Using the EMDR Recent Event Protocol with Homicide Survivors and Victims of Other Violent Crimes

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Donald F. deGraffenried, LCSW, Senior EMDR TrainerRegister Now for CE programs now
April Minjarez, PhD, LMFT, Senior EMDR Trainer

Fri, March 17, 2023 – In-person
9:00 am – 4:30 pm
6 CECs
This training is approved by the EMDR International Association for 6.00 credits. Approval #08012-19.

$120 – UConn SSW Alumni and Current Field Instructors
$150 – All Others

This in-person training is suitable for all levels of EMDR practitioner, however participants must have at a minimum taken Part I EMDR Training, by an EMDRIA Approved training provider. Only those who have fully completed EMDR Part II training, will be able to claim and use EMDRIA credits towards certification or recertification.

Homicide is a stark reality in the United States and claimed over 24,576 victims in 2022. The EMDR Recent Event Protocol is a key tool used in the treatment of victims/survivors and offers a structured and effective way for clients to desensitize and recover from the trauma of the murder of a loved one.

Co-Trainers April Minjarez, Ph.D. and Donald F. deGraffenried, LCSW, will explore the effective use of the Recent Event Protocol as it pertains to homicide victims and victims of other violent crimes. This will include a review of the protocol, engagement of the client, assessment, and effective use of a ten session, time-limited model of treatment. This seminar will also address the use of EMD, Eye Movement Desensitization, for desensitization when use of the full 8-phase protocol may not be possible.

The day will include a case study of successful treatment, including a demonstration via role-play of a simple visual tool to help in the assessment and treatment of the client. In addition, the trainers will explore the impact of historical trauma and how it pertains to race, class, and culture.

This seminar will include lecture and numerous, brief clinical examples of the successful use of EMDR Recent Event Protocol with homicide survivors and other victims of violence. An audiotape of an interview with a homicide survivor who has been treated with EMDR will also be used to bring “the voice of the survivor” into the training.

This seminar will enable you to:

  • identify and describe the three crisis issues related to homicide and other violent crimes
  • define the Recent Event Protocol/EMD and employ them in the assessment and treatment of trauma related to homicide and other crimes of violence
  • demonstrate an understanding of the Visual Assessment Tool (VAT) in the assessment and treatment of homicide trauma/crimes of violence
  • apply five or more specific EMDR techniques to work successfully with survivors of violence in community mental health settings
  • experience and describe how historical trauma: race, class and culture are important in treatment
  • understand the appropriate use of Phase One, Phase Two and Phase Three in the use of the Recent Event Protocol

Please bring a small stone that will easily fit in the palm of your hand. We will demonstrate a powerful, yet simple experience of mindfulness to use with clients or yourselves.

Developing Comfort and Confidence with Tapping (EFT)

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Catherine Ewing, LCSW, MDivRegister Now for CE programs now
Friday, March 24, 2023
In-Person
9:30 am – 1:30 pm
4 CECs

$80 – UConn SSW Alumni and Current Field Instructors
$100 – All Others

This workshop is a great follow up for those who have taken Fundamentals of Emotional Freedom Technique: Care for Clients and Practitioners, for those who have taken any Entry Level EFT class or been practicing on their own. Based on feedback from prior participants, a follow up class has proven helpful in deepening understanding and developing confidence in using EFT.

Getting comfortable using EFT comes with practicing on yourself and with clients who are generally well-functioning but may be struggling with anxiety, physical pain, intrusive thoughts, self-limiting beliefs or life changes. The more you use EFT and see the consistent positive results, the less strange it will feel and the more opportunities you will find to use it for your own self-care and for your clients.
This workshop will include a review of the Basic Recipe for tapping, including tapping points, set-up phrase and basic tapping protocol. Additional topics to be introduced and further explored will be the Personal Peace Procedure, Tapping to Install Positive Beliefs, Borrowing Benefits, and how EFT dovetails with the Law of Attraction.

There will be ample time for group tapping, demonstration with class participants, and Q&A.

