Activities for Summer Workshop 2014

Awesome activities will be offered at Brasstown Valley Resort. We hope that you come early and/or stay after to take advantage of these unique and regional offerings.  As winter winds down, we invite you to envision all of the activities you may enjoy in June.

Equani Spa:  This spa is saturated with Cherokee traditional treatments that offer peace, tranquility and healing unique to their native culture and heritage. Regular spa services are also offered.  Located on sacred Cherokee land, the spa treatments are presented in a tasteful and elegant way. Two examples of native offerings are: 

• • The 7 Clan Ritual: a highly detoxifying experience geared to stimulate circulation and balance. It begins with a European dry body brushing to stimulate the lymph system and is followed by a purifying massage  
• • The Way of the Circle Ritual: a massage and a body masque combined in one treatment. Dead Sea Mud-infused oil is used and at the end while the body is in a cocoon, a head massage is performed to complete the circle.”

Joyce Dugan, the Former Chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, the first woman ever elected to this position, highly endorses this Spa. She offers Wa-Do (thank you) to all who had a part in creating this sacred space. (Photo used by permission from Brasstown Valley.)

Hiking:  There is onsite hiking, and the trails are well marked and provide hiking levels from beginner to advanced. These trails can be enjoyed before, during and after the conference.  There are many offsite hiking options. Transportation is provided by the resort for a low fee. If you are driving, the hotel provides maps.

• Brasstown Bald, is Georgia’s highest mountain. It rises 4,784 feet above sea level. From the top, you can see four states, and on a clear day, you can see Atlanta. 
• Blue Hole Falls and High Shoals Falls, are located down a 1.2 mile hike on High Shoals Trail. At the bottom, a viewing platform of Blue Hole Falls is followed by High Shoal Falls.
• Anna Ruby Falls, a beautiful waterfall is accessible via a half mile trail. This site offers a view “rare” twin waterfalls which join at the base to form Smith Creek which flows into Unicoi Lake.
• Three other areas for hikers and nature lovers to explore include:  Walasi-Yi, Helton Creek Falls and Vogel State Park.

The Ridges Resort and Marina:  Just 20 minutes by car from the Resort, the marina offers pontoon boats, ski boats, jet skis, canoes, kayaks, fishing boats and a party-sized captain assisted pontoon boat. You might consider this option for a family peer group outing or a committee meeting option. Reservations can be made directly via www.theRidgesresort.com. 

Winery:  There is a local winery, the Crane Creek Vineyard, just minutes away from the resort. This winery offers tours, wine tastings and of course a breathtaking scenic view of the mountain vineyard.

Onsite:  With a full gym onsite and an indoor/outdoor pool with two jacuzzi’s, the resort at Brasstown offers many opportunities for activity and/or relaxation. Both tennis and golf are available and both include scenic views of the mountains. The tennis courts are nestled in a peaceful, secluded natural environment. The golf course covers hills, valleys and creative twists and turns. Deer graze on the course. The beauty of the mountains is also very delightfully distracting. 

The stable at the bottom of the resort grounds provides guided Trail Rides for the beginner to the advanced rider. The horses are equipped with western saddles. One hour and two hour guide-led rides are available which provide an opportunity to view the beautiful scenic vistas from the vantage point of horseback. The resort jacuzzi will come in handy after a trail ride for any post-horseback soreness.

We hope that you are enticed to enjoy this beautiful area of the country.

Wa-do (Cherokee thank you) for your presence at this awesome conference!

ARE YOU REALLY TAKING CARE OF YOURSELF?

At AAP we tend to take our personal interactions very seriously. We set aside ample time for relationship issues in process groups, family groups, our own therapies, supervision, and peer groups. How many of us are as diligent about taking time for care of our bodies? Consider these recommendations for the minimum requirement for exercise for various age groups.

EXERCISE

40s Rx: One hour of weight training 3 days a week if you do your whole body at once (4 days for half an hour if you split it up), plus 45 minutes of cardio 5 days. Take one day off.

50s Rx: 4 to 6 cardio sessions a week, 20 to 40 minutes, with an intensity that lets you answer a simple question but not chat, plus half an hour of weight training twice a week, 8 to 12 reps of each exercise, or 15 to 20 using lighter weights. Stretch afterward.

60s Rx: 3 days a week of challenging but not exhausting cardio, (a slow jog), plus 3 days of weight training, lighter weights, more controlled movements combined with slow, sustained stretching. Walk whenever possible, and do daily balance exercises.

Now, truthfully, are you consistently doing this amount of exercise on a routine basis?

