June 24th, 2024 | 3:30-5:30pm EST | Virtual Workshop Via Zoom | 2 CEUs for Qualifying Practitioners* General Ticket: $50 | Dues Paying Member: $42.50
Tickets Available: Here
About the Workshop:
A primer for clinicians working with the parents/mothers of adult children with serious mental illness and/or substance use disorder. Dr. Smith provides a feminist lens to understand and use clinical interventions to support older parents/mothers who are trying to balance their own needs with that of their adult children.
This two hour workshop you will be an introduction to working with parents/mothers with “difficult adult children”. Adult children with serious mental illness and/or substance use disorder often return to their parents for residential, financial, and emotional support. The burden on these parents/mothers is often ignored and not understood. Many older parents/mothers search for help from therapists when they feel overwhelmed by their difficult adult children’s needs within an environment that includes a broken mental health system, no affordable housing, and limited substance use treatment centers. The seminar will allow you to move away from mother-blaming (“she’s so enmeshed”) to a deeper understanding of the conflicts that parents/mothers of seriously challenged adult children experience.
The workshop focuses on understanding the internal conflicts that parents/mothers experience when their adult children cannot fulfill their potential, be self-supporting, and/or engage in satisfying interpersonal relationships due to their mental health or substance use problems. The workshop addresses ways to help parents/mothers’ handle feelings of ambivalence, guilt and shame, hopelessness and isolation.
Learning Objectives:
1. Participants will be able to discuss the internal conflicts of older parents/mothers whose “difficult” adult children have SMI and/or substance use behavior and are often aggressive and/or abusive towards their own parents/mothers.
2. Participants will be able to describe how motivational interviewing can help parents consider the pros and cons of making changes in their situation with their challenging and dependent adult children.
3. Participants will be able to discuss the impact of macro forces on parents/mothers’ feelings of powerlessness: inadequate mental health and substance use treatment system; no affordable housing, and the belief in the internalized mandate to be a “good parent/mother”.
4. Participants will learn to locate resources for parents with difficult adult children, as well as strategies for supporting the clients’ need for social support.
About the Instructor:
Judith R. Smith, Ph.D., LCSW, is a New York City based psychotherapist, professor, and researcher on women’s issues as they age. She is a professor, Emerita, at Fordham University. She offers support groups online for mothers with difficult adult children. Her book, Difficult: Mothering Challenging Adult Children through Conflict and Change, is based on a three-year research project and brings to life the stories of fifty women, each over sixty years old, whose lives were drastically altered by becoming the default safety net for their adult “kids.” To learn more, please visit: https://www.difficultmothering.com
*Qualifying practitioners: WTCI has been recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for NYS licensed mental health counselors #MHC-0102 and creative arts therapists #CAT-0018, by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Social Workers as an approved provider of continuing education for NYS licensed social workers #SW-0361, and by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0049.