Learning Objectives:

  • Develop more comfort and confidence using EFT for self and with clients
  • Understand the Personal Peace Procedure and its appropriate use
  • Learn protocol for Tapping in Positive Beliefs
  • Learn about the power of Borrowing Benefits in group settings
  • Understand the energetic integration of EFT and the LOA

Fundamentals of Emotional Freedom Technique

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Catherine Ewing, LCSW, MDivRegister Now for CE programs now
Friday, March 3, 2023
In-Person
9:30 am – 1:30 pm
4 CECs

$80 – UConn SSW Alumni and Current Field Instructors
$100 – All Others

Room location and directions will be included in your confirmation email.

Emotional Freedom Technique is a form of Energy Psychology, combining psychotherapy and energy healing techniques. It is based on the understanding of the human body as an electrical system and the recognition of the systems of subtle energy that surround and interface with the physical body. When that energy system is disrupted, a person experiences mental, emotional, or physical imbalance.

EFT has application across a broad range of issues, including stress and anxiety related disorders, PTSD, physical pain, self-sabotage, cravings and addictions and performance. It draws from a variety of proven modalities, including Thought Field Therapy, acupuncture, biofeedback, EMDR, hypnosis, cognitive behavioral therapy and applied kinesiology.

Various forms of Energy Psychology have been practiced since the early 1980s. In recent years, EFT has been researched in more than 10 countries, by more than 60 investigators, whose results have been published in more than 20 different peer-reviewed journals.

In this engaging in-person workshop, participants will learn how to use Emotional Freedom Technique both for their own self-care and for working with their clients, students, colleagues, and families.

• learn about the psychological and medical roots of EFT
• learn the Basic Recipe and Tapping Sequence of EFT
• understand how EFT can be used to bring down high emotional charge in both current issues such as anxiety and fear, as well as from past trauma
• have a direct experience of the benefits of tapping
• learn how to use Emotional Freedom Technique with their clients and for their own self-care

Research: Young Adult Perceptions of Climate Change, Here and Abroad

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The School of Social Work’s Center for International Social Work Studies (CISWS) has received an award to support research on the perceptions and attitudes of young adults toward climate change. The research is supported by UConn Hartford Director’s Office for Student Research.

Melting iceberg“We hope to learn about the youth’s involvement with climate activism, as well as any anxieties or concerns with climate change broadly. By looking at youth and young adults from varying nationalities, we hope to learn about what motivates or hinders them from being actively engaged in addressing climate change. Learning from the perspectives of the participants, we plan to develop an intervention research project to train young community leaders to better engage with others in climate activism,” says Rebecca Thomas, professor and director of the CISWS.

Graduate student interns involved in the research project include Christine Deschamps, Fizza Saghir, and Fernando Ricardo Valenzuela.

Goal of the Study: As the consequences of climate change increasingly impact all parts of the globe—and disproportionately BIPOC populations in the Global South—its effects on mental and physical health, forced migration, and how this impacts people’s willingness to engage in preventative advocacy, needs to be explored. As more research on climate change’s impact on survival surfaces, we want to examine how youth and young adults’ positive or negative perceptions of climate change impact their desire to engage in advocacy.

Project Summary: This project, using a critical participatory qualitative framework, aims to explore youth and young adults’ (18 – 29) attitudes and feelings around climate change, particularly their degree of hope and/or hopelessness regarding adequate mitigation/prevention strategies.

Target populations will include both international and domestic-born participants to compare any similarities or differences in responses during analysis. We will conduct semi-structured focus groups and surveys with participants to hear their general thoughts and feelings about climate change, frequency of these thoughts, material changes they’ve made to “do their part (if any),” how hopeful/hopeless they feel climate change is being adequately addressed, and if these feelings impact their level of involvement with climate advocacy.

Analysis will include comparing international students/participants with local (USA) participants to see if any differences in perceptions, feelings, and advocacy are related to cultural/geographic backgrounds, and/or the impact climate change has had/will have on those areas compared to the USA.

Methodology: The methodology will involve recruitment of youth and young adults from the broader Connecticut community through in-person and social media outreach efforts. Participants will be a mix of both international and U.S. residents and will participate in semi-structured focus groups of about six people. Qualitative programs (NVivo or Dedoose) will be used for a thematic analysis.

