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Community Workshops
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Healing Trauma: Skill-Building Workshops
These workshops are intended for survivors. Therapists are welcome if they will be addressing their own trauma issues. |
Healing Your Soul-Self: Trauma and Spirituality
Saturday, October 16, 2010 or Sunday, February 13, 2011
10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Presented by Maco Cassetta
Often we are good at being in tune with the cognitive, emotional, social and physical impacts of trauma. However, it is easier to neglect or discount how trauma has impacted our spirituality. A holistic healing journey includes attention to one's soul self as well. During this session, participants will explore ways in which trauma has affected their spiritual journey. Combining theory, opportunities for reflection, personal sharing, and experience, participants will be introduced to different stages of healing which will help them to identify and reclaim their soul selves.
This workshop is intended for women trauma survivors and will address spiritual safety, remembrance and mourning, and reconnection to one's faith experience.
- Held at Womencare Counseling Center, Evanston
- Light refreshments will be available
- Pre-registration is required
- Enrollment is limited to facilitate discussion
- Limited number of partial scholarships are available
Program Fee $95

We will be offering an optional group as a follow-up to this workshop: The Healing Spiritual Journey for Trauma Survivors. Please see the Groups section.
Sexuality Interrupted: Healing the Wounds of Abuse
Sunday, October 14, 2010
10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Presented by Amy Steinhauer
Assaults on women and girls take many forