DAY 2: May 25, 2023

Qigong Meditation Exercise Session

BONUS MORNING SESSION | 7:00am to 8:00am

PRESENTED BY Munira Jiwa, BScPT

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This session is not available for live stream.

Qigong is a powerful and ancient form of meditation exercises dating back more than 4000 years that helps you create an internal environment of peace and healing. Learn how you can use Qigong elements of energy breathing, visualization, gentle movements and sound to experience your optimal health, peak performance, and inner peace.

Workshop #11: Trauma-Focused DBT: Trauma, Attachment and Brain Development

COUNSELLING-FOCUSED
PRESENTED BY Eboni Webb, Psy.D., HSP

MORNING SESSION | 8:30am to 12:00pm

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This session is available for live stream.

Working with emotionally dysregulated and traumatized clients/students in your practice can be overwhelming and exhausting. You probably feel the pull of being the “savior” for their constant state of dysregulation. Learn how to develop the skills needed to be more effective in treatment, avoid burnout and achieve positive outcomes through developing an integrative lens to treat trauma and attachment more effectively across the lifespan through integrating Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy techniques and interventions. Dr. Webb will give you the training you need through case stories, neuroscience research, and experiential activities. Learn to work together with clients/students and all relevant support systems to increase compassion through seeing the function of their behaviors through the lens of trauma, reestablish structure, and create a validating environment. Leave with the knowledge and skills to confidently teach clients/students and all critical care providers how to implement a safe structure that enables clients/students to learn and master these skills throughout all the pertinent areas of their lives.

Attend this workshop and you will discover how critical complex interventions are for the complexity of treating trauma and attachment disorders.

Join Dr. Eboni Webb, former advisor to the Dialectical Behavior Therapy National Certification and Accreditation Association, and Advanced Certified Practitioner of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and take home evidence-based strategies from both modalities to use with clients who come from hard places.

COURSE OBJECTIVES:

Defining trauma and attachment

• Biosocial Model

• Effects of inadequate validation in early emotional development

• Symptoms of a pervasive emotional dysregulation disorder

• Developmental vs. attachment trauma

• Single-incident trauma

• Common sources of trauma

• Parenting Styles

• Attachment Styles

Trauma and Brain Development

• Biphasic arousal model

• Core organizers of experience

Workshop #12: The Personality Disorder Toolbox: Practical Strategies for Meeting the Challenges of Your Most Difficult Cases

COUNSELLING-FOCUSED
PRESENTED BY Jeff Riggenbach, Ph.D.

MORNING SESSION | 8:30am to 12:00pm

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This session is available for live stream.

Individuals with personality disorders have long been considered the most challenging clients presenting in the clinical setting. Many patients lack motivation, most begin with poor insight, and some have such deeply engrained dysfunctional beliefs, unhealthy coping skills, and destructive behavioural patterns that continue to frustrate providers, family members, and consumers alike. Many professionals even continue to view them as untreatable.

However, there is hope. Emerging research suggests this is simply not the case. DBT, CBT, and Schema Therapy have paved the way in pioneering new attitudes and outcomes related to treating these conditions

Join leading exert in the field of personality dysfunction Dr. Jeff Riggenbach for this enjoyable training chock full of the latest research, techniques, and practical strategies. This powerful workshop will give you a new ability to help struggling individuals deal with issues related to self-injurious behaviours, multiple suicide attempts, frequently hurt feelings, intense and unpredictable mood swings, substance use, angry outbursts, toxic relationships and other problems that impair their ability to function in society. Leave this day long training with an integrated DBT/CBT /Schema Informed approach to treating these cases and giving clients with even the most complex needs a life worth living.

COURSE OBJECTIVES:

• Understand evidence based approaches to treating personality disorders, and learn why traditional patient care doesn’t work

• Learn communication skills for effectively engaging clients with complex needs

• Acquire skills for modifying deeply engrained beliefs driving behaviours outside of client awareness

• Disrupt lifelong self-defeating patterns

• Identify 8 motives for self-injurious behaviours and interventions that work for each

• Learn symptom-targetted strategies that help with clients in the moment

• Develop schema modification techniques proven to benefit even your most “difficult” PD clients

• Build resilience in clients by teaching strategies that help them not only get well, but stay well

Workshop #13: Self-Compassion Skills Training for Mental Health & Education Professionals

ALL PROFESSIONALS
PRESENTED BY Tim Desmond, LMFT

MORNING SESSION | 8:30am to 12:00pm

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This session is not available for live stream.

