Antisocial Personality Disorder
Of all the personality disorders, individuals with Antisocial PD are often the most exciting, seductive, charming – and dangerously powerful – of all clients. People diagnosed with Antisocial PD are like high speed Ferraris in a world of law-abiding Volvos, designed for thrills, extreme risk-taking and a “good time”. Countless individuals, including therapists, have been duped, manipulated and victimized by clients with this disorder. Like no other clients, this population challenges therapists’ skills and their basic concepts of human interrelatedness. While most therapists are familiar with the “classic” descriptions of this disorder that simply focus on criminal behavior and substance abuse, many clinicians do not recognize the myriad of clinical presentations and subtypes of ASPD. This 6-hour workshop will focus on vital assessment issues, differential diagnoses, co-morbid disorders, etiologies and childhood attachment dynamics, and treatment approaches for these clients and their families.
Note: It is highly recommended that workshop participants attend both Part I and II of this workshop.

At the conclusion of this course, attendees will be able to:
1. Identify and assess for a range of symptoms for Antisocial Personality Disorder, traits and characteristics, including a Dimensional Perspective five-factor model of ASPD.
2. Make differential diagnoses between Narcissistic, Borderline, and Antisocial PDs and identify common co-morbid disorders.
3. Discuss various etiologies of ASPD and childhood antecedents of trauma and attachment issues.
4. Utilize treatment approaches from various theoretical orientations (including psychodynamic, humanistic-existential, and cognitive-behavioral) for ASPD clients and their families.
5. Identify and manage a therapist’s countertransferential reactions.

Be a Tech-Smart Therapist: Providing Internet Safety for Our Youth
Internet crimes against children are one of the fastest growing fields of law enforcement in the new century. This workshop will explore technology risks and benefits in order to better assess for abuse, but also to strategize for age-based population interventions and communications using technology. As we are faced with the truth about technology, we will share methods for internet safety and cyber-violence prevention of children in our lives at home and practice being “Cyber Smart”. You can be a “Cyber Savvy” adult.

Objectives of this workshop are to:
1. Provide tools for internet safety
2. Offer interventions and referrals for parents and children who live in the land of technology
3. Familiarize participants with easy “tech tricks” to keep young clients engaged in therapy

Mental Health of our Expanding Waistlines: Addressing Social Determinants of Childhood Obesity
Is our environment making our children sick? How is the mental health of our community related to our growing children? What can we do as mental health professionals to address this public health crisis?

Objectives of this workshop are to:
1. Acknowledge the role of mental health practitioners in the scope of public health
2. Increase cultural humility in our work and practice
3. Learn skills to give community-minded diagnoses
4. Build our resources for community-based mental health treatment

Brains, Trains, and Grown Ups: Living Life through our Attachments
Ride this workshop and travel the developmental brainwaves from infancy to adulthood. This 3-hour course will focus on attachment-both in theory and practice. We will explore the diagnostic implications of early attachment and identify how our attachments affect our behaviors and relationships through the course of our development. Finally, we will use our relational therapy skills to address issues that arise as a result of our attachments.

Objectives of this workshop are to:
1. Identify different kinds of attachments based on theory and practice
2. Map behaviors related to early relationships
3. Chart diagnostic possibilities as a result of changing attachments
4. Explore adult experiences based on early attachments

Emotional Affairs
“Emotional infidelity is intense but invisible, erotic but unconsummated. Such delicious paradoxes make it every bit as dangerous as adultery,” says Mark Teich’s in his article, “Love But Don’t Touch” (p. 91, Psychology Today, March/April 2006).

Although affairs have been around since Biblical times, infidelity has now taken an insidious new turn that some mental health professionals fear is the biggest threat that marriage has ever faced – that is, the emotional affair. This type of affair begins with a garden-variety friendship that develops almost imperceptibly until it eventually exceeds in importance the relationship with a one’s own spouse. Emotional affairs are characterized by deep emotional connectedness, the excitement of illicit secrets, and sexually charged (but unconsummated) relationships. In the age of the Internet and the egalitarian workplace, emotional affairs have become far more accessible than ever before. The effects can be just as psychologically devastating to the stability and intimacy of relationships as sexual affairs – sometimes even more so.

At the completion of this course participants will be able to:
1. Assess for emotional affairs in relationships and distinguish them from healthy, platonic friendships.
2. Explain possible intrapersonal and interpersonal causes for emotional affairs.
3. Apply the Jungian concept of the Ghostly Lover as a common contributing factor to emotional affairs.
4. Demonstrate knowledge about treatment issues and interventions for repairing a relationship after an emotional affair.
5. Identify ways to prevent emotional affairs in committed relationships.

Law and Ethics
A thorough understanding of current laws and ethical standards pertaining to psychotherapy is critical for therapists. This course, complete with an engaging PowerPoint presentation, will present a comprehensive, up-to-date overview of issues such as privilege and confidentiality, danger to self or others, treatment of minors, mandated responsibilities and other legal issues related to MFT and LCSW practice. Recent changes in the law will be highlighted.

At the completion of this course participants will be able to:
1. Recognize when they have legal and ethical responsibilities
2. Understand how to carry out those legal and ethical responsibilities
3. Maintain a standard of care against charges of criminal, civil, and ethical wrongdoing
4. Know when and how to properly consult to better uphold legal and ethical responsibilities

This course satisfies the requirements for the California Board of Behavioral Sciences mandatory Continuing Education course in Law and Ethics.

Religion, Spirituality and Psychotherapy
Of all the human diversity issues addressed in psychotherapy, spirituality and religion remains one of the most overlooked and devalued. Recent research verifies the direct impact of spiritual and religious factors upon clients’ mental health, and the fact that ignoring clients’ beliefs can decrease the efficacy of therapy while increasing clients’ premature termination. However, there has been a history of conflict between the spiritual and psychotherapeutic realms, with some therapists believing that the two areas are mutually exclusive. Many graduate programs do not even include any training about the potential role of spirituality in psychotherapy. While most therapists carefully monitor countertransferential reactions about a host of sensitive topics, spirituality and religion still seem to trigger a broad range of prejudicial and judgmental reactions that can strike at the heart of clients’ core belief systems and what makes life most meaningful for them.

This 6-hour workshop explores the various roles of spirituality and religion and the creation of a “sacred place” in the context of psychotherapy. An overview of sacred themes, symbols, rituals and language for the major Western and Eastern religions is reviewed. Other topics include identifying a working definition of spirituality, assessing for secular or religious/spiritual therapy, incorporating Jungian perspectives on spirituality, and specific treatment techniques that judiciously utilize religious/spiritual practices. Special attention is given to AAMFT and NASW ethical standards as related to this topic.

Note: It is highly recommended that workshop participants attend both Part I and II of this workshop.

At the conclusion of this course, attendees will be able to:
1. Determine a working definition of spirituality for psychotherapists.
2. Assess for the use of secular or religious/spiritual elements with clients.
3. Identify the essential dynamics for creating a “sacred place” in psychotherapy.
4. Discuss various sacred themes, symbols, rituals and language for the major Western and Eastern religions, including Jungian perspectives on spirituality.
5. Utilize specific treatment approaches from various religious/spiritual orientations in an ethical and professional way.
6. Identify and manage therapist’s countertransferential reactions.

Avoiding Valium: Practical Techniques for Managing Vicarious Trauma
How often have you come home from work and not been asked how your day went? We have been trained to hear stories that most people can choose to change the channel as things seem to get uncomfortable. In this workshop, participants will take the steps to identify the traumatic nature of our roles as mental health providers. We will be sharing tools to address the vicarious trauma we experience through walking with our clients’ life crises. Lastly we will explore methods of self-care so we may continue to be great therapists.

Objectives of this workshop are to:
1. Identify the spectrum and indicators of vicarious trauma
2. Plan strategies for debriefing and managing counter-transference issues as they arise
3. Practice self-care techniques to prevent burn-out

Children Exposed to Domestic Violence
Thousands of children grow-up in war zones, yet ironically the battlefields are not in foreign countries but in the homes of many American families. Children exposed to domestic violence and other high conflict situations live in a perpetual state of combat readiness, ever vigilant for the next battle between their parents. The anguish and rage of these war-torn children often result in significantly impaired object relations, dissociative states, an array of high risk and self-defeating behaviors, as well as Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and severe personality disorders in adulthood. The emotional survival skills that these children use can inflict tremendous pain upon themselves and their families and inadvertently trigger responses from others that reinforce their maladaptative behaviors.

This 3-hour workshop will cover assessment and diagnostic issues, traumatic bonding and attachment dynamics, and treatment approaches that include practical cognitive-behavioral skill-building techniques (e.g. self-soothing and self-care strategies, interpersonal effectiveness and social skills), in addition to psychodynamic work that emphasizes the therapeutic relationship and internalizing safe objects as key curative factors.

At the conclusion of this course, attendees will be able to:
1. Assess for a range of symptoms, including traumatic bonding and attachment dynamics, and Axis I and potential Axis II diagnoses.
2. Apply Dr. Judith Herman’s model of Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder with this population.
3. Utilize both cognitive-behavioral skill-building techniques and psychodynamic treatment approaches.
4. Identify and manage potential countertransference.