NUTRITION

Please don’t skip reading this section. I challenge you: for one week, before Summer Workshop, keep track of what you eat.  Make an honest assessment of how you are taking care of your nutritional needs and how you are using (or abusing) food. The cost of ignoring what we are doing to our bodies can be very high in terms of chronic disease and long term wellbeing. In The China Study, Dr. T. Colin Campbell details the connection between nutrition and heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. The New York Times has recognized the study as the “most comprehensive large study ever undertaken of the relationship between diet and the risk of developing disease.”

Campbell's conclusions include recommendations for plant based rather than animal based foods, caution against considering vitamin supplements a panacea for good health, and an understanding that genes, on their own, do not determine disease but can be activated by environmental influences, especially nutrition.

STRESS REDUCTION 

We all understand that our profession is stressful, and that meditation, yoga, chanting, Qi Gong, and other activities can lower stress. Yet how many of us include one or more of these activities in our daily lives?  Personally, I am doing somewhat better in the areas of exercise and nutrition, but often eliminate meditation or yoga on busy days, even though I know that when I practice daily, I am more focused, relaxed, and definitely less stressed.

BE CHANGED. FOR GOOD

To offer participants the opportunity to examine various aspects of self-care before and during the summer workshop, our committee has included opportunities throughout the conference to examine, experience, and change in ways that lead to a healthier lifestyle.

For those who want to examine their relationship with food, Jane Baxter will be leading a two day workshop called: Spiritual Depletion, Overeating, and the Need to Mend Fragmentation. She will address how the stress of being a therapist can lead to a sense of depletion, which can result in using food as an unwanted crutch. We are also working with Brasstown Valley Resort to offer healthy choices for food selections at meals. 

The resort provides opportunities for exercise which include a fitness room, hiking trails, and horseback riding. On Thursday morning, Sharman Colosetti will hold a class in the pool in HiYo combining stretching and water aerobics. Kay Loveland and Frances Compton present a workshop: Dare Greatly: Vulnerability, Risk, and Change to introduce you to golf and tennis.  We will have fun while learning ways that you might have inhibited yourself from sports participation due to shame or frustration. 

And then there’s the AAP dance! Invite yourself to risk dancing with some new partners.  Have you always wanted to jitterbug with Don Murphy, twerk with Vivian, or boogie with Jim Bird? Now is your chance to be daring.

The 2014 Summer Workshop Committee excitedly invites you to join us for health, learning, and fun at the Brasstown Valley  Resort, June 18-22, and challenges you to BE CHANGED. FOR GOOD.

Energy Psychology: A New Frontier

Training Institute 2014/2015

by Loretta Sparks

Victoria Danzig and I are really excited to offer this two-year Training

Institute on Energy Psychology; the first year (Part I) may be taken independently of the second year (Part II). However Part II has the prerequisite of Part I.

Part I will be held at Summer Workshop and I&C 2014. It will focus on a

basic introduction to the EP: acupuncture system, the chakras, biofields,

and muscle testing. We will introduce the basics of the two most studied EP modalities, Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) and Tapas Acupuncture Techniques (TAT) and will discuss how to integrate them into your practice. 

Learning how to use these mind-body techniques in traditional psychotherapy offers you powerful tools to help relieve your client’s suffering. In addition, you can help empower your clients in their own self-care by teaching them techniques they can use for self-soothing in between their appointments with you.

If you are interested in joining this Training Institute or have any questions, please contact:  Loretta Sparks at Loretta@selfcarepower.com or Victoria Danzig at VictoriaDanzig@msn.com

Call for Papers: Voices Summer 2014

Identity and Transformation: I, We, and Other

What is identity? How do we define ourselves to ourselves, to others, to our community or larger public? In therapy, how do patients present their identities to us? What is the mechanism of change – of transformation – that shifts and liberates self?

From the biological to the social, our identities influence how we see ourselves and others. While some identifiers, such as gender and race, may seem obvious, some are hidden from others and even from ourselves. Biology, genetics, and environment begin to form us before we’re born. Parents transmit the code and shape the result. They dream their children into being; we are born into a world that already knows or recognizes us. 

Does another’s view of us create identity or change it? Years ago, being called a “nerd” in high school relegated one to outsider status.  Today’s kids describe themselves as nerds, and by that moniker identifying themselves as smart or scientific or passionate about some endeavor or interest. What happens to the boy who’s been top of his class through school and finds himself in a college where everybody’s smart, and he’s merely average?  What about the aging beauty noticing her crepey skin?  Or the American-born, ethnically Korean woman who feels most American when she visits Korea? Issues of culture, class, race, religion gender, sexuality, nationality, and ethnicity both bond us and separate us.