When our clients/students are overwhelmed by anxiety, adrift in depression, or hobbled by trauma, a lack of self-compassion is often at the heart of their difficulty. Thankfully, research has shown us that if practiced regularly, self-compassion can regulate emotions, transform negative core beliefs, and heal trauma. This experiential workshop will help you integrate self-compassion training into your work. You’ll focus on how to:

• Guide clients/students through highly individualized training sessions based on their specific strengths and obstacles

• Apply the eight core practices that make up the Map to Self-Compassion, including self-acceptance and embracing suffering

• Help clients/students feel revitalized and avoid burnout

• Choose self-compassion practices for client/student problems—including complex trauma and self-sabotage—based on key assessments

• Use the brain’s care circuit to regulate emotions and heal trauma in clients/students

This workshop will include lecture, live demonstrations, small group practices, and question and answer sessions. You will have the opportunity to present clinical cases and receive consultation to demonstrate how to apply self-compassion with your specific clients/students. We will break down all of the microskills required to treat a client/student from a self-compassion perspective, and you will have the chance to practice each of them. You will also learn about (and receive a copy of) the Map to Self-Compassion from The Self-Compassion Skills Workbook, and how to use this map to assess and choose the most appropriate form of self-compassion practice for each specific client/student. The workshop will conclude with a section on cultivating self-compassion within ourselves as clinicians and educators.

COURSE OBJECTIVES:

• Guide clients/students through highly individualized training sessions based on their specific strengths and obstacles

• Explain how to apply the eight core practices that make up the Map to Self-Compassion, including self-acceptance and embracing suffering

• Illustrate how to help clients/students feel revitalized and avoid burnout

• Develop and put to practice self-compassion practices for client/student problems—including complex trauma and self-sabotage—based on key assessments

• Summarize the brain’s care circuit to regulate emotions and heal trauma in clients/students

Workshop #14: Supporting the Anxious Mind at School and at Home: Sources of Anxiety, Stress Management, and Anxiety-Regulation Skills

SCHOOL-BASED FOCUSED
PRESENTED BY Christine Dargon, Ph.D.

MORNING SESSION | 8:30am to 12:00pm

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This session is available for live stream.

Divorce, family breakdown, violence in society and the media, has produced a “shell shocked” generation of kids suffering from anxiety!

Join anxiety expert, dr. Christine dargon, who will demonstrate how you can “connect” with anxious children and inspire them to practice new self- regulation skills. You will learn how to help parents (“bulldozers,”“helicopters” and “snowplows”) and schools gain confidence, gratification and success in helping their most anxious kids.

COURSE OBJECTIVES:

• What research tells us about therapy effectiveness applied to children

• How anxiety develops in children: the “three ingredients framework”

• Biological sensitivity

• Anxiety personality style

• Stress overload

• Treatment goals, strategies and recommendations

• The baseball analogy for behavior change and symptom reduction

• Behavioral health recommendations

Workshop #14: Working with Emotional and Behaviour Problems with Children and Adolescents

SCHOOL-BASED FOCUSED
PRESENTED BY Caroline Buzanko, Ph.D., R. Psych

MORNING SESSION | 8:30am to 12:00pm

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This session is not available for live stream.

Every child and teen experiences emotional ups and downs and engages in challenging behaviours from time to time. Though frustrating, these reactions are an important part of development for all kids. However, these outbursts become a problem when they happen frequently, when they are excessive, and when they begin to impair a child or youth’s functioning.

Emotional and behavioural challenges have increased drastically among children and adolescents over the years with alarmingly high prevalence rates. Unfortunately, most go without effective support, which makes them susceptible for developing severe emotional and/or behavioural disorders that impair their social and emotional well-being, relationships, and development.

Early intervention and treatment are critical to support children and teen’s social, emotional, and behavioural well-being and reduce future risk. Although teachers, parents, and mental health professionals know they need to help, they aren’t always confident in how to do so – especially in the heat of the moment. They may have tried different strategies, but with limited success. Thankfully, these children and teens can be supported easily with the right tools and know-how.

This dynamic workshop is vital for anyone working with children and teens. Participants will develop an understanding of what is going on for children and teens, what happens when the demands on them outweigh their capacity to cope, the underlying needs they have, and the function of an emotional or behavioural meltdown. Participants will also learn the typical strategies adults use when they are trying to help but instead makes the situation worse. Importantly, they will learn what is truly effective (hint: it’s not behaviour charts) to promote positive behaviours and emotion regulation proactively, before an emotional or behavioural blowout occurs, and reactively, in the heat of the moment. With these strategies, participants will help children and teens build their capacity to manage their emotions and behaviours successfully across contexts.

COURSE OBJECTIVES:

• Understand the unique stress kids and teens face and their underlying needs

• Identify the function of behaviours and emotions and typical adult traps that escalate emotional reactions and problematic behaviours

• Learn how to respond effectively when big emotions/behaviours show up and promote emotion regulation and positive behaviours