Approved for 1.5 CEs - details below
Wednesday
Sept. 9, 2020
You will learn to:
Due to COVID-19, SPI is finding new ways to continue to support the mental health community. This webinar is one of several resources we have developed to support you in helping clients during this challenging time. You can find additional resources (many are free) in our COVID-19 resource library.
2020 is posing new challenges for families throughout the world, which Dr. Bonnie Goldstein with discussant, Dr. Pat Ogden will explore, offering innovative strategies to cope with uncertainty resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. Emphasizing the somatic narrative, we will offer helpful resources for navigating these massive life changes, exploring the impact of the environmental threat and ensuing feelings of upset, aggression, irritability, fearfulness, avoidance, loss of interest in activities, etc. affecting children, caregivers and families.
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy treatment options will be elucidated as we explore ways to ameliorate the impact of chaos and destabilization on family members and stitch new patterns into the fabric of family dynamics. We will offer concrete tools to address apprehension and fears by exploring shifts in posture and stance that help foster confidence and communication, discovering actions to support aligned posture (e.g. lengthening spine, shifting stance, etc.) that parents and children can practice together.
Treatment directions for addressing kid’s and caretaker’s feelings of hopelessness or inadequacy will be illustrated through case studies describing the collaborative nature of treatment, including evoking curiosity about movement or gestures that might support new positive feelings, beliefs, and enhanced communication between family members.
We will discuss a case study involving a father’s concern for his son who sank into loneliness after the pandemic shuttered schools. Recognizing that schools’ cancelling of sports and other extracurricular activities is particularly hard for kids because such activities support their social, emotional and physiological health, we will explore the physical correlates of well-being that can provide similar support.
The relational impact of the pandemic on family members, friendships, and the therapeutic relationship will be explored and we will introduce tools for reinforcing new behaviors that support positive relationships.
We will look at the range of responses to the pandemic, as some students thrived during distance learning this past spring, where many others struggled with the format, feeling isolated, bored, frustrated, Zoom-fatigued, inability to concentrate, or academically challenged. Other prevalent concerns which we will address include:
Challenges in the home environment that have been exacerbated in the past six months include difficulties setting boundaries and respecting boundaries set by other family members; we will discuss a mother-daughter dyad where mother’s complaint of her daughter’s clinginess, dependency and need for approval was interwoven with concomitant needs for autonomy, as we explore the ensuing challenges that arose within the family.
We will address feelings of helplessness in the face of losses, capitalizing on somatic ways to feel more in control during these complicated times and offering creative ideas about play, connection, touch that help establish positive interactions.
Concrete tools will be offered to address some of the challenges family members experience as they negotiate health issues such as mask wearing; ideas will be proposed to address younger children’s resistance while validating their feelings, and to ameliorate teens concerns that masks feel hot and sweaty, adversely impact their skin, or give them “mask breath.”
Some communities are dealing with the aftermath of months of isolation while others are enduring community-wide shut down; wherever you and your clients are on this trajectory, the wide lens of this webinar will offer transition-management skills and explore ideas for our increased wellbeing.
Due to COVID-19, SPI is finding new ways to continue to support the mental health community. This webinar is one of several resources we have developed to support you in helping clients during this challenging time. You can find additional resources (many are free) in our COVID-19 resource library.
Anchorage, Alaska, USA: 8:30 a.m.
Los Angeles, California, USA: 9:30 a.m.
Denver, Colorado, USA: 10:30 a.m.
Houston, Texas, USA: 11:30 a.m.
New York, New York, USA: 12:30 p.m.
Rio de Janerio, Brazil: 1:30 p.m.
Dublin, Ireland | London, United Kingdom: 5:30 p.m.
Milan, Italy | Paris, France | Amsterdam, Netherlands: 6:30 p.m.
Use this time zone converter if you do not see your city listed >
Due to COVID-19, SPI is finding new ways to continue to support the mental health community. This webinar is one of several resources we have developed to support you in helping clients during this challenging time. You can find additional resources in our COVID-19 resource library.