Our patients come to us looking for happier lives and more satisfying relationships.  We witness dramatic transformations as clients discover themselves. As therapists, we must stay aware of the hidden and not-so-hidden ways that we and our patients deal with our similarities and differences, pregnant with the possibilities for transformation that lie in the exploration of those issues.

How does therapy--- individual, group, and couples--- help with differentiation and individuation?  What are the effects of group identities? What are the implications for our divided country, our divided selves, and for the troubled world?

For the summer 2014 issue of Voices, we welcome submissions on the theme of identity and transformation.  Direct inquiries and submissions (see Submission Guidelines on the AAP website, www.aapweb.com) to editors Kristin Staroba (kristin.staroba@gmail.com) and Penelope Norton (psynorton@aol.com).

Deadline for submission: April 15, 2014

The Ethics of Change in Psychotherapy: A Lesson from Bungee Jumping

Ethics: In Search of Integrity and Responsibility in the Work Place

Ethics Committee Members: Damon Blank, Vivian Guze, Carole Light, Jack Mulgrew, Murray Scher, Avrum Weiss, Pat Webster, Marilyn Schwartz, Chair

By Marilyn Schwartz

To my surprise, a compelling ethical dilemma presented itself during my recent four-week trip to New Zealand. When our hiking group arrived at the Kawarau Bridge in South Island, the original bungee jumping venue, two of my younger traveling companions expressed an interest in bungee jumping.  Lisa, 31 years old, was a woman I identified with as a younger version of myself – athletic and drawn to challenging physical situations. Meg, 25 years old, was about to start college, having left the Marines after 5 ½ years of service mostly in Afghanistan.  Meg, clearest about wanting to jump, was holding back because of the pricey cost of the ticket.

Standing on the bridge as close to the bungee jumpers as we could, Lisa, Meg, and I were able to feel the jumpers’ palpable excitement and terror.  Lisa exclaimed, “Oh, I wish I could do it.  It certainly would cure my ridiculous fears such as speaking up to my difficult boss and avoiding conflict situations.”  Meg joined in: “I’ve done scary things in the last five years.  This actually looks like fun.” And I mumbled under my breath: “I wish I were 30 years younger and could jump without killing myself.”  

Then the therapist genie in me burst out: “You are two strong, brave women; you can do it.  You might learn something important from this. If not now, when?” I went further and told the women, “ We’re doing it, follow me,” and marched them off to the ticket counter. I planned to buy Meg a ticket. If she could risk five years of her life in Afghanistan for me/us, the least I could do was treat her to this bungee jump.  My offer clearly pushed Lisa over the edge. She said if Meg were jumping, she would too.

As I was paying for the ticket, I noticed my husband’s ashen face as he imagined that I was purchasing a ticket to jump to my death.  When he discovered what I was up to, he accused me of unethical behavior, saying that I was encouraging the girls to do something that might potentially harm them. He asserted that my own wish to jump and my words of encouragement to the young women had influenced and pushed them to make their decision.

Thankfully, both women survived the bungee jump.  Both expressed similar feelings of exhilaration and pride about their accomplishment. Each acknowledged that the jump had what we, as psychotherapists, might regard as a positive therapeutic effect on them.  They felt enlivened with a heightened sense of self-regard, gaining self-confidence from pushing through their fears.  Lisa laughed about how ridiculous it will seem to her now to tremble at the hands of her boss. Meg, who surprised all of us by screaming loudly, hysterically, from the moment she stepped off the bridge, said it was a relief for her to howl all the way down. My sense is that her screaming was therapeutic in terms of her being able to express fear in a way that she probably wasn’t allowed to do during her days in the military.  

So where do ethics come into play in our psychotherapist role as change agents? I suggest the starting point for this discussion is the important principle of beneficence and malfeasance: whether what we do is for the benefit of the patient or not.  Similarly important is the question of whether what we do is more for the benefit of our patients than for the benefit of ourselves. For example, do we encourage patients to move in one direction rather than another because it meets our conscious or unconscious needs?  Who defines therapeutic benefit and its recipient - the therapist or the patient?

Considering these questions, my behavior in the bungee jumping episode is suspect. True, I did provide a wonderful treat for a well-deserving military service person and a positive therapeutic experience for each of these young women.  But, my actions are questionable given my own heightened emotional state: not thinking through the situation carefully, not processing it with the women, and my acting impulsively – a set-up for a possible ethical transgression. As I stood on that bridge looking at others jump, my unconscious and conscious were screaming in unison: “Jump, Marilyn, jump!” Thankfully, I was the recipient through the generosity of my younger “surrogate jumpers” of one of the greatest thrills of my lifetime - vicariously jumping off one of the highest bungee jumps in the world.  

