Addiction Conferences and Continuing Educations for Mental Health Professionals with CE Credits for Eating Disorder, Sexual Addiction, Behavioral Mental Health Issues by the Ben Franklin Institute Nationwide.

 

ThursdayMarch 18th, 2010

Solution-Orientated Approaches to Rapid Change: Drawing on Positive Psychology and the New Brain Science to make Your Work More Joyful and Effective

BILL O’HANLON, MS, LMFT

8:30-10:00am

Recent years have seen a shift in focus from what is wrong with people (diagnosis of deficits and damage) to what is right with people (strengths, competence and abilities). This approach has been validated by recent research findings about the plasticity of the brain and on what makes us happy and gives our lives meaning. Translating this research into practical interventions isn't always obvious. This talk, inspiring as well as informative, by Bill O'Hanlon, author or 28 books including Change 101 and Do One Thing Different (featured on Oprah), will help professionals by providing the tools to more rapidly join with clients and help them change. It can make your work easier, more cooperative and more joyful.

Trauma Model Therapy: Principles and Strategies

COLIN ROSS, MD

10:30-12:00pm

Brief Strategic Treatment for Anxiety Disorders: Winning the Anxiety Game

REID WILSON PHD

Practical methods enable clients to find the courage and motivation to challenge their old beliefs and attitudes by ignoring the content of their worries and exploring uncertainty rather than fleeing from it.

From Positive Psychology to Effective Pschotherapy

BILL O'Hanlon, MS LMFT

Attachment Deficits & Axis II Defenses: Resourcing the Resistant Client

MAUREEN O'CONNOR-STROUT, MC, NCC, LPC

1:15-2:45pm

Better than Prozac: Using the New Brain Science to Relieve Depression & Anxiety

BILL O’HANLON, MS, LMFT

3:15-4:45pm

Recent research and insights have given a new understanding of depression, not as a deficit in chemicals, but as a problem with neurogenesis (new brain growth and connection). Antidepressants may work by promoting brain cell and neuronal growth and connection, but there are other ways, within the grasp of therapists, counselors and addiction specialists that can make an immediate and lasting difference in helping relieve depression. This session will give three simple methods for relieving depression using insights from recent brain science.

Handling OCD: the Four Primary Homework Assignments

REID WILSON, PHD

In this presentation help clients challenge their dysfunctional beliefs by reframing the nature of OCD through four simple but provocative guidelines.

Trauma Model Therapy of Self Mutilation

COLIN ROSS, MD

Getting your Life in Flow: The Essence of Happiness

REID WILSON, PHD

EVENING PRESENTATION 7:00-8:00pm

We’ll have fun with Dr. Wilson tonight as we learn how to feel more satisfied about our past, optimistic about our future and engaged in the present.

FridayMarch 19th, 2010

Trauma and Neuroscience: The Connection

DOUGLAS BREMNER, MD

8:30-10:00am

The past two decades have seen a rapid expansion of knowledge about the effects of traumatic stress on the brain. Brain Imaging studies have implicated areas including the hippocampus, amygdale and medical prefrontal cortex in PTSD. These studies followed up preclinical studies showing that stress is associated with changes in hippocampal morphology, inhibition of neurogenesis, and memory deficits. Other brain areas implicated in the fear response include the amygdakla, which plays a critical role in the formation of fear memories, and the frontal cortex, which shuts off or extinguishes fear memories.

The Synchronicity of Mindfulness Practices and Neurofeedback in the Treatment of Addiction and Co-morbid Affective Disorders

SHARI CORBITT, Psy.D

10:30-12:00pm

This workshop will look at the ways in which neurofeedback and mindfulness practices support a greater degree of engagement in resdiential treatment of individuals with substance use disorders and co-morbid affective disorders.

The Dissociative Structural Model: A way of Understanding PTSD

COLIN ROSS, MD

The Trauma Live On: Adult Children of Unfaithful Parents

DENNIS ORTMAN, PHD

Neuroscience and Brain Imaging of Trauma: Related Mental Disorders

DOUGLAS BREMNER, MD

1:15-2:45pm

The past decade has seen an explosion in the application of neuroimaging sciences to abuse-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other trauma-related psychiatric disorders. This presentation will discuss key research findings in PTSD and trauma related disorders.