SSW Marks Black History Month with Call for Racial Justice

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From the Desk of Dean Heller

Dear Colleagues,

While Black History Month presents us with the opportunity to celebrate the contributions of African Americans to our nation’s history, at this moment we are also called to redouble our commitment to the cause of racial justice.Black History Month graphic

As many of you know, in early January, 29-year-old Tyre Nichols of Memphis, Tennessee died after being fatally beaten by police officers during a traffic stop. His death is a painful reminder that just three years after George Floyd’s death, Black people remain disproportionate targets of police violence. At the School of Social Work, we are staunchly opposed to systemic racism and will continue to use the tools of teaching, scholarship, and community and professional action to call attention to and end the structural inequities that harm Black communities.

Fittingly, the theme for this year’s Black History Month is “Black Resistance.” According to the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the theme addresses the fact that “African Americans have resisted historic and ongoing oppression, in all forms, especially the racial terrorism of lynching, racial pogroms, and police killings since our arrival upon these shores.” We are all too aware of how anti-Blackness continues with efforts to erase Black history and excuse violence. As long as such anti-Black oppression exists, the School of Social Work will work to challenge it, locally and globally.

The School’s Black History 365 committee engages in this work by honoring and highlighting Black lives, contributions, and culture throughout the year. On Feb. 1, we’re hosting “Giving Voice to the Black Experience,” an event with local artist Miles Wilson-Toliver who will discuss a form of resistance – the rejection of Euro-classical voice technique which paved the way to a more universal technique: RSVP at http://s.uconn.edu/BH365.

All month long, I strongly encourage you to explore opportunities at UConn and in your community to highlight the accomplishments and impact of Black and African American communities on our history, society, and culture. Visit a museum, attend a lecture, read a book, volunteer. These efforts advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism, as well as our goal to support and value the experiences of our Black students and colleagues.

In solidarity,

 

Nina Rovinelli Heller, Ph.D.
Dean and Professor
Zachs Chair in Social Work

 

 

 

 

 

Understanding Grief in Children/Teens in Foster/Residential Care

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Ruth Pearlman, LCSW, LICSW, M.ED
Wed, March 29, 2023Register Now for CE programs now
10 am – 12 pm (ET)
2 CECs

$40 – UConn SSW Alumni and Current Field Instructors
$50 – All Others

Webinar link will be emailed when your registration is complete.

As social workers, we tend to have limited training in the grief of children. How they cognitively and psychologically understand loss is often omitted from our core learning objectives. For children in foster or residential or alternative care, the research is even more limited. This webinar will focus on the specific bereavement and grief experiences of children in alternative care. We will explore how a child, to even “be” in alternative care, is to be a griever. Any alternative care for a child, by its very definition, requires that the child in care has either lost a family member(s) to actual death or another form of loss that often feels like a death.

How have we systemically viewed these grieving children? Are we more likely to diagnose their expressions of grief as negative behaviors? Can the most oppositional child we treat be among the most bereaved children we have encountered?

This webinar will examine children in alternative care as disenfranchised grievers. We will address the bereavement needs that so often, and unintentionally, go untreated. We will also explore why this grief has been systemically undertreated due to a system that was never given adequate resources to address the bereavement needs of these children.

Participants will:

  • be able to identify the common symptoms of grief experienced by children in care
  • be able to identify how grief manifests in behavioral symptoms
  • learn positive interventions to address grief and loss issues of children in alternative care

Celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day

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From the Office of Dean Heller

Dear Colleagues,

On Monday, January 16, we recognize Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. For four decades, this holiday has provided an opportunity to celebrate the life and contributions of this legendary civil rights leader. At UConn School of Social Work, we also take this moment to reaffirm our commitment to Dr. King’s Dream and the ongoing struggle for racial justice.

The goal of achieving racial, social, and economic justice is central to our School’s mission and a major focus of Social Work for Impact: Our Five-Year Strategic Plan. Our faculty and staff are deeply committed to continuing to engage in meaningful dialogue about diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism in our community and in our work. We also pledge to hold ourselves accountable and to take action to advance racial justice.

As part of this commitment, we recently published our School’s definition of anti-racism in order to clarify our purpose and goals moving forward. It states that anti-racism is “collective and individual actions designed to ensure that all members of our community experience, in equal measure over time and place, belonging, power, esteem, success, and wellness.” As a community of social work students, faculty and staff, we know that our mission can only be realized when justice is achieved for those who have long been excluded, especially racially oppressed people in our community and world.

On MLK Day, I encourage you to participate in events organized at UConn and in our community. These include the MLK Living Legacy Convocation and the MLK Day of Service.  For information about these events and other events across the state, please visit UConn’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice website.

