This highly interactive, case-based, full day seminar will provide attendees with an opportunity to discuss a variety of ethical issues related to mental health and addiction services.  We will begin by reviewing a practical approach to ethical analysis that will help the attendees better manage ethical issues that they encounter in their professional lives.   More...

 

Until now passivity has been one of the least studied, discussed, and explained aspects of human behavior. The fields of psychology, personal growth, and recovery have completely ignored it. Understanding passivity is an essential and important key to creating healthy relationships, increasing self-esteem, and healing the bodies, minds, and spirits of individuals who are hurting or hurting others, and doing so without shame. In order to lead a fulfilling life, a person must overcome passivity, become compassionately assertive, and ultimately remember who he/she were meant to be, wanted to be, and not settle for a half-lived life characterized by quiet desperation, frustration, and settling. This workshop addresses the ever-increasing problems passivity presents to marriages, communication, conflict resolution, and stress. This material will positively impact individuals, groups, and families and does so without shaming those who lives may be less than what they’d hoped. As people recognize passivity and begins to understand and address it, they are building the foundation necessary to become creators of their worlds instead of feeling like the world controls them. These first steps allow people to become compassionately assertive with those they love and, in so doing, regain valuable insights into how to become the people they thought they would be, longed to be and, ultimately, can be, resulting in a fully-lived life.

 

Early life trauma can cause long-term and persisting changes to the brain and brain chemistry which can be measured and imaged, even decades after the childhood events. The presence (or absence) of childhood trauma can increase later-life vulnerability to addiction and mood disorders and also appears to influence which treatments are most effective.  More...

 

In this session we will review the developmental effects caused by unresolved trauma and its impact on the addictive client. Often these clients have a difficult time identifying, tolerating, and regulating their emotions. Therefore, it is important to provide an integrated approach that emphasizes mood state regulation. More...

 

 

A deep sense of shame often underlies and drives eating disorders (ED) and substance abuse (SA). When these two disorders co-occur, the level of shame intensifies.  More...

 

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or chronic Post Traumatic Stress comprises a series of symptoms that usually leaves the mind overwhelmed, broken, fragmented, disturbed, and over-reactive to stressful triggers. These symptoms can feel unbearable, make relationships disintegrate, tempt the use of addictive substances, incite suicidal ideation, and more.  More...

 

 

 

In this session Dr. Reimers will present an overview of various types of trauma, and offer views on the natural process of recovery versus non-recovery. Highlights include the inexplicable link between trauma and addictions; the role of avoidance and addiction as primary contributors in non-recovery, summarizing how avoidance serves to keep the trauma active in the present; and other variables that determine the likelihood of recovery. More.

As a universal experience, shame can be looked at as a gatekeeper to wellness. Shame has the power to color the filters through which we experience the world. This is not only true of our clients but is also true for us as helping professionals. In this extended session on shame, participants will participants will look at the developmental process of shame and how the powerful experience of shame impacts active addiction, treatment, as well as active recovery. Shame can be one of the largest obstacles to recovery, and yet we haven’t had many tools for addressing it.   More...