Annual STATA Meeting (with CEU)

Join us the for Annual STATA Membership Meeting

CEU Presentation: Trauma & the Brain - Using the Senses & Art to Support Healing

Feb 26, 2017
2:00-4:30PM
St. Edward's University, Doyle Hall, Room 132
3001 S. Congress Ave, 78704
(Directions at the bottom of the email)

Register to attend: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/stata-annual-meeting-and-ceu-presentation-tickets-31414685169

We will share updates from the past year, discuss plans for 2017, and have a CEU presentation with art-making. 

CEU - Trauma and the Brain: Using the Senses and Art to Support Healing
Presenters - Bess Green, LPC, ATS, ATR-BC and Deann Acton, LMFT, ATR-BC

Learning objectives:
1. Participants will demonstrate basic understanding of trauma's effects on the brain and ways to help clients be "brain savvy."
2. Participants will learn strategies to help clients buy in to brain-based, trauma-informed therapy and coping skills.
3. Participants will learn strategies for increasing the sensory impact of their current art therapy or counseling practice.

Recent research is providing new insights to the ways that trauma, both big and little t, effect the brain. Growing understanding of the brain’s plasticity throughout the lifespan provides hope for clients and a challenge for clinicians. Working with cognition alone has provided limited benefits for many of our clients. They tell us, “Yeah, I knew what to do” or “I knew that wasn’t going to work but…” Cognitive strategies and strategies using the neo-cortex simply aren’t “on-line” during times of high stress and overwhelm. The research suggests that therapists need to develop new ways of supporting shift in the body, the kinesthetic and sensory experience of living. How can we as therapists incorporate these understandings into our work with clients? How can we educate our clients in ways that help build trust, reduce shame and develop empowerment in the healing relationship? These are some of the issues we will grapple with in the presentation and experiential to follow.

BIOS

Bess Green is a Board Certified Registered Art Therapist and Licensed Professional Counselor in private practice.  She has worked with children and families who have experienced domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse for more than ten years in a community setting. She also has experience working with adults and children in an acute hospital setting.

Having majored in studio art as an undergraduate, Ms. Green was familiar with the power of art to explore the richness and complexity of emotional life and the power to create a bridge between artist and viewer.  Art Therapy training strengthened her conviction that art helped clients who had experienced trauma find their voice and reconnect with the body safely. Further research into working with relational and solution focused counseling models and Somatic Experiencing led to an approach that was supportive but also effective given a brief treatment frame.

Deann Acton is a Board Certified Registered Art Therapist and Licensed Marriage Family Therapist in Private Practice.  In the past eighteen years, She has amassed a wealth of experience working with women and children in domestic violence shelters, running mandated violence intervention programs for men, working in prisons and juvenile detention centers as well as drug and alcohol recovery programs and mental hospitals.   For twelve years, she worked in the San Mateo County School Based Mental Health program outside of San FranciscoCalifornia.  In that program, she was able to do training with Bruce Perry and his Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics and also received extensive training in Dialectical Behavior Therapy. 

Ms. Acton has a Bachelors Degree in Fine Art from the University of Texas.  She has used art through out her own life as a means of healing.  In 2012, when she was diagnosed with cancer, Ms. Acton used art and DBT coping strategies to weather the illness and treatment necessary to defeat it.   She is currently in full remission, but cancer left her with an even deeper understanding of the power of art to move through seemingly insurmountable challenges.  

Directions:

We will meet in Doyle Hall, building number 12 on the map linked here: https://stedwards.box.com/shared/static/5d39db5j5z9vllu0j8uwon4mm7yk22xh.pdf

Enter from Congress Ave and proceed onto campus from the main entrance. Turn left at first stop sign. You will pass a large parking lot on the left and the Arts building on right. Park in the lot on the left, across from Doyle Hall. You can enter the building through the courtyard or the front.