Tagged With "cognitive approaches"
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The Family Partnership: Leveraging a Two-Generation Approach to Improve Executive Function in Families
Three Change in Mind partners (The Family Partnership, Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, and Children & Families First in Delaware) were just recognized in an article about TFP’s Executive Functioning Across Generations. Reflection Sciences is the developer of the Minnesota Executive Function Scale, the best tool out there for measuring EF in kids. Here’s the link: ...
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The Healing Place Podcast - Dr. Kathleen Friend: The Greatness Chair
Kathleen Friend MD is a Child Psychiatrist, children’s author, musician and heart rhythm meditation teacher currently living in Tucson, Arizona. Her mission is to expand the paradigm of Child Psychiatry to embrace a holistic view of mind, body and spirit.
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The Healing Place Podcast - Dr. Kathleen Friend: The Greatness Chair
Kathleen Friend MD is a Child Psychiatrist, children’s author, musician and heart rhythm meditation teacher currently living in Tucson, Arizona. Her mission is to expand the paradigm of Child Psychiatry to embrace a holistic view of mind, body and spirit.
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The implicit bias of, “Mental Illness” and “mentally ill”, a lexicon of hurt.
How can we heal from the implicit bias of “ Mental Illness ” and “ mentally ill ”? I hear these words and it sounds like fingernails scraping down the chalkboard. “ The stain of dehumanization colors the mind, body and spirit and it is not so easily washed away.” - Michael Skinner Recently I read a blog post at the ACEsConnection website, “Erasing My ACES” by Sirena Wheeler. It was posted on April, 19, 2020. It struck a chord with me, many in fact and it put me on a spiral down memory lane.
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The implicit bias of, “Mental Illness” and “mentally ill”, a lexicon of hurt.
How can we heal from the implicit bias of “ Mental Illness ” and “ mentally ill ”? I hear these words and it sounds like fingernails scraping down the chalkboard. “ The stain of dehumanization colors the mind, body and spirit and it is not so easily washed away.” - Michael Skinner Recently I read a blog post at the ACEsConnection website, “Erasing My ACES” by Sirena Wheeler. It was posted on April, 19, 2020. It struck a chord with me, many in fact and it put me on a spiral down memory lane.
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The Surviving Spirit Newsletter May 2020
Hi Folks, The May edition of the Surviving Spirit Newsletter is posted at the website - http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/index.php or PDF - http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/pdfs/2020-05-The_Surviving_Spirit_Newsletter_May_2020.pdf To sign up for an e-mail copy, please write to me @ mikeskinner@comcast.net or sign up @ Website via Contact Us, Thanks! Michael . “ Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.” - Helen Keller The Surviving Spirit Newsletter May 2020 – please...
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The Surviving Spirit Newsletter November 2019
Hi Folks, The latest edition of the Surviving Spirit Newsletter is posted at the website - http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/index.php http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/pdfs/2019-11-The_Surviving_Spirit_Newsletter_November_2019.pdf To sign up for an e-mail copy, please write to me @ mikeskinner@comcast.net or sign up @ Website via Contact Us, Thanks! Michael. Healing the Heart Through the Creative Arts, Education & Advocacy Hope, Healing & Help for Trauma, Abuse &...
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Wellness and Resiliency Toolkit for Kids with Trauma
I'm excited to share a booklet created for youth in Oregon foster care at a Wellness camp this summer. Youth were provided with these quick, easy and effective (and evidence based) "Mindful Moments" exercises in their Wellness Toolkits and they were practiced throughout the day at camp so that they could be remembered in times of stress and dysregulation. The exercised are designed to quickly bring them back to a state of calm. The youth really enjoyed them, and found them easy and...
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What’s Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness? [Mindful Leader]
By David Treleaven A few months ago, a colleague who taught meditation in corporate settings asked for my advice. A woman in one of his programs had experienced sexual harassment in the workplace, and she was now experiencing symptoms of traumatic stress. When she’d meditate, images and sensations would flood her field of consciousness, leaving her more rattled than before. “Should I keep meditating?” she’d asked him. “I want to work with my stress, but practicing seems to be making things...
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4 Techniques Used Around The World To Heal Trauma [mindbodygreen.com]
As a psychiatrist who has worked with psychological trauma for more than 20 years, I have seen and heard stories of violence, genocide, abuse, and loss from many places around the world. The context always differs, but people everywhere share the same emotions of grief, anxiety, anger, fear, and depression that grip us in the aftermath of a traumatic event. The nonprofit organization I founded and direct, The Center for Mind-Body Medicine (CMBM) , teaches tools of self-care and group support...