So, how to judge my therapist genie whose work appeared to benefit all? Join me, Phyllis Clymer, and David Loftis for a continuation of this discussion on the ethics of change in psychotherapy in the upcoming ethics workshop at the 2014 Summer Workshop. 

Southern Region Committee Report

Audience listens in rapt attention to Larry Shor

Our Winter Salon on 1-31-14 featured Larry Schor, PhD. His title was: Beyond Our Reach or Within Our Grasp: Boundaries; Their Role in Enhancing Virtue, Managing Our Inner Saboteurs and Creating Change For Good.  Larry,  a member of AAP since 2001,  is a Professor of psychology at the University of West Georgia.  West Georgia is a Humanistic Psychology program and Larry is responsible for bringing many students to AAP Southern Region functions and to I&Cs. He is a Voices contributor and has a Private Practice. He is also a founder of the volunteer program for the Red Cross Disaster Relief.

Larry held the group spellbound as he presented his theories of our saboteurs. In exploring the positive and negative functions of these inner processes, our discussion topics included: the boundary violations inherent in the sabotaging we can do in our work and in our lives; the many reasons we have our inner saboteurs; and the duality of the positive/negative function. Larry offered a safe container for sharing many ideas and conflicting opinions. Larry was bombarded with questions and comments. His presentation helped us prepare for the Southern Region Conference:  The Cost of Virtue, Managing Your Inner Saboteurs and our Summer Workshop: Be Changed. For Good. We loved having Larry.

This salon came just two days after “Snomageddon” in Atlanta when everything stopped. We appreciated having such a great turnout of 65 participants, including 15 first timers and many repeat guests. We are hoping to help increase membership from the participation of these young therapists. 

Southern Region Conference

Our Southern Region Conference,  The Cost of Virtue, Managing Your Inner Saboteurs will be held on March 21-23, 2014 in Myrtle Beach, S.C. We have an incredible line-up of workshop presenters and invite you to take advantage of our “jam-packed” AAP experience. There will be wonderful food, a beach side dinner and of course, dancing. Our presenters are Lyn Sommer, Jack Mulgrew, David Donlon, Bob Rosenblatt, Suzanne Imes, Anni Tuikka and Steve Eichel. We have two all-day workshops and four half-day workshops. We will continue our Sunday morning tradition of randomly assigned peer groups, which often function as workshops. The conference is at the Myrtle Beach Hilton, right on the beach. We have conference reduced rate rooms available for three days prior and three days after the conference for your pleasure. Mention AAP as you register to get the conference rate. If you are not on our mailing list, our AAP website has all of the registration information.  The rooms must be reserved by February 28^th to take advantage of the low $109.00 room rate. We hope to see you there. Please encourage colleagues and therapists in your geographic area to come and have a “Taste of AAP” in a lovely welcoming setting.

We are looking forward to planning our Fall Salon. If you are an AAP member who lives out of state and would like to present at one of our salons, we would love to hear from you and will treat you like the special person you are.  

See you Soon!

Maureen Martin, Chair, Hannah Esther-Hawkins, Treasurer, Nancy Moser, Secretary, Curt Arey, Melissa Beddingfield, Ken Turner, Dairlyn Chelette, Lucie LieNielsen and Don Hawkins, Treasurer, Nancy Moser, Secretary, Curt Arey, Melissa Beddingfield, Ken Turner, Dairlyn Chelette, Lucie LieNielsen and Don Murphy.

Looking Forward

by Gordon Cohen, President Elect

Five work groups gathered during our Strategic Planning session last summer to determine our next long term goal.  

One of the groups focused on our financial future.  They deliberated various ways to generate additional sources of income for the Academy.  

• • They are in favor of beginning an AAP Bookstore that would sell MP3 recordings from our audio library as well as books published by our members.  
• • Additionally, the idea was proposed to enlist an online retailer such as Amazon to promote the sale of publications vetted by Academy members that are judged to contribute to the training of psychotherapists.  
• • They are also in favor of delegating the Training Committee to develop revenue by generating online courses for psychotherapists that are CEU approved.   
• While they supported the concept of a network for the public to obtain referrals for therapists, they emphasized that it would not be ethical to receive income for this service. 

A more complex issue, which the group was unable to complete due to a lack of time, revolves around the possibility of gaining financial support from vendors other than pharmaceutical companies.   This question was placed on hold until it can be entertained by the entire EC.

Lastly, it was recommended that the Finance Committee, which has oversight of our investments, consult with our fund manager at least annually to assess the health of our investments and make whatever changes the members deem warranted.  While we need to continue to develop additional revenue streams, this goal was not sees as our highest priority for the immediate future.  Other ideas of generating income for the Academy are welcomed as well as volunteers who may be interested in contributing to any of these programs.