Vicarious Trauma: Protecting the Front Line

LAURIE PEARLMAN, PHD

Therapies with trauma survivors can exact an emotional toll on therapists and other trauma workers, leaving them feeling isolated and traumatized by their work. This process, vicarious traumatization (VT), is a transformation in the helper’s inner experience that results from empathic engagement with trauma survivors and a sense of commitment or responsibility to help. The effects of VT are cumulative, across clients, and extend beyond professional settings, into the personal and interpersonal world of the therapist or other trauma helper. In this workshop, Dr. Laurie Pearlman will discuss the impact of vicarious traumatization, some contributing factors, and ways of coping with VT, and vicarious transformation.

A Mindful Approach to Therapy: Freud meets Buddha

DENNIS ORTMAN, PHD

Brain Imaging in Anxiety Disorders

DOUGLAS BREMNER, MD

3:15-4:45pm

Time to Say Goodbye: Ending Trauma Relationships

LAURIE PEARLMAN, PHD

Terminations in long-term psychotherapy with complex trauma survivors present many challenges. These therapies may end for a variety of reasons, including that the work is complete; it has reached an impasse and one party (or both) decides to end treatment. The processing of the termination and its meaning to both parties is essential to the integration of the termination process into the therapeutic process.

Integrated Experiential Therapy: Engaging the Body, Mind and Spirit to Disarm Defenses

DAWN ZURLINDEN, LCSW, MSSW

It’s been said that addiction is a treatment-resistant disease. When therapeutically framed, the simple act of physically stepping forward can have the power to shift resistance to willingness. Suddenly therapy becomes an event, instead of a discussion of an event. Experiential techniques, integrated with emphasis on the response of the body, promote spontaneous responses that short-circuit intellectualization. They offer opportunities to take present-moment actions, using the creative capacity of the mind as well as somatic awareness and expression of the spirit. This session will include demonstration and interactive immersion, providing the environment to experience the effect of varied experiential techniques. The participants will get to use the creative process to develop and practice pieces relevant to their specific treatment populations and situations.

SaturdayMarch 20th, 2010

Reconsidering Trauma: Treatment Advances, Relational Issues and Mindfulness

JOHN BRIERE, PHD

8:30-10:00am

This presentation provides an overview of the simple and more complex of the psychological trauma, and outlines recent developments in the treatment of posttraumatic difficulties, including relational processing, titrated exposure, cognitive reconsideration and mindfulness interventions.

Eliminating Self Defeating Behaviors: A Cognitive Behavioral Model

ROBERT ACKERMAN, PHD

10:30-12:00pm

This workshop will focus on identifying and eliminating behaviors that cause defeat and harm to people. Many “self-defeating” behaviors often are behaviors that once helped a person survive a crisis. Once the crisis is over the behaviors, even though no longer needed, are maintained. Instead of helping the person they now cause harm by limiting the potential to develop healthy behaviors. Some examples of self-defeating behaviors include procrastination, defensiveness, perfectionism, under—achievement, isolating yourself, taking too much control in relationships, workaholism and so on. Using a cognitive behavioral approach, eliminating self-defeating behaviors and replacing them with life enhancing skills will be the goal of the workshop.

Integrating Mindfulness into Trauma Therapy

JOHN BRIERE, PHD

Buddist mindfulness practices reflect a 2,500 year old model for the remediation of psychological suffering. Much more recently, western psychology has developed techniques for treating the effects of trauma. This presentation outlines ways in which these two surprisingly compatible approaches can be integrated in trauma therapy.

EMDR: Trauma Therapy Powertool

LAUREL PARNELL, PHD

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a powerful and effective therapy for treating trauma-based problems. This revolutionary therapy has helped thousands of people recover from such traumas as war, accidents, assaults, disasters and childhood abuse. In addition to the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, EMDR is also used to treat the psychological effects of smaller traumas that manifest as symptoms of depression, anxiety, phobias, low self-esteem, creativity blocks and relationship difficulties. There are more controlled research studies on EMDR for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder than any other therapy-most with positive results. Dr. Parnell will describe EMDR's discovery and development, EMDR's theoretical model, the structure of an EMDR processing session, and present cases from her books. A brief question and answer session will conclude the presentation.

Understanding and Treating Complex Psychological Trauma

JOHN BRIERE, PHD

1:15-2:45pm

Based on his, Principles of Trauma Therapy, Dr. John Briere will present a non-pathologizing, developmentally-informed approach to the treatment of complex posttraumatic presentations. A central premise of this perspective is that dissociation; substance abuse, self-mutilation, and many other "dysfunctional" behaviors are adaptive strategies that cannot be cured as much as rendered unnecessary by effective treatment.

Appreciating Gender Differences in Treatment and Recovery from Chemical Dependency

ROBERT ACKERMAN, PHD

1:15-2:45pm

This workshop will focus on developing an appreciation for gender differences in the treatment and recovery from alcohol and drug addiction and other problems. Additionally it will focus on how dysfunctional families effect gender development and, in turn, to assess how this development effects personal change for females and males. This workshop will not treat women and men from dysfunctional families or addicted individuals as victims, but rather as survivors and will concentrate on strengths found in those from dysfunctional families regardless of adverse conditions. An internal and external model for intervention will be presented.

Attachment-Focused EMDR: A Client-Centered Therapy for Healing Childhood Trauma and Neglect

LAUREL PARNELL, PHD

Attachment-focused EMDR is a new model of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) developed over a period of nineteen years by psychologist and EMDR trainer Dr. Laurel Parnell that adapts this powerful and effective trauma therapy to the needs of clients with attachment wounds. In this workshop you will learn how the standard EMDR protocol can be modified so that it flows more easily, supports client safety, maintains the therapeutic connection and enhances attunement. Attachment-focused EMDR is client-centered and emphasizes a reparative therapeutic relationship, using a combination of Resource Tapping (Parnell, 2008) to strengthen clients, EMDR to process traumas and talk therapy to help integrate the information from the EMDR sessions and to provide healing from therapist-client interaction.

In this workshop Dr. Parnell will present the five basic principles of Attachment-Focused EMDR and how they are implemented in the treatment of traumatized clients with attachment wounds. Case material and video clips of sessions will be used to illustrate key points.

Lust, Anger, Love: Treating the Sexually Addicted Client

MAUREEN CANNING, MA, LMFT

3:15-4:45pm

The dynamics specific to sexual addiction set it apart from other addictive processes. This workshop will educate interventionist in understanding these dynamics and the complexities specific to sexual compulsive behaviors. By discussing the ideology of sexual disorders, exploring the cycle specific to sexual addiction and understanding the criteria for sexual addiction treatment the interventionist will receive valuable knowledge to enhance their intervention skills.

Perfect Daughters: Adult Daughters of Alcoholics and Other Traumas

ROBERT ACKERMAN, PHD

This workshop will focus on the concerns, emotions, and recovery issues for adult daughters of alcoholics and other dysfunctional families. The workshop is based on Dr. Ackerman’s work and research with more than 1200 women in the United States. Identification of problems for adult daughters and intervention techniques will be presented. The workshop will focus additionally on the positive and as well as the negative characteristics and behaviors of adult daughters with a special emphasis on the transitions necessary to achieve a more balanced and healthy life.

Resource Tapping: Activating your Healing Resources through Bilateral Stimulation

LAUREL PARNELL, PHD

Resource Tapping is a clinically recognized therapy to activate your inner strength through bilateral stimulation of the brain. In this workshop based on Dr. Parnell’s book Tapping In you will learn this groundbreaking system for tapping both sides of the body to release emotional and physical distress, aid in healing, and calm the body on a deep physiological level. World-renowned EMDR expert Dr. Parnell will guide you through a series of easy-to-learn exercises to access your “latent positive resources”—the neurological foundation for your internal resilience and sense of safety.

Advanced Clinical Training for Therapists and Counselors

CONFERENCE DESCRIPTION:

Ben Franklin Institute, producer of The Summit for Clinical Excellence Conference is the premiere provider of continuing education for behavioral health, mental health and addiction professionals. We bring together the best and brightest trainers from many disciplines offering a broader perspective; to help our therapists and counselors better address the issues that their client is facing day to day.

CONFERENCE OBJECTIVES:

1. To identify specific diagnostic and treatment approaches, counseling skills andmodalities that will be successfully applied to the fields of mental health, behavioral health and addictive disorders; including but not limited to: psychological resistance, anxiety disorders, EMDR, therapeutic mindfulness, self-mutilation, resilience and counseling, neuroscience and trauma and related psychological and behavioral disorders.

2. To learn the symptoms and characteristics of the disorders mentioned in objective #1 and how they have interfered with the clients’ interpersonal and family relationships. To participate in skill building workshops and unique training that offer cognitive and experiential clinical techniques; to assist in patient/client recovery from these listed disorders.