Conferences Led by Ron Potter-Efron Ron Potter-Efron facilitates many workshops intended for mental health therapists, alcohol/drug counselors, psychologists, and related professional audiences.  These workshops offer a mix of useful information, practical treatment guidelines, and opportunities for participants to find out a little more about themselves.  Here are the titles and a brief description of four one-day (6 hour) workshops he now offers.  Ron also gives KEYNOTE ADDRESSES and other, shorter presentations in these and other areas, designed to meet people's needs in terms of time and focus on particular material.  These presentations can also be geared for general rather than professional audiences. "Anger and Aggression Management: Core Skills Training" "Letting Go of Anger" "The Therapeutic Treatment of Shame, Guilt and the Social Emotions" "Anger Management: Adding Breadth and Depth." "Rage: Understanding and Treating the Most Dangerous Form of Anger." "Adolescent Anger Management."

"Anger and Aggression Management: Core Skills Training"

A core seminar that should be a priority for any general practitioner who wants to be able to help clients understand and begin dealing with their anger.  The main sections of this workshop include:

• Understanding the essential qualities of excessive anger and conflict

• How to make meaningful assessments of the possible causes of someone's anger

• Relationship of anger problems to alcohol or drug abuse

• Four content areas  for intervention:

  • Behavior

  • Cognition

  • Affect

  • Spirit

• Presentation of format for 12 week anger management programs.

"Letting Go of Anger"

This seminar offers much new material even for experienced anger management professionals because it is centered around the concept of identifying and working with each person's anger styles-the characteristic ways they handle their anger.  In addition, a one-hour unit is reserved for consideration of how professional therapists can help angry children, adolescents, couples, and families.

• What are anger styles?

• The hidden styles:

  • Anger avoidance

  • Passive aggression

  • Paranoia and distrust-based anger

• The explosive styles:

  • Sudden anger

  • Deliberate anger

  • Excitatory anger

  • Shame-based anger

• The chronic styles:

  • Habitual anger

  • Moral anger

  • Resentment (which is covered in more detail in the "Angry All The Time" seminar)

• Assertiveness as the eleventh anger style

• Anger in the family: dealing with angry children, adolescents, couples and families

"The Therapeutic Treatment of Shame, Guilt and the Social Emotions"

Shame and guilt concerns permeated modern therapeutic endeavor, sometimes as the primary reason clients enter treatment and more often as problems that emerge during the course of therapy.  In turn, shame and guilt can be classified as two of the social emotions: emotions that have developed primarily to guide interpersonal behavior.  Other social emotions include embarrassment and pride (and possibly envy and jealousy).  This seminar offers participants an opportunity to understand how the social emotions affect individual behavior as well as how and why each social emotion can become problematic.  Treatment guidelines are provided for each social emotion with a particular focus upon the treatment of shame and guilt.

• Understanding the social emotions: their development, value, and possible problems

• Utilizing the "Four Spheres of Self" model to treat the social emotions:

  • Presentation self
  • Defensive self
  • Flawed self
  • Core self

• How the "action tendencies" of each social emotion affect interpersonal interaction

• Treatment of specific content areas

  • The shame-rage connection

  • Sexual and body shame
  • The relationship of addiction to shame and guilt
  • Developing pride in therapeutic interventions
  • Treatment for jealousy and envy
  • Treatment of shame and guilt from the family of origin
  • Finding the core self

"Anger Management: Adding Breadth and Depth"

Anger management is an exceedingly broad topic. Increasingly practitioners are developing individualized treatment options for angry and aggressive individuals that take their specific needs into account. Topics covered include:

Ten Anger Styles. Ten ways individuals handle their anger. Each style presents a different set of problems that counselors can address. Based on Ron and Pat Potter-Efron’s Letting Go of Anger.

Attachment Problems, Anger and Aggression. Counselors who understand how early bonding difficulties and later attachment failures contribute to many anger problems including domestic violence and jealousy can help clients better deal with these issues.

Resentment  and the Ability to Forgive. Resentment and the subsequent development of hate is a particularly difficult area of anger management that demands specialized knowledge on the part of the counselor.

Treating angry children, adolescents, couples and families.

"Rage: Understanding and Treating the Most Dangerous Form of Anger."

Rage can be defined as a fit of tremendous anger during which a person loses partial or complete control over his or her feelings, thoughts, actions and (sometimes) conscious awareness of his or her behavior. Rages are very dangerous phenomena, often resulting in serious injury or death. 
Raging will be described as a general concept as well as in four specific manifestations: impotent rage, survival rage, abandonment rage, and shame-rage. Treatment for raging in general and each of these types of rages will be provided.

Content areas: 

•  What are rages? How do they feel to the rager?
•  Brain and body functioning during rages. Possible medical treatment.
•  Understanding and treating rages.
•  Raging in children and adolescents.
•  Understanding and treating:
    - Impotent rages
    - Survival rages
    - Abandonment rages
    - Shame-rages.
  

"Adolescent Anger Management."

This seminar is taught with Bill Blount, the author of Healthy Anger Comprehensive Workbook for Learning Positive Anger Management Skills.
Anger management with adolescents parallels adult anger management in many ways but must take into account the less fully developed brain of teenagers as well as their tendencies to rail against authority and to criticize adult hypocrisy.

Topic areas include:

•  Three types of problematic adolescents.
•  The adolescent brain and its implications for anger management.
•  Core approaches to anger management counseling with adolescents: behavioral, cognitive, affective and existential interventions.
•  The ten anger styles as applied to adolescent anger management.
  

Would you be interested in contracting Ron to speak to your organization? If so, please email us at  pttrefrn@triwest.net and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.

Copyright © 2001 [Pat and Ron Potter-Efron.]. All rights reserved.
 Revised: 04/06/05.