Books published by Whole Person Associates

This book will help facilitators empower gifted and talented teens to enhance their strengths and discover opportunities for growth.Gifted and talented teens often have physical, emotional, and social challenges. They are exposed to an ever widening, diversified, and sometimes scary world. All adolescents may feel insecure, test boundaries, feel peer pressure, and wonder about their futures. Gifted and talented teens struggle with these same issues. They may excel in one or more area and struggle in others.A User-Friendly Resource Educators and counselors of gifted and talented teens, mental health professionals, and facilitators in virtually any setting will find this resource tailored to the strengths and needs of their clients.AdaptableThe Facilitator's Possibilities page at the end of each activity suggests ways to present the exercise(s) as well as follow-up possibilities. Each handout can stand alone or a chapter can become a series of sessions or a workshop.Age and Ability Appropriate Activities are for gifted and talented teens, and are adaptable to individual or group exercises, whether facilitator led or used as self-directed learning.Chapter Descriptions Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Teens first focus on their qualities within, traits that benefit or deter their progress, the senselessness of comparisons, and character traits. Teens then explore their interactions with others, rapport, levels of conformity, friendships, and love relationships. Thought Power Teens investigate their emotional intelligence, perspectives, and values, and they compare artificial to human intelligence. Teens identify and reprogram distorted thoughts and differentiate between distress and eustress. Giving Back Teens re-gift an intangible quality, and explore ways to use their difficulties, talents, and resources to help others. Teens develop a personal platform, experience positive reciprocity, and find value in forgiveness. Team Player Teens acknowledge that disagreements can lead to innovation, and conflicts can be resolved. Teens apply sportsmanship concepts to competitive situations and identify ways to manage wins, losses, and mistakes. Teens practice communication, leadership, and followership. Self-Expression Teens share ideas about topics important to them through their choices of visual art, the written or spoken word, theater, dance, music, fantasy, and other techniques. Teens change self-limiting thoughts into personal power, identify insights, evoke emotions, and take healthy risks through creative expression.

Includes PDF worksheetsThe Teen Suicide and Self-Harm Prevention Workbook is a proactive approach to dealing with the many characteristics that may prompt teens to experience self-harm and/or suicide ideation. Designed to be used with clients in the care of a trained clinician, the purpose of this workbook is to provide you with information and tools that build upon each other to help your clients manage thoughts, feelings, and behaviors related to self-harm and suicide.This workbook is a practical, step-by-step guide to present a detailed understanding of the context in which self-harm and suicide play out in a person s life, warning signs and risk factors experienced by people suffering with thoughts and actions of hurting themselves, ways to prevent suicide ideation, and methods for finding a healthy support network.Most importantly, our goal for this workbook is to help clients recognize that many other people have many of the same issues, to which NO shame is connected, and self-harm and/or suicide is definitely not the answer to their problems.Free PDF Download of the assessment tools and all of the reproducible activities in this workbook, details inside.The pages of this workbook can be used in a variety of ways: Activities can be used with individual clients alone, in pairs, or in a very small group. If there is more than one person, the activities can be completed individually and then shared with each other, as long as all of the participants are comfortable doing so. Individual clients or small group members can complete the activities with the help of a clinician, if needed. When utilizing this approach, clinicians will also help their clients process their responses to the various activities they have completed. Small group members can utilize the activities as part of the therapeutic process. When using this approach, they can process the information together with other group members to help achieve commonality and optimal results. If there is more than one client, explain that this will be a What is said in this room, stays in this room session. Explain to the clients that to insure privacy, they need to use a name code when writing about or talking about other people in their lives. (Ex: H.H.M. might be, He helps me!) Don t use a person s initials. If there is a very small group, it is often successful to have group members work together in pairs. When utilizing this approach, be sure to pair group members based on willingness to work together. Pairs can process information together, role play, or work as a team in a group discussion. All of the materials contained in the chapters of this workbook can be utilized in an individual or a very small group setting. If the clinician is using this workbook with a small group, you may photocopy or print enough materials for the members in the group, or allow individuals to reflect, write, and then process the materials together. The clinician can pick and choose the reflection activities that will best assist clients to overcome their desire to self-injure or die by suicide.

The Suicide & Self-Injury Prevention Workbook for adult clients is a proactive means for dealing with the many characteristics that may prompt people to experience self-injury and/or suicide ideation.This workbook consists of reproducible materials for use by mental health professionals and health care providers in their work with adult individuals and/or with very small groups.Chapter Descriptions:Each chapter begins with a table of contents and treatment planning options for clinicians of individuals and small groups to engage in prior to distributing the actual activity.Self-Injury This chapter will help clinicians to assist clients identify and explore their self-injury actions as well as discover and implement some tools, skills, and techniques for overcoming this behavior.Warning Signs This chapter will assist clinicians to help clients recognize, identify, and explore the warning signs and the effects that these signs have on their self-injury or suicidal thoughts.Risk Factors This chapter will assist clinicians to help clients explore their various risk factors and ways they can reduce the effects of these risk factors when experiencing a crisis.Prevention This chapter will assist clinicians to provide clients with tools, skills, and techniques for receiving help and reducing their self-harming and suicidal ideation.Support This chapter will assist clinicians to provide clients with ways to access a variety of needed support people as well as community resources.Client and Clinician National Resources This chapter will provide clients and clinicians information about self-injury and suicide prevention from national resources.Activity handouts ask participants for opinions and facts about their feelings and beliefs. The accuracy and usefulness of the information is dependent on the information that clients honestly provide about themselves. Assure clients that they do not need to share their information if they do not want to do so, nor do they need to show the handout to anyone but the clinician. Assure them that they are in a safe place and they can be honest.It is usually difficult for troubled people to express their feelings or their thoughts. The purpose of these activity handouts is for participants to build confidence to open up by completing interesting and appealing pages, and writing words that are challenging to think about or say.Activity Handouts...• Help clinicians quickly and easily learn details about each client s life to enhance the treatment process.• Help clinicians in the exploration of progress made by clients as they continue to develop skills and integrate them into their daily lives.• Help clients learn more about how their thinking, management of feelings, and behaviors are affecting their thoughts of self-injury and suicide.• Provide clinicians with a process for initiating discussions about sensitive topics like self- injury and suicide ideation.• Provide clients with ways to tell their stories as they work collaboratively with clinicians.• Serve as a great aid in developing plans for effective change and positive outlook in life, both in the present and in the future.• Allow clients to explore various elements of themselves and their situations.• Serve as exploratory exercises and not a judgment of who they are as human beings.

Using this WorkbookFree PDF worksheets availableThis workbook has been designed as a practical tool for counselors, social workers, teachers, group leaders, therapists, and other helping professionals. Depending on the role of the professional using Mindfulness Skills Workbook: Remedies for Worry, Anxiety & Stress, the modules can be used either individually or as part of an integrated mindfulness curriculum. The facilitator may choose to use this program with clients who need to slow down, live more in the present moment, pay attention rather than live on autopilot, and accept life and others without being judgmental. The activities in this workbook can be used with individual clients or with groups. The techniques used in the assessment tool and self-exploration activities are evidence-based and field-tested. Download free PDFs of the worksheets. Format of the WorkbookThe Mindfulness Skills Workbook: Remedies for Worry, Anxiety & Stress contains a mindfulness assessment and many guided self-exploration activities in the chapters that can be used to enhance mindfulness and create greater well-being. The assessment can be used as a pre-test to discover participants mindful state before training, and then used again as a post-test at the end of training to see the effects of the training. The purpose of this assessment (and any quick assessments throughout the chapters) is not to categorize people, but to allow them to explore various elements that are critical for success in developing mindfulness. This workbook contains self-assessments and not tests. Traditional tests measure knowledge and elicit either right or wrong responses. These assessments ask only for opinions or attitudes about topics related to a variety of coping skills and abilities. In addition to the assessments, each chapter includes a set of guided self-exploration activities to help participants learn how to develop mindfulness in their daily lives. The activities assist participants in self-reflection and the practice of mindfulness techniques. These brief, easy-to-use self-reflection tools are designed to promote insight and self-growth. Many different types of guided self-exploration activities are provided, so you may pick and choose the activities most needed by and most appealing to your participants. Many of the guided self-exploration activities include a journaling component that allows participants to gain insights into themselves and more effective ways of living their lives. The guided self-exploration activities are reproducible; you may photocopy as many pages as you wish for your participants or download the free PDFs for ease of printing.

Do you have teenage clients struggling with worry, anxiety, and stress? Mindfulness is a proven antidote to address these emotionally centered issues. The Teen Mindfulness Skills Workbook: Remedies for Worry, Anxiety & Stress will give you the tools needed to help your teen clients as they explore and develop mindfulness skills. Over 85 downloadable PDF mindfulness worksheets included.This workbook has been designed as a practical tool for counselors, social workers, teachers, group leaders, therapists, and other helping professionals. Depending on the role of the professional using Teen Mindfulness Skills Workbook: Remedies for Worry, Anxiety & Stress, the modules can be used either individually or as part of an integrated mindfulness curriculum. You may choose to use this program with clients who need to slow down, live more in the present moment, pay attention rather than live on autopilot, and accept life and others without being judgmental.This workbook includes everything you need to help your teenage clients to develop mindfulness skills. Each chapter begins with discussion questions to encourage deeper self-reflection, followed by activity pages designed to teach specific mindfulness skills.The reproducible activities, exercises, and handouts in this workbook can be used with individual clients or with groups. The techniques used in the assessment tool and self-exploration activities are evidence-based and field-tested. With over 85 downlaodable PDF mindfulness worksheets, printing the worksheets for use during counseling sessions or as a take home project is easier than ever.Why Is Mindfulness Important?Although mindfulness is not automatic and does not occur spontaneously, it can be learned and practiced so that it can be accessed intentionally when needed. Some of the characteristics of mindfulness include non-judgmental awareness, paying attention on purpose, remaining non-judgmental, staying in the present, being non-reactive, and remaining openhearted and compassionate.Mindfulness has many benefits that can help to reduce the stress associated with daily hassles:• Increased acceptance-By not making evaluations, participants can accept the internal thoughts in their mind and see these messages as simple mental processes rather than pure truths.• Greater awareness-Participants will be able to experience expanded awareness and a clearer vision of the world and its processes.• Less intense reactions-Participants will be less inclined to react when experiencing the stress of daily hassles. Instead, they will develop an observer stance through which they are free from evaluation, attachment, and frustration.• Relaxed approach-Participants will learn to relax to be better able to cope with worry, anxiety, and stress related to daily hassles in life.• Calm demeanor-Participants develop a state of mind in which they are mentally and physically at peace. They will be prepared to deal more effectively with the daily worry, anxiety, and stress caused by everyday hassles. They will experience greater overall well-being.• Mental functioning-Participants will experience greater concentration, focus, and self-awareness that will promote greater personal and professional growth and development.CHAPTERS:Chapter 1: Are You on Autopilot?Chapter 2: Do You Pay Full Attention?Chapter 3: Can You Stay in the Present Moment?Chapter 4: Do You Accept Others By Using Wise Judgment?Chapter 5: Do You Have a Backpack of Mindfulness Techniques?

Understanding and putting Relational-Cultural theory into practiceIn the last decade, modern neuroscience has validated almost all of the early tenets of Relational-Cultural theory (RCT): relational development through the life span, the neuroscience of connection, and social justice. The American Psychological Association invited RCT into its “Psychotherapy monographs series”, noting it was one of the ten most important psychological theories in North America.This book addresses many of RCT’s newest applications. It is a compilation of writings by people who presented at and attended the conference Transforming Community: The Radical Reality of Relationships co-sponsored by The College of St. Scholastica (CSS), the Wellesley Centers for Women, and the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute at Wellesley College held from June 9-12, 2016 in Duluth, Minnesota on the campus of CSS.The four main sections of the book - Neuroscience and Health Care, Education, Environment, and Social Justice are reflective of the discussion groups convened at the conference. Heart-felt dialogue addressed how RCT can be applied to education, race, white privilege, the neurobiology of connection, resistance to marginalization, LBGTQI issues, mentorship, girl-centered practice, intellectual mattering, disruptive empathy, the radical reality of relationships, integrating critical race and relational cultural theories, our intrinsic relationship with the environment, and relational advocacy.The authors and editors hope you will find RCT useful in working with clients, communities, and institutions. It is hoped more than anything that this book inspires you to keep on the path of developing the practice and the understanding of the power of connection and the possibility of building a more empathic community, both in your practices and in your personal lives.What is Relational-Cultural Theory?Relational-Cultural theory (RCT) places relationships at the center of human growth. People grow through and toward relationship throughout the lifespan. While the culture calls for independence, autonomy, a "stand on your own two feet," mentality, RCT points out our ongoing need to be connected with others. When we are excluded or isolated the resultant social pain travels the same pathways to the same place in the brain as the pain of physical injury or experiencing an intense need for food or water. RCT suggests we need to participate in mutually empathic relationships in order to survive and grow strong. This theory has been applied to psychotherapy, education, social work curricula, graduate psychology programs, social policy, and has been viewed as a revolutionary new model of human nature and social construction. RCT provides a positive and hopeful picture of human development, a model that celebrates bridges not walls.

A unique self-care strategy for therapists and helping professionals. Providing therapeutic help to someone who has suffered trauma puts the therapist at risk for vicarious traumatization. It can leave the therapist with symptoms of either an acute or a posttraumatic stress response. Therapists are story listeners. One of the primary benefits a therapist provides clients is a safe place to tell their stories and to express their pain, thus diminishing their burden. This often leaves the therapist sharing the burden and the pain. Ms. Collins and Ms. Laughlin have created a process of self-care that helps prevent and alleviate vicarious traumatization. Through the process of story-telling and hearing others' stories, therapists can be relieved of the trauma they have absorbed.

Do you have a disruptive child in class or home - a child who neglects homework, comes unprepared for school, fails to finish assignments, vies for attention, fights with other kids, and acts as the class clown?If everything you've tried so far has failed, why not try something different? Guided visualization with children is a new approach that brings proven results. Children who see themselves as failures are guided to transform negative images into positive ones. In this way they can successfully reverse many years of discouragement and disillusionment.Guided visualization takes little time to learn, and results are seen almost immediately. Just minutes a day can make a major improvement in the classroom or at home and save your sanity.

Over 160 ready-to-use icebreakers to set the scene for meaningful discussion and sharing.

This book offers 39 interactive activities to assist individuals in developing meaningful relationships. Each activity offers a safe environment for individuals to build communication skills, encourage cooperation, and rekindle companionship in the committed relationships. The fresh and creative ideas help individuals: Build lasting relationships Notice styles of communication and reframe criticism Practice sharing and responding Develop respectful curiosity Understand differencesAbout the authors:Marie-Nathalie Beaudoin, a clinical psychologist, specialized in child and family therapy. Sue Walden has over 25 years experience teaching improvisation and creativity classes to adults, couples, and families. Her clients include IBM, MCI, Apple, and DuPont.