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A "Better Normal" Community Discussion - Trauma Sensitive Yoga for Embodiment and Agency
TCTSY (Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga) is the practice of bringing our bodies into the present moment to integrate and recover from the harmful effects of adverse life experiences. This evidence-based method focuses on the felt sense of the body, also known as interoception. Exercising interoception helps inform one’s choice-making and allows participants to restore their connection of mind with body and cultivate a sense of agency that is often compromised as a result of trauma. Dion...
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Addiction Isn't the Problem, It's the Symptom [pesi.com]
Note: You may receive an unsolicited invite to a class when downloading the article. By Gabor Mate, PESI, May 2, 2020 Have you ever wondered, as I have, how someone with an addiction could go through 21 detox centers and 5 treatment facilities, yet continue to relapse? It wasn’t until I started working in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside—one of the most concentrated areas of drug use, mental illness, and poverty in North America—that I realized... The reason these treatments do NOT work is...
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Announcing CRI's Newest Trainings- July and September!
CRI is excited to announce new trainings! We will have online trainings in July, and an in-person training in September. July Online Trainings CRI Course 1 LIVE WEBCAST: Trauma-Informed Training A dynamic 2 part six-hour LIVE WEBCAST course, Course 1 introduces CRI’s capacity-building framework for building resilience, KISS. Knowledge, Insight, Strategies and Structure describes our community’s learning and movement from theory to practice and how to implement evidence-based strategies into...
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Boot Camp After 60: 10 Steps To Turn Around Unhealthy Habits [khn.org]
It takes moxie to flip an unhealthy lifestyle to a healthy one — particularly for folks over 60. Most baby boomers approach retirement age unwilling to follow basic healthy lifestyle goals established by the American Heart Association, said Dr. Dana King, professor and chairman of the department of family medicine at West Virginia University, referencing his university’s 2017 study comparing the healthy lifestyle rates of retired late-middle-aged adults with rates among those still working.
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Community Resiliency Model: An Innovative Approach to Addressing Burnout
Join the Illinois ACEs Response Collaborative for our next free webinar in our continuing series on best practices to prevent and mitigate the effects of provider burnout this Thursday, March 12th, at 10:00 am CDT. The second session of the IL ACEs Response Collaborative's series on burnout will discuss the Community Resiliency Model, developed by Elaine Miller-Karas of the Trauma Resource Institute, and explain how it prevents burnout in the workplace. The Community Resiliency Model creates...
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CRI Course 1: Trauma-Informed Training Webcast!
CRI Course 1: Trauma-Informed Training Webcast! Date: February 26, 2019 Time: 8am - 3pm Pacific Time A dynamic six-hour WEBCAST course, Course 1 introduces CRI’s capacity-building framework for building resilience, KISS. Knowledge, Insight, Strategies and Structure describes our community’s learning and movement from theory to practice and how to implement evidence-based strategies into action. The training includes three groups of topics: the NEAR sciences , a cluster of emerging scientific...
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Education resources, including mental health, for kids, families during coronavirus pandemic
We have an abundance of helpful links and posts swirling online to support families and school systems as we adjust to our new normal of learning while self-isolating at home. Thousands of free academic resources from the NYT student writing prompts, to the Anti-Racist, Anti-Oppressive Homeschool Resource list, to this excellent collection from BuzzFeed, and the ever-growing crowd-sourced collection aptly named Amazing Educational Resources are being shared. Our schools do so much more than...
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FREE WEBINAR: Community Resilience Model- An Innovative Approach to Addressing Burnout
Join the IL ACEs Response Collaborative for the latest webinar in our continuing series on best practices to prevent and mitigate the effects of provider burnout.
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From Compassion Fatigue to Healing Centered Engagement: Turning Trauma Informed Values into Action
To pave the way for a truly strengths-based approach to full healing and recovery for both service users and burned out staff, we must educate them on (1) the central role of primal body responses to trauma (past and present), and (2) the early development of adaptive thoughts and behaviors in response to
traumatic experience.
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Fuzzy Slippers: How Do Self-Care as a Trauma Survivor
When I recommend the need for self-care to trauma survivors, they say it can feel like a chore. Some of them even roll their eyes and tell me, “You mean you want me to take care of myself? Ugh. Who has time for that?!” It’s tempting for any person to undervalue self-care. But for trauma survivors, resistance to self-care has much deeper roots. Healing takes a focused, gentle approach. Self-Care as a Practice of Welcoming Your Needs Many trauma survivors learned to do without self-care...
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Growth through Trauma-Informed Strategies: Coaching and Consultation with Rick Griffin
There is a Chinese proverb that states, “If you want 1 year of prosperity, grow grain. If you want 10 years of prosperity, grow trees. If you want 100 years of prosperity, grow people." The benefits are evident, yet the real question becomes, “how do you grow people?” This Big Idea Session, CRI’s Trauma Coaching and Trauma Consultation Training, answers this question. Schools, organizations, and parents are discovering that the traditional “command and control” style of working with...
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How to Have Difficult Conversations (dailygood.org)
Google has spent millions of dollars proving that trust is the bedrock of constructive communication. They wanted to know why their best teams succeeded, and after not being able to prove any of their assumptions and going back to observe those teams, they found that what they had in common was not personality or intelligence or confidence or prior success, but something they called ‘psychological safety.’ That’s the kind of safety that’s built on feeling able to be real and vulnerable in a...
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Mind & Body Empowerment for Human Trafficking Victims (starr.org)
Building Resilience and Belonging through Trauma-Sensitive Yoga Starr believes, as its founder Floyd Starr did, that there is no such thing as a bad child. And, when you provide a safe environment, when you treat a child with dignity and respect, it changes a child’s heart. And that, in the end, is what changes a child’s life. It’s a powerful story that we have been helping children write for over 100 years at Starr Commonwealth. For all students on Starr’s campus, this approach is applied...
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Next "A Better Normal" community discussion series: April 7, 2020 — Tian Dayton
Therapist and author Dr. Tian Dayton, who first started writing about ACEs science more than 20 years ago, will address grief and maintaining emotional sobriety during COVID-19. Carey Sipp, Southeast community facilitator for ACEs Connection, will host this community conversation, and Alison Cebula, Northeastern regional community facilitator, will moderate.
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Opening Up by Writing It Down: How Expressive Writing Improves Health and Eases Emotional Pain
In my last post, I highlighted a book Vincent Felitti mentioned at the CAMFT conference in Orange County. In the same talk, Dr. Felitti also recommended a form of therapeutic writing developed by James Pennebaker to help individuals uncover painful emotions and heal trauma. Pennebaker's book Opening Up by Writing It Down: How Expressive Writing Improves Health and Eases Emotional Pain details the why and how. The Pennebaker method has been referenced elsewhere on ACEs Connection; I thought...
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Self-Care: 12 Ways to Take Better Care of Yourself [psychologytoday.com]
Laura's Note: Self-care basics, because self-care is basic :). Why Self-Care Matters It’s so important to make sure you take good care of your body, mind, and soul every day, not just when you get sick. Learning how to eat right, reduce stress, exercise regularly, and take a time-out when you need it are touchstones of self-care and can keep you healthy, fit, and resilient . Why Do We Often Fail at Self-Care? Practicing self-care isn’t always easy. Most of us are crazy busy, have stressful...
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Seven Benefits of Working with a Therapy Animal from a Handler's Perspective
Sometimes I feel selfish for walking away from our therapy dog sessions with my heart overflowing with joy, a smile radiating from my face AND heart. I love watching this dog turn a child’s tears into giggles. Sammie has a thing for kids. Her tail wags every time she sees one. Whether we are walking the halls at a school or the trails at a nature preserve. She wants to meet them all and offer a snuggle. As a result, her tail thumps in canine happiness, and I just can’t help but grin.
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Seven Strategies I Use To Reregulate As Anxiety Symptoms Surface
So, how does Teri Wellbrock bring herself back into a state of calm once the anticipatory anxiety has been triggered? Here is Teri's personal go-to list. Please keep in mind she created this plan on a trial and error basis. She loaded her coping skills toolbox with exercises, fidgets, courses, books, therapy suggestions, and techniques discovered through personal research. Following is her top seven strategies, however, please note that she has a much larger bag-o-tricks to pull from if needed.
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Re: Growth through Trauma-Informed Strategies: Coaching and Consultation with Rick Griffin
I think this makes sense. Figuring out trauma is only part of the puzzle and a community approach...skill building and support sounds like an important piece of the puzzle.
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Re: Preparing and Advocating for Medical Care as a Trauma Survivor
Excellent article. And oh-so-true. I know when I was searching for a new doctor, I specifically started inquiring if the physician took a holistic approach to healing as I did not want someone who simply wanted to throw a pill at my symptoms in order to make them go away. After all, masking the symptoms was something I had experienced for over twenty-five years as I tried to wrestle my panic attacks. Once I started respecting my needs on a holistic level, that's when true healing and symptom...
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Re: For Many People with Anxiety, Self-Care Just Doesn’t Work [healthline.com]
Thank you for posting this, Laura. While I appreciate the sentiments expressed by the author and get what she's saying, I always bristle when I read about a backlash to what, in fact, is sound advice. Self-care is important. Period. No one says there's a one-size-fits-all approach. When sound advice becomes a trigger, that doesn't mean the advice is wrong. It means you can use that as an opportunity to take responsibility for why you feel triggered—without blaming the messenger—and use that...
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Re: For Many People with Anxiety, Self-Care Just Doesn’t Work [healthline.com]
You know, Diane, I would regret posting this article, if it weren't for the opportunity for discussion it provides that you have recognized and acted upon. Thank you for that. At first glance, the author's view seems short-sighted and she seems bent on "self-care bashing", perhaps because of her frustration at seeing her anxiety worsen instead of improve as she attempts to "do" self-care. She does, though, come around at the end to this notion: If you feel strongly about developing a...
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Re: For Many People with Anxiety, Self-Care Just Doesn’t Work [healthline.com]
Hi Laura, I love your well-thought-out analysis. Thanks for sharing your insights. I had read the entire article before posting my comment and wonder, as you noted, if the beginning was click bait motivated. At the same time, all articles are worth posting when they raise worthwhile discussion and reflection. I reacted to this article because one of my biggest pet peeves is when authors seem to try to boost themselves/their approach by denigrating others. I see this with a backlash to...
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Re: Seven Benefits of Working with a Therapy Animal from a Handler's Perspective
There's so much to like about this "love letter" to working with a therapy animal, if I may. Two bits that stand out, though, are "Do I approach with a 'wagging tail' and welcoming aura?" -- definitely goals for which to strive. I know that in my decades-long habitual self-guarding and hypervigilance, I can unintentionally come off as aloof. I'm now inspired to try to wag my figurative tail when approached or approaching others. And this whole piece just sings with the fact that you and...
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Re: Seven Benefits of Working with a Therapy Animal from a Handler's Perspective
Oh, I so relate to what you wrote about the hypervigilance bit and coming off as aloof. I lived in a guarded state for decades. Once I started the healing journey I began shining a light from within and found myself smiling without even realizing I was doing so as I would notice others smiling back at me or stating, "You must be having a great day based upon that grin!" And, yes, yes, yes . . . I find joy in watching Sammie help children find their smiles which naturally brings me to a place...
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Re: Study: 1 in 4 Who Meditate Have Had Bad Psychological Experience [psychcentral.com]
This article makes sense. I attended a 10-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat and it was an amazing experience. But I already had been meditating regularly for many years. I wouldn't recommend it to my clients—or anyone—if meditation is new to them. In my opinion, you need to have a degree of solid internal grounding first and some experience with meditation, otherwise, it could be a very difficult experience. Other forms of meditation also can feel hard for people who experienced...
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Re: To Help Heal Trauma, Talk Less, and Write More
Yes! There must be a mountain of research (not to mention anecdotal evidence) that writing is one of the most effective ways to process the emotion from traumatic events, not to mention everyday stresses and worries. While talk therapy has its place and its benefits, it's not always the best approach for recovering from trauma, for the reasons you cite. From personal experience, I'd caution anyone who's considering writing about a trauma they've experienced, especially if they have not yet...
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The Adult I Needed (Part 1 of 2) [thismustbenormal.wordpress.com]
There’s a wisdom-y nugget that gets bandied about these days that goes something like this: be the adult you needed as a kid. I don’t know who said it first. I could invoke my magical former librarian powers and confirm attribution and the exact quotation by consulting authoritative sources, but that sounds like work. Plus, I’ve a hunch it might confirm nothing more than that, just as to my knowledge no one has yet proved that Margaret Mead said that one thing about never doubting yadda...
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The Healing Place Podcast: Dr. Jamie Marich - Trauma & the 12 Steps; Addiction Recovery; & Utilizing Complimentary Healing Tools
Teri Wellbrock sits down with Dr. Jamie Marich who describes herself as a facilitator of transformative experiences. A clinical trauma specialist, expressive artist, writer, yogini, performer, short filmmaker, Reiki master, and recovery advocate, she unites all of these elements in her mission to inspire healing in others.
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A "Better Normal" Community Discussion - Trauma Sensitive Yoga for Embodiment and Agency
TCTSY (Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga) is the practice of bringing our bodies into the present moment to integrate and recover from the harmful effects of adverse life experiences. This evidence-based method focuses on the felt sense of the body, also known as interoception. Exercising interoception helps inform one’s choice-making and allows participants to restore their connection of mind with body and cultivate a sense of agency that is often compromised as a result of trauma. Dion...
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Mental Health Awareness: When Suffering Is Not an Illness
When I was an adolescent and young adult, I struggled with depression. As I reflect back on that time, so much of what I was experiencing was deeply tied to coming to terms with my sexuality. Growing up in the 1980’s in a relatively conservative town, I was closeted (even to myself) until I was a young adult. The pain and fear of being different, of not belonging, of being judged or rejected for who I was more than my adolescent brain could wrap its conscious head around.
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The Surviving Spirit Newsletter June 2020
Hi Folks, The latest edition of the Surviving Spirit Newsletter is posted at the website - http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/index.php To sign up for an e-mail copy, please write to me @ mikeskinner@comcast.net or sign up @ Website via Contact Us. Thanks! Michael. The Surviving Spirit Newsletter June 2020 http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/pdfs/2020-06-The_Surviving_Spirit_Newsletter_June_2020.pdf Newsletter Contents : 1] I desperately miss human touch. Science may explain why. By...
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The Neurobiology of Trauma: Somatic Strategies for Resilience
The Neurobiology of Trauma: Somatic Approaches to Resilience By Jennifer Walsh As we have all come to experience over the past several months, trauma is simply a component of the human condition. While it affects both individuals and communities in a variety of ways, we have all experienced difficult, stressful, or even traumatic events over the course of our lifetime. Although social workers have traditionally worked with these vulnerable populations, there are numerous professionals...
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Rebecca Lewis Pankratz: Breaking Generational Poverty, Poverty Circles, & Poverty Programs
"A CEs Connection is the curator of incredible hope, healing and possibility. Parents are not the bad guys. Most of us are just kids with ACEs who grew up..." Rebecca Lewis-Pankratz Last Friday, @Rebecca Lewis-Pankratz joined our A Better Normal series to discuss poverty circles and programs. Rebecca is the Director of Learning Centers as Essdack, as well as a poverty consultant, and we met online, via Twitter (her handle is @pOVERty’s Edge. Rebecca is a brilliant speaker, gifted writer, and...
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Loving An Orchid: Understanding Child Abuse Trauma's Impact [psychologytoday.com]
By JoAnn Stevelos, Psychology Today, August 21, 2020 As a child, I was an orchid but lived like a dandelion. I have always prided myself on my resiliency, for surviving a long and painful childhood filled with abandonment, psychological, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse . Child abuse can do that to you—give you a false sense of self and what resiliency really looks like. Resiliency is not just surviving. This false narrative of resiliency can take years to undo. One approach is to try...
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A Better Normal - Friday, August 28th, 12pm PT: Trauma and the 12 Steps with Dr. Jamie Marich
Please join us for the ongoing community discussion of A Better Normal, our series in which we envision the future as trauma-informed. Friday, August 28th, 2020 12pm PT // 1pm MT // 2pm CT // 3pm ET Hosted by Alison Cebulla and facilitated by Jenna Quinn of ACEs Connection with guest Dr. Jamie Marich, author of the book Trauma and the 12 Steps: An Inclusive Guide to Enhancing Recovery , newly revised, expanded, and released on July 7, 2020, published by North Atlantic Books . >>Click...
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Laurie Santos Says Self-Care Doesn't Have to Be Selfish [nytimes.com]
By Hope Reese, The New York Times, October 7, 2020 Laurie Santos, a psychology professor at Yale University and host of The Happiness Lab podcast, is a leading expert in positive psychology, a relatively young field. Since she began teaching “ The Science of Well-Being ” in 2018, it has become the most popular course in Yale’s history, with nearly a quarter of students enrolling. The class, now online for free, applies what Dr. Santos calls a “preventative medicine approach” to mental health...
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The Changemaker: It Starts with You!
Changemakers unite! Now is the time for a trauma-informed approach to healing and personal growth. The reinvention of the new normal starts with you!