 

In solidarity,

Nina Rovinelli Heller, Ph.D.
Dean and Professor
Zachs Chair in Social Work

 

 

Developing Comfort and Confidence with Tapping (EFT)

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Catherine Ewing, LCSW, MDivRegister Now for CE programs now
Monday, March 27, 2023
10 am – 12 pm (ET)
2 CECs

$40 – UConn SSW Alumni and Current Field Instructors
$50 – All Others

Webinar link will be emailed when your registration is complete

This webinar is a great follow up for those who have taken Fundamentals of Emotional Freedom Technique: Care for Clients and Practitioners, other Entry Level EFT classes, or practicing on their own. Based on feedback from prior participants, this follow up class has proven helpful in deepening understanding and developing confidence in using EFT.

Getting comfortable using EFT comes with practicing on yourself and with clients who are generally well-functioning but may be struggling with anxiety, physical pain, intrusive thoughts, self-limiting beliefs or life changes. The more you use EFT and see the consistent positive results, the less strange it will feel and the more opportunities you will find to use it for your clients and your own self-care.

This webinar will include a review of the Basic Recipe for tapping, including tapping points, set-up phrase and basic tapping protocol. Additional topics to be introduced and further explored will be the Personal Peace Procedure, Tapping to Install Positive Beliefs, Borrowing Benefits, and how EFT dovetails with the Law of Attraction. There will be ample time for group tapping, demonstration, and Q&A.

Participants in this interactive webinar will:

  • Develop more comfort and confidence using EFT for self and with clients
  • Understand the Personal Peace Procedure and its appropriate use
  • Learn protocol for Tapping in Positive Beliefs
  • Learn about the power of Borrowing Benefits in group settings
  • Understand the energetic integration of EFT and the LOA

Fundamentals of Emotional Freedom Technique

Posted on by

Catherine Ewing, LCSW, MDivRegister Now for CE programs now

Monday, Feb 27
10 am – 12 pm (ET)
2 CECs

$40 – UConn SSW Alumni and Current Field Instructors
$50 – All Others

Webinar link will be emailed when your registration is complete

Emotional Freedom Technique is a form of Energy Psychology, combining psychotherapy and energy healing techniques. It is based on the understanding of the human body as an electrical system and the recognition of the systems of subtle energy that surround and interface with the physical body. When that energy system is disrupted, a person experiences mental, emotional or physical imbalance.

EFT has application across a broad range of issues, including stress and anxiety related disorders, PTSD, physical pain, self-sabotage, cravings and addictions and performance. It draws from a variety of proven modalities, including Thought Field Therapy, acupuncture, biofeedback, EMDR, hypnosis, cognitive behavioral therapy and applied kinesiology.
Various forms of Energy Psychology have been practiced since the early 1980s. In recent years, EFT has been researched in more than 10 countries, by more than 60 investigators, whose results have been published in more than 20 different peer-reviewed journals.

In this engaging workshop, participants will learn how to use Emotional Freedom Technique both for their own self-care and for working with their clients, students, colleagues and families.

In this engaging seminar, participants will:

  • learn about the psychological and medical roots of EFT
  • learn the Basic Recipe and Tapping Sequence of EFT
  • understand how EFT can be used to bring down high emotional charge in both current issues such as anxiety and fear, as well as from past trauma
  • have a direct experience of the benefits of tapping
  • learn how to use Emotional Freedom Technique with their clients and for their own self-care

 

Art of Diagnosis – Webinar

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Register for CE programs nowJennifer Berton, PhD, LICSW, CADC-II
Virtual

Thurs, Oct 12, 2023
10 am – 12 pm (ET)
2 CECs

Registration Fee: $50
10% discount for UConn SSW Alumni and current SSW Field Instructors

Webinar link will be emailed when your registration is complete.

Although a large component of the daily work of social workers is to diagnose psychiatric illnesses, there is little education on how to do that well. This training teaches how to differentially diagnose using specific questions and provides distinct tools that clinicians can use in sessions.

In this live webinar, you will:

  • Explore common diagnostic mistakes clinicians make
  • Learn to accurately use the Mental Status Exam as a diagnostic tool
  • Gather the assessment tools available in the DSM 5 and elsewhere
  • Practice differential diagnosis by disorder type through vignettes