By Karen Carnabucci, LCSW, TEP
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It’s 2021, and that means we’re climbing out of the worldwide pandemic and reviving our professional conferences. That’s what’s happening with the American Society of Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama, which finished its five-day online conference. I presented during the pre-conference – "Shaking Your Family Tree: Who’s In Your DNA?” – and attended the rest of the conference, which ended Sunday.

Here’s my 10 conference takeaways:​

By Karen Carnabucci, LCSW, TEP
 
Let’s talk about puppets.  And play.  And why play is so essential for discovery,  growth, healing and change no matter who you are or how old you are.
 
Play is often considered suitable for little people – children – until they are able to grow older and “talk” about their problems and transition into the kind of therapy that “big people” do. Which is why I want to tell you about puppets, stuffed animals and dolls and their value for people of all ages. The fact is that children, teens and adults hugely benefit from play as a genuine therapeutic intervention that not only support learning to emotionally regulate but also to build spontaneity and creativity that is so valued in Dr. J.L. Moreno’s method of psychodrama.

My good friend and colleague Linda Ciotola, M.Ed., TEP,  and I have talked a lot about this.  We co-wrote the book Healing Eating Disorders with Psychodrama and Other Action Methods: Beyond the  Silence and the Fury,  where we briefly the use of props in education and psychotherapy, and we mention play in our conversations practically all the time. One  of the best times I've had in recent years is sitting in Linda's play room in her home, talking with puppets.

By Karen Carnabucci, LCSW, TEP

As you know, I love offering resources to my trainees and others interested in learning and refining skills of action methods.
And this one is a good one!

My dear friend and psychodrama colleague Linda Ciotola, M.Ed., TEP, has created an online video series about the use of action methods to treat survivors of trauma and promoting post-traumatic growth with her colleague Nancy Alexander, MSW, LCSW-C, a retired psychotherapist and social worker in Maryland.

The series is titled "Introduction to Psychodrama for Trauma Survivors" and includes:

By Karen Carnabucci, LCSW, TEP

​In the past two decades researchers have discovered a tremendous amount of information about the human brain. As we learn these startling new details, we are forced to discard old assumptions about how the brain works and learn about the brain's amazing powers.

We now know about the delicate nature of the developing brain from the very beginning of life. Certain experiences – a stressed mother, a community trauma, a family crisis – appear to inhibit the circuitry of brain development even before the child’s birth.

Yet the brain is not “fixed” to any specific configuration for life. For instance, we now understand that the brain is “plastic,” continuing to constantly change, alter and adapt as it responds to new life experiences.

By Karen Carnabucci,  LCSW, TEP

When working with survivors of trauma, the main objective of every clinician is the creation of a structure that supports safety and containment.

With the practice of action psychotherapy such as psychodrama, this objective becomes more crucial. Action therapy, including what appear to be rather benign techniques, is a powerful tool that can trigger unprocessed material in survivors of trauma, resulting in flashbacks and dissociation.

The Therapeutic Spiral Model -- developed by clinical psychologist Kate Hudgins, Ph.D., TEP, and colleagues -- is an integration of classical psychodrama, object relations and recent advances in trauma theory to provide additional safety and structure when working with trauma. It follows the goal of providing safety and containment at every step for the client as well as the helping professional. Aspects of the model can be employed in individual and group sessions and may be easily adapted by talk therapists.

The model identifies safety and containment in five areas:

By Karen Carnabucci, LCSW, TEP

Traditional talk therapy helps the suffering person understand what contributes to his or her eating disorder or dissatisfaction with body image. However, conventional talk therapy usually leaves the person with the knowledge of “why” the eating disorder is present but without changing the behavior.

Psychodrama, the action method developed by Dr. J.L. Moreno and his wife Zerka T. Moreno, teaches the importance of human problems in the context of the roles that are played out in life. With the opportunity to change these roles to more healthy behaviors, we have found that tremendous healing is available with psychodrama.

With the perspective of roles, rather than pathological behaviors, we identify sufferers as the one who binges, the one who restricts food, the one who purges, the one who isolates, the one who is anxious, the one who diets, the one who fears being fat, and so on.

By Karen Carnabucci, LCSW, TEP

It's Spring, so I had fun putting together this gift basket for the silent auction at the upcoming 2017 conference of the American Society of Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama from May 4-7 in Clearwater, Fla.

I call this basket "Warm Up Fun," and it includes an assortment of items, including  masking tape, Tarot cards, small sand tray items, a music CD, a journal and a package of colorful plastic eggs.

Here's the protocol for creating a warm up with your group with the eggs:

By Karen Carnabucci, LCSW, TEP

A man wrote to Dear Abby, the syndicated advice column, to voice his distress about his wife’s hoarding behavior.  The letter was titled Key to Wife's Hoarding May Be in Her Genes.  “Abby,” the name used by columnist Jeanne Phillips, offered her answer.

I offer my view here too – it’s so important that people know about their options!

Here's the letter:

DEAR ABBY: My wife and I and our 13-year-old son live in a nice home we have been remodeling for the last eight years. The problem is, my wife has a hard time getting rid of anything, and she constantly brings home "new projects" that take up space but never get done. At one point, we hired a professional organizer because we had reached the point of having "goat trails" as the only means of navigating our way around the house. We also have a barn that is chockablock full.

I have heard that the root cause may be due to an anomaly on a chromosome. How should I approach my wife about getting some genetic testing done? Her mom is also a professional pack rat. The clutter is taking its toll on our relationship -- we are in marriage counseling -- and on our family. We have so much stuff I can't breathe. -- SUFFOCATING IN MONTANA