say about it
And it goes something like this…”
How we express ourselves unconsciously reveals much about our early attachment experiences. It’s literally not what we say, but how we say it. As a result of early relationships, we develop internal working models about what happens to our safety and needs in relationships. Identifying these can help us re-write our scripts about attachment.
Using an intersubjective lens, we will integrate the original attachment research with recent advances in relational neuroscience. Attachment has been popularized and in so doing, the original research has been diluted and is often misunderstood. Recent findings in neuroscience have also been exciting, but many therapists may struggle with incorporating it into their psychological thinking without turning it into psychoeducation or unintentionally narrowing their clinical eye. This seminar will touch on Mary Ainsworth’s surprising and often-overlooked contribution to the literature, and draw out Mary Main’s elucidation of the unconscious embodiment of our early experiences (internal working models).
The focus of our time together will be translating that rich body of research into practical clinical application — how things look in session and discerning the path to the North Star of attachment security. The presenter will demonstrate the Modern Attachment Regulation Spectrum (a popular tool they developed in their teaching through the podcast Therapist Uncensored) as an aid in thinking about and using the research of the relational sciences. Our aim is to discover and change unconscious internal working models – ours and theirs.
Learning Objectives (bearing in mind take-home applicability for participants’ practices):
At the conclusion of this presentation, participants will be able to:
- Explain how one expresses themselves reveals signs of their attachment history.
- Apply 1 relational neuroscience concept in developing an intervention in a case example.
- Given an anxious/preoccupied case example, provide the general clinical direction one employs in moving toward attachment security.
- Describe an intervention to gain cooperation from a client who is unconsciously resisting with a dismissing state of mind.
- Apply the Modern Attachment Regulation Spectrum to a case.
Presenter Bio
Sue Marriott is a clinical social worker and certified group psychotherapist. She has served on the Board of the Austin Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology and is past-President of the Austin Group Psychotherapy Society. She also co-founded the non-profit Austin IN (interpersonal neurobiology) Connection, which brings study and training of the relational sciences to the public.
Outside of hanging with her 3 almost grown children, Sue has the most fun co-hosting the top-rated podcast Therapist Uncensored. This show brings the relational sciences to the world and has found a surprising level of interest, as it has over 1 million downloads and is heard in 172 countries.
Shame and Her Wicked Sister, Humiliation: Hidden Dimensions of the Treatment of Trauma
March 12, 2021, 9:30 am-12:30 pm
Richard Chefetz, MD
Note: This seminar counts toward the CE Licensure requirements for Trauma.
Registration deadline is March 7th. Everyone will receive an individually encrypted Zoom link (coming from SecureVideo). We need to have your name and correct email address so we can send these individualized links. This takes time, so we are setting a deadline of registration by March 7th to ensure adequate time to send out individualized links. (Seminar links will come from SecureVideo account of Lynn Hamerling. It will not say WSPP in the email subject line).
Description:
Acute shame is distinguished from chronic shame by feeling like “I have been bad,” where the latter is an eternity of “I am bad.” In chronic shame a person tends to feel unlovable, and of no value. In humiliation the interminable badness of chronic shame morphs to feeling broken, defective beyond redemption. The humiliator often fully intends to shame. The impact is devastating, and when the humiliator takes pleasure in the collapse of their target, the sadism crushes the soul. While shame and humiliation are sister emotions, they are not the same. In this presentation, the differences between shame and humiliation are mapped out, and clinical vignettes will be used to illustrate the value of making these powerful emotional experiences distinct in the clinical dialogue.
Learning Objectives (bearing in mind take-home applicability for participants’ practices):
At the conclusion of this presentation, participants will be able to:
- Describe the difference between the words affect, feeling, and emotion as well as the clinical utility of distinguishing between them.
- Describe the process by which shame and rage become welded together and the utility of this constellation of affects.
- Differentiate shame and humiliation and describe the utility of these differences in psychotherapeutic discourse.
Presenter Bio:
Richard A. Chefetz, M.D. is a psychiatrist in private practice in Washington, D.C. He was President of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (2002-3), Co-Founder and Chair of their Dissociative Disorders Psychotherapy Training Program (2000-2008), and is a Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology. He is also a faculty member at the Washington School of Psychiatry, the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis, and the Washington Center for Psychoanalysis. He is a Certified Consultant at the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, and is trained in Level I and II EMDR. Dr. Chefetz was editor of “Dissociative Disorders: An Expanding Window into the Psychobiology of Mind” for the Psychiatric Clinics of North America, March 2006, “Neuroscientific and Therapeutic Advances in Dissociative Disorders,” Psychiatric Annals, August 2005, and “Multimodal Treatment of Complex Dissociative Disorders,” Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 20:2, 2000, as well as numerous journal articles on psychodynamic perspectives on trauma, dissociation, and clinical process. He recently published a book with Norton (2015), in their Interpersonal Neurobiology series, Intensive Psychotherapy for Persistent Dissociative Processes: The Fear of Feeling Real, http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Intensive-Psychotherapy-for-Persistent-Dissociative-Processes/