Embracing Emotions in Clinical Practice

During this worldwide pandemic, we’re seeing a tremendous increase in anxiety, depression, grief, fear, rage, panic, and many other emotions – and many mental health professionals are dealing with their own mix of these emotions as they work to help others.

But what if these emotions aren’t a sign of disorder, but are instead necessary responses that are valid and purposeful?

If we can re-frame emotions based on the most current neuroscience – as essential aspects of cognition, decision-making, behavior, and action, then their presence can become an asset instead of a liability.

Exploring the Empathic Paradigm of DEI

Dynamic Emotional Integration^® (also known as DEI) is an innovative approach that treats emotions as an intelligent, living system that is vital to every aspect of human behavior. DEI helps people learn how emotions work, why they arise, and how to work skillfully with all of them – especially the so-called “negative” emotions.

Most of us have been taught to distrust emotions, stop their natural flow, or treat them as problems. For instance, in many spiritual traditions, emotions are seen as stumbling blocks to be transcended, while in many scientific traditions, emotions are organized into simplistic binary categories of positive versus negative, or prosocial versus antisocial.

Even therapists are generally not taught about the healing function of emotions, yet they’re the professionals that we trust with our emotional issues!

In many areas of the mental health profession, emotions are viewed through the pathology paradigm, and are seen as problems in and of themselves. DEI treats emotions not as pathology, but as essential aspects of cognition, behavior, and action. In DEI, we utilize the empathic paradigm and learn to engage directly with the wisdom inside each and every emotion.

In this course, mental health professionals will explore DEI with creator Karla McLaren, M.Ed. and DEI professionals and practitioners Sarah Alexander, LCSW and Amanda Ball, MS.

This course includes filmed and live demonstrations to explore how emotions work together, using real-life scenarios to help participants identify mixed emotions and emotions that tend to arise in pairs, groups, and clusters.

Your course tuition includes a textbook that will be mailed to you: The Dynamic Emotional Integration^® Workbook

In this 6-week online course, you’ll explore:

• The messages and intelligence inside each of the seventeen basic emotions
• Simple ways to access emotions when their specific intelligence is required
• Practical approaches to access the wisdom of intense emotions, mixed emotions, and emotions that have been repressed
• Real-time demonstrations of how emotions help people understand the world, engage with others, and solve problems

Instructors

Karla McLaren, M.Ed. is the creator of Dynamic Emotional Integration^® and the author of The Language of Emotions, The Art of Empathy, Embracing Anxiety, The Dynamic Emotional Integration^® Workbook, and Emotional Flow. Her lifelong research focuses on her grand unified theory of emotions, which revalues even the most “negative” emotions and opens startling new pathways into self-awareness, effective communication, and healthy empathy.

Sarah Alexander, LCSW is a social worker in private practice and an instructor in the graduate counseling program at Lewis and Clark College in Oregon. Sarah is dual-licensed as a DEI Trainer and Consultant, and she’s a co-developer of the DEI Practitioner track for mental health professionals around the world. Sarah is the owner of the Brave Acorn counseling center in Portland, Oregon.

Amanda Ball, MS is the co-developer of the Dynamic Emotional Integration^® licensing program, and the developer of the Emotional Genius for Teens program. Amanda is dual-licensed as a DEI Trainer and Consultant, and she’s a co-developer of the DEI Practitioner track for mental health professionals. Amanda is also a high school mental health counselor in Sonoma County, California.

Course Details

This is a live, interactive course.

Length of Course: 6 Weeks

Dates: Monday, June 1st to Saturday, July 11th, 2020

Tuition: $385.00 (includes The Dynamic Emotional Integration^® Workbook). Special “social distancing plus emotional closeness” discount: $325

Learning & Interaction Structure: Reading curriculum, forum discussions, audio files, course PDFs, and 90-minute weekly webinars using the Zoom video conferencing program.

Live Zoom Webinar Discussions: These weekly 90-minute sessions will be held from 10am to 11:30am Pacific Daylight Time on Saturdays: June 6th, June 13th, June 20th, June 27th, Friday, July 3rd, and Saturday, July 11th.

Time Commitment: You’ll read the course curriculum and interact in the forum on your own schedule (plan for a minimum of 2-3 hours per week), and you’ll meet with Karla, Sarah, Amanda, and your colleagues for 90 minutes on Zoom each Saturday.

This Course is Suitable For: Mental Health professionals and graduate students.

Continuing Education

This course is co-sponsored by R. Cassidy Seminars, who provide 15 CE Credits for this course to psychologists, psychoanalysts, counselors, marriage and family therapists, social workers, creative arts therapists, nurses, educators, and chemical dependency counselors. There is a post-test and separate fee ($40) for these credits and certificate.

Follow this link to sign up for CE credits with Cassidy Strategic