Back to All Events

Engaging Aging: Clinical Considerations

BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND

September 9th, 3pm-5pm EST | Earn 2 CEUs for Qualifying Practitioners

General Admission: $50 | Dues Paying Members: $42.50

Buy Tickets Here

Aging and the aging body are universal experiences that impact us both personally and in our clinical work. People as they age often respond with disbelief seeing their reflection in the mirror and are taken aback with the difference between how they feel on the inside and their reflection. 

This didactic and experiential workshop illuminates the numerous and necessary tensions we hold, (ex. Fight versus to accept, dependence versus interdependence, etc.), while navigating our individual aging processes. We explore the multiple dialectics of aging, and look deeply at issues of accepting, challenging, and honoring diverse narratives and lived experiences of aging. 

We see/interpret aging and aging bodies against the backdrop of social and cultural constructs, economic inequities, and marginalization. From this broader perspective we open the door to more expansive thinking that can engender curiosity instead of dread in both us and our clients. Further, we elucidate some of the countertransference challenges that may emerge in our clinical work.

Learning Objectives:

1. Demonstrate a greater understanding of social-cultural constructions/constrictions and how they are enacted through numerous tensions related to aging and the aging body.

2. Identify the commonalities and differences between our aging bodies, our clients’ aging bodies, our similar and diverse experiences, and the clinical and countertransferential
implications.

3. Apply new ways of thinking about and intervening with aging clients.

About the Instructors:

Lela Zaphiropoulos, LCSW, ACSW

Lela Zaphiropoulos, psychotherapist and supervisor in private practice for over 30 years working with individuals, couples, groups, is a WTCI Board and faculty member as well as co-director emeritus of the postgraduate training program. She leads didactic, experiential workshops for practitioners on issues of food/eating/disembodiment. Prior to private practice she worked at Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital and at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital. She completed postgraduate training at The Institute for the Study of Psychotherapy. She is co-author of Eating Problems: A Feminist, Psychoanalytic Model (1995), and of Kids, Carrots, and Candy: A Practical, Positive Approach to Raising Children Free of Food and Weight Problems (revised 2012). She is a founding member of Endangered Bodies NY, a global initiative to challenge the industries that promote body insecurity.

Debra Kram-Fernandez, PhD, LCSW, MS-DMT, 200-RYT

Debra Kram-Fernandez obtained her PhD in Social Welfare from the City University of New York Graduate Center/Hunter College School of Social Work after obtaining her LCSW-R. She also holds a MSW and MS in Dance-Movement Therapy from Hunter College. Dr. Kram-Fernandez is a graduate of WTCI’s postgraduate training program. Her areas of expertise include understanding serious mental illness, group work facilitation, and diversity in human services. She is currently an Associate Professor at the State University of New York (SUNY) Empire and has a small private practice.

Participants should be prepared to join with audio and video. This is an interactive workshop. Please contact WTCI at admin@wtci-nyc.org if you require accommodations.

*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.

Refund policy: Recipients who give notice of cancellation two weeks or more ahead of the date of the event will receive a full ticket-price refund. Recipients who give notice of cancellation one week to thirteen days ahead of the date of the event will receive a refund of 50% of the ticket price. Except in the case of dire emergency circumstances, to be determined by Administration, refunds will not be permitted if notice is given in less than a week of the date of the event start date/time. Service fees will not be refunded.