Online Training: Self-Care When You Need It Most
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Global and local issues, as well as the aftermath of the pandemic, have affected professionals and clients alike. Professionals are providing services to disenfranchised people and populations while enduring unprecedented stressors. The presenters have a long history of studying self-care at the front lines of challenging environments and helping professionals to develop their skills in caring for themselves.
This workshop begins with the recent literature and results from surveys in 2020 and 2023 examining the impact of the pandemic and self-care among people working with justice-involved clients. Discussion follows, including the emotional, physical, and interpersonal effects of the past few years. The training next reviews time-honored and evidenced-based self-care techniques and activities for helping busy professionals reduce their vulnerability to stress; enhance emotion regulation; employ daily strategies to unite body and mind; cope from a place of calm during times of distress; and, when difficult days get the better of us (as they often can), to re-center, reset, and repair. It encourages participants to create their list of “non-negotiables,” those self-care activities (such as sleep or spiritual practices) that one refuses to compromise.
Topics to be covered include:
1) Review of recent survey data on how the pandemic has affected counselors, therapists, and paraprofessionals.
2) Self-care skills for professionals and clients.
3) Review how professional self-care improves clients’ capacities for self-care.
1) Explain how the pandemic has impacted those who work with clients in challenging environments.
2) Assess how we, as well others, are coping with global and career stressors.
3) Describe current research regarding the benefits of the consistent practice of mindfulness, meditation, and yoga on mental and physical health.
4) Describe self-care techniques for emotion regulation and managing stress that include healthy daily routines, mindfulness, meditation, mind/body awareness, cognitive restructuring, breathwork, and muscle-tension release.
Audience
This training is for all professionals who work in stressful environments. It aims to honor our intention to take care of ourselves every day and to highlight some of the best-known strategies that can assist us and our clients.
Content Level
Who's Presenting
Janet DiGiorgio-Miller, PhD
Dr. Janet DiGiorgio-Miller is a licensed psychologist in private practice in New Jersey. She conducts evaluations and treatment for sex offenders. She has over thirty years of clinical experience in working with adolescents and families. She has been a frequent presenter both locally and nationally on various topics including reunification, relationship issues and mindfulness. Dr. DiGiorgio-Miller has publications in the field of sexual offending including research on emotional variables and deviant sexual fantasies in adolescent sex offenders. Dr. DiGiorgio-Miller also has publications regarding mindfulness and sexual offending. She published a self-help book for young adults called “A Great Relationship & Then Some.” Dr. DiGiorgio-Miller was past president and secretary of the New Jersey Chapter of The Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, (NJATSA) and has served on the board for many years. She is a Representative At Large on the ATSA Board of Directors. She is the Chair of the ATSA Ethics Committees. Dr. DiGiorgio-Miller is on the Child and Adolescent Committee and the Chair of the Best Practices Subcommittee.
Arliss Kurtz, MSW, RSW
Arliss Kurtz MSW, RSW is a registered clinical social worker from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Ms. Kurtz has 30+ years of experience working within child welfare, community mental health/psychiatry, and forensic areas of practice within varied work settings, and is currently in private practice. She has presented on a variety of topics including, but not limited to, compassion fatigue/burn out, self-care, therapy with youth who have engaged in sexual harm, trauma-informed practice and caregiving, and mental health and wellness information. Ms. Kurtz regularly volunteers her time to the Manitoba
College of Social Workers, most recently as Chair of the Inquiry Committee, a judiciary process related to the Complaints Committee. She is on the international ATSA Child and Adolescent Committee, Chair of the In-Reach Subcommittee where she created, co-developed, and co-facilitates a monthly, International learning and on-line peer consultation forum. She is also on the Child and Adolescent Best Practice Subcommittee and was a member of the 2022 ATSA Conference Committee that was held in Los Angeles where she also co-presented two workshops. As part of her career development and self-care practice, Ms. Kurtz is currently working through a yearlong hybrid yoga teacher training that is held on-line for 11 months and will culminate with an immersion and certification experience in Costa Rica. Once certified, she will be melding aspects of Raja yoga practice, also known as the “Royal Path”, within her clinical practice.