Nourishing the Hungry Heart: A 12-Week Workshop for Compulsive Overeaters

Do you want to change your relationship with food and body image through mindfulness, emotional processing, and body awareness exercises? You might be ready to participate in this 12-week series of experiential exercises conducted in 90-minute sessions and designed to explore all dimensions of hunger (mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual), promote self-acceptance, and motivate sustainable, long-term behavior change. This workshop offers a non-diet approach to healthy eating that encourages self-awareness of eating behaviors and triggers to achieve balanced eating by addressing and extinguishing the underlying issues contributing to overeating. The workshop will teach the use of body-awareness, mindfulness, yoga and movement, and concrete emotion regulation skills to alter disordered eating patterns and achieve a healthy, biologically appropriate weight.

Objectives:
1. Monitor eating behaviors and identify triggers (“what are we really hungry for?”)
2. Increase motivation to change behaviors by identifying obstacles and discovering solutions with support from other group members
3. Learn basic mindfulness, emotion-regulation and stress-reduction skills to maintain healthy eating and eliminate chaotic patterns
4. Enhance awareness of the internal cues that tell us what is “too much” or “not enough” and learn to live from the “inside out.”
5. Develop tools to cope with emotions, manage body-image dissatisfaction, overcome compulsions and celebrate progress!

Dates: January 11 through March 28, 2012
Days & Times: Wednesdays, 7:00-8:30 pm
Location: The Counseling Group, 2840 SW 3rd Avenue, Miami, Florida 33129
Cost: $50/session (insurance may cover and we can check your benefits)

Facilitator:
Inge Sengelmann, LCSW, SEP is a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner who specializes in eating disorders and the resolution of disorders of extreme stress resulting from overwhelming life events.

Group will be limited to 8 participants, so please contact me for more information at The Counseling Group by calling 305-857-0050 or emailing info@counselinggroupmiami.com

Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Training Group Begins January 2012

Do you want to develop skills to achieve emotional balance and fulfilling interpersonal relationships? DBT skills groups can be a valuable addition to individual therapy because they offer practical strategies for managing strong emotions. Group members are encouraged to participate in the whole cycle of skills training, which may take up to six (6) months. The group will be limited to 8 participants and be closed after the first skills cycle. Both male and female clients are welcome. Group members are required to be in individual therapy, which does not have to be with The Counseling Group therapists as long as the individual therapist is willing to support the use of DBT.

The skill areas are taught in 4 modules, each lasting 4-6 weeks, so this is a 6-month commitment to learn and apply the skills. There are practices assigned for each week and reviewed at the beginning of the next group. The skills are:

•Mindfulness: The "core" DBT skill is to learn to cultivate non-judgmental awareness of present-moment experiences, thoughts, emotions, and behavioral impulses. Because mindfulness is so central to DBT, we not only spend 4 weeks on learning this skill, but we also do a mindfulness practice together every week.

•Emotion Regulation: Understanding what emotions are, their functions, and skills to de-escalate or change them is key to reducing suffering.

•Interpersonal Effectiveness: Specific relational skills are taught to balance personal needs without damaging relationships or feeling overwhelmed by them.

•Distress Tolerance: When emotional experience is overwhelming, and you feel unable to change it, there are ways to tolerate this distress without engaging in self- or other-destructive behaviors.

Dates: January 10, 2012 through June 26, 2012
Days and Times: Tuesdays, 7:00 – 8:30 p.m.
Cost: $75/session (the fee may be covered by insurance and we can verify your benefits)
Location: The Counseling Group, 2840 SW 3rd Avenue, Miami, FL 33129.

Facilitators:
The first step in joining the DBT Skills Training Group is to meet with one of the facilitators individually, Inge Sengelmann, LCSW, SEP or Kristin Jones, MS, MHC

Call 305-857-0050 for more information.