2011 Fall Conference

Mon, 2011-09-05 13:29 |

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VAMFT

The Virginia Association
for Marriage and Family Therapy

presents

Don’t Ask Me to Forgive You! A Radical Approach to Healing Interpersonal Wounds

with

Dr. Janis Abrahms Spring

October 21, 2011

8:30am - 4:30pm

Fredericksburg Expo and Conference Center

2371 Carl D. Silver Parkway
Fredericksburg, VA 22401

Speaker Biography

Dr. Janis Abrahms Spring

Janis Abrahms Spring, Ph.D., ABPP, is a nationally acclaimed expert on issues of trust, intimacy, and forgiveness. Dr. Spring is a Diplomate in Clinical Psychology, a recipient of the Connecticut Psychological Association’s Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Practice of Psychology, and a former clinical supervisor in the Department of Psychology at Yale University. She received her B.A. from Brandeis University, magna cum laude, her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Connecticut, and her post-graduate training from Aaron Beck, M.D., at the Center for Cognitive Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania. In private practice for more than three decades, Dr. Spring is known for the richness and originality of her clinical skills and trains hundreds of therapists each year. She is a popular media guest on programs such as NPR, Good Morning America, Anderson Cooper 360, and the CBS Early Show, and she presents regularly at such public venues as The Smithsonian Institute, Harvard’s Continuing Education Conferences, Smith College School of Social Work, and Kripalu Institute. She and her husband live in Westport, Connecticut, and have four sons.

Workshop Overview

Forgiveness has been held up as the gold standard of recovery from interpersonal injuries. We’ve been taught that forgiveness is good for us and that good people forgive. In real life, however, hurt parties often find that they can’t or won’t forgive, particularly when the offender is unrepentant or dead.

In this workshop, Genuine Forgiveness will be reframed as an intimate dance, a hard-won transaction, which asks as much of the offender as it does of the hurt party. You will learn to help offenders perform bold, humble, heartfelt acts of repair to earn forgiveness, such as bearing witness to the pain they caused, delivering a meaningful apology, and taking responsibility for their offense. You will also learn to help hurt parties release their obsessive preoccupation with the injury, accept a fair share of responsibility for what went wrong, and create opportunities for the offender to make good.

The presenter will also propose a radical, new alternative to forgiveness—a profound, life affirming, healing process called Acceptance. This can be accomplished by the hurt party alone, when the offender can’t or won’t make meaningful repairs for the damaged caused. Ten concrete steps for achieving Acceptance will be described.

Conference Goal

“

Everyone is struggling to forgive someone. This workshop invites you to participate personally or vicariously for your patients—in an experience designed to help you rise above a violation, repair the rupture within yourself, and consider forgiving the partner, parent, in-law, sibling, child, friend, or significant other who has hurt you. For those of you who have wronged someone else, it will offer you concrete steps for earning that person’s forgiveness and your own.

”

Objectives

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able:

To challenge popular assumptions about what it means to forgive
To provide hurt parties with a radical, new alternative which allows them to become physically and spiritually healthy - without forgiving an unapologetic offender
To compare four different responses to interpersonal injury and to identify what makes two of them dysfunctional and two of them healthy
To follow specific, concrete guidelines for helping offenders earn forgiveness and for helping hurt parties foster forgiveness

Conference Schedule

8:30am — 9:00amRegistration

9:00am — 12:00pm1st Part of Lecture

12:30pm — 1:30pmLunch (on your own)

1:30pm — 4:30pm2nd Part of Lecture

Contact Hours

6 Hours

(Certificate will be provided)

Fees and Cancellation Policy

VAMFT Member: $109 (includes Virginia Association of Clinical Counselors)

Nonmember: $149

Full-Time Student:$55

AAMFT Student: Free

Individuals requiring refunds will be charged a $35 fee processing fee

Contact Information

For questions about the conference please contact Shardae Washington at 302-593-3487 or spulliam18@gmail.com

Accommodations

A limited number of rooms at a reduced rate have been reserved at the Homewood Suites which is just to the right of the Expo Center. Because the number of rooms is limited be sure to make your reservation early. Mention VAMFT when making your reservation to ensure you get the reduced rate. The phone number for the Homewood Suites is 540-786-970.

Registration Submission

Download a registration form, here.

If you are paying by check, please make it payable to VAMFT, and mail both your check and a registration form to:

Edward Hendrickson
1109 N. Howard Street,
Alexandria, Virginia 22304

Or, you may click here to register online using a credit card.

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