How To Be A Healing Presence Without Becoming Anxious, Power-Struggling, Or Referring the Mad Person To A Hospital

How It Works

Starting this November in two-hour sessions on Sunday evenings, I will teach you a new model for understanding psychosis that will help you be able to relate with a person in madness in a manner that helps them heal. We are looking for nine volunteers who will receive the training for free in a webinar format on zoom. Volunteers may be professionals (including peer counselors) looking to hone their skills, family members seeking better relationships with their loved ones, or people with lived experience who want to share their perspective and contribute to a new model. The sessions will be taped and edited and eventually sold at an affordable price. Come bring your stories and perspectives to the discussion, ask questions, and we will all learn in community.

Here’s what we’ll go over:

Week 1

• How listening to stories and reflecting on commonalities helped me deconstruct experiences into solvable problems and formulate the structure of the rest of the presentation

• Why the medical model definitions lead to limited solutions and ultimately to the poor outcomes, stereotypes and the dehumanization we see.

• The way the thirty differential diagnoses that include psychotic experiences in them may have kept us from creating a counter culture and focusing on solutions. 

Week 2

• Why the notion that this is a thought disorder is wrong, and the importance of considering the conglomeration of experiences that cause one to experience a break from reality.

• The reason trying to stop a person from perseverating about their experiences by telling them that they are ill only decreases mindfulness and thwarts efforts to stop perseveration.

• Why it is often important to research and know about real government conspiracies to gain a message receiver’s trust and learn about what they think.

Week 3

• How expanding the ways message receivers think about what causes their experiences adds to flexibility and can have a positive impact on functioning.

• Learn to use what we term “the trickster concept” to likewise increase flexibility and open up faith without reality checking and sabotaging your trust with the message receiver.

• Why processing past behavior and negative outcomes is essential to help a message receiver start to accept boundaries and use the social skills that work for them.

Week 4

• How social, institutional, and internalized stigma are linked to a message receiver’s irrational thinking making timing and context important as cognitive therapy is used as a tool to help them. 

• How a mindful understanding of special messages can still be a valid part of an individual’s effort to discern reality without leading to a crisis or an emergency.

• How to use this system of care in group and individual contexts so that you can meet the message receiver where they are at and develop intervention strategies.

Hi, I’m Tim 

Early on in my 27 years of working in the trenches of community mental health, I thought I was a good worker when I did things like: 1) take care of people who were experiencing a break in reality by doing things for them to build trust; and 2) reminding them to take their medication. As I realized what people were living through in impoverished warehouse circumstances and fought for better services, I started to notice ways I was being followed by the company that owned the housing project where I worked. When I received a threat from a close friend, I myself descended into madness. I tried to flee to Canada  and was rapidly warehoused as a ward in a last resort State Hospital. I learned very quickly that madness wasn’t what I was trained to believe it was in school. I learned 1) that being treated like I was incapable of doing anything myself felt insulting; and 2) being told to take my medications was pointless; these kinds of interventions were not the help I needed.  

It was a lot harder to get ready to go back to work in mental health than I thought it would be after three months in an institution. Enduring housing insecurity, moves, and underemployment was very hard. When I did manage to get my license I started to run professional groups that explored not only what psychosis was, but also what could be done that was helpful. I used my lived experience to help other silenced individuals open up. The things we all learned in the process of sharing stories were astounding. I have documented these learnings over the past fifteen years and want to release to you my findings in a course that will help you know how to intervene when faced with someone who experiences a break from reality.   

Click to Schedule Interview with Tim

There will only be only nine to ten participants so set up your interview today

The post Nine Volunteers Can Join Journey Through Madness Webinar for Free appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

This is an announcement that Quality Improvement of Solano County Health and Social Services (Provider #57883) is offering Redefining Psychosis in two parts – 9:00 am – 12:15 pm on Thursdays, May 14 and 21, 2020.   For details regarding registration, please see attached Registration Form.

This is a 2-part training.  It is recommended that participants attend both days, but it is not required.

This workshop is intended for all levels of trainees. Parts of it are introductory and parts are advanced. It is intended to inspire clinicians to bravely address the issues that are experienced in a psychotic break or what becomes redefined as a special message crisis.

Maximum attendance for this training is 50 participants.

Course Title:      Redefining Psychosis

Date:                    Part 1 – Thursday, May 14, 2020

                              Part 2 – Thursday, May 21, 2020

Time:                   Each session is from 9:00 am – 12:15 pm

Location:             Zoom – Information on accessing the trainings will be sent out closer to the training dates

 Educational Objectives:

Historically, clinicians are trained to avoid engaging with people when they are in an emergency state for fear of escalating symptoms. This workshop is intended to provide a roadmap to the rabbit hole. In other words, it redefines what is happening during a person’s journey through madness in a structured way that justifies intervention and highlights solutions. This can help a clinician feel confident that listening and intervening has value and can be necessary to form an alliance that can help. Interventions and solution strategies that get suggested can be used at any stage of a person’s recovery to explore what is happening or what has been experienced. Often clinicians struggle to know what is and isn’t helpful. This presentation will give attendees not only a better sense of what is helpful, but also hosts of strategies to consider using.

This course is being presented by Timothy C Dreby, M.Ed., LMFT.

Tim states:  “I have been running professional survivor-led psychosis focus groups for the past twelve years in a public Intensive Outpatient Program at Highland Hospital in Oakland CA. I have a Masters of Education from Temple University obtained in 1998 and a MFT License obtained in 2008. I also survived a mid-career “schizophrenia” diagnosis that involved a three-month hospitalization in Montana State Hospital and a two-year emergency state about which I wrote an award-winning memoir. In 2013, I authored an Alameda County Innovations Grant and started to make public presentations with a small band of people with lived experience I trained and hired to promote this methodology. Since the close of this program I have been presenting and developing this material in local venues and through collaborations with the Bay Area Hearing Voices Network. This has involved annual presentations at the California Association of Social Rehabilitation Conference and other local venues.”

Please submit the attached Registration Form via QI fax at (707) 427-2774 or email at QualityImprovement@SolanoCounty.com no later than May 12, 2020.  County employees must receive supervisory approval.

If you register and are later unable to make the training, please cancel at least 24 hours ahead.

Each of the courses meets the qualifications for 3 hours of continuing education credit for LMFTs, LCSWs, and/or LPCCs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences. Solano County Health and Social Services (Provider #57883) is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists to sponsor continuing education for LMFTs, LCSWs, and/or LPCCs. Solano County Health and Social Services maintains responsibility for this program/course and its content.

Participants must attend the fully scheduled time to receive CEUs – partial credit will not be awarded.  Participants will not earn CE credit if more than 5 minutes late to the training, take excessive breaks, or leave early.

Certificates of Completion will be sent to participants within 3 weeks of participation once attendance is verified.

Professional credit is at no cost to the participant. The course includes course materials and learning activities to all participants.

If any special accommodations are needed, please contact Quality Improvement at least 3 days prior to the date of the training.  Quality Improvement can be contacted at (707) 784-8323 or at QualityImprovement@SolanoCounty.com.

If you would like to make a complaint following this training, please contact Quality Improvement at (707) 784-8323 or at QualityImprovement@SolanoCounty.com.

Thank you!

Quality Improvement

Behavioral Health Division

Solano County Health and Social Services

Phone:  (707) 784-8323

Fax:        (707) 427-2774

Nonproprietary

Redefining Psychosis Registration Form May 2020 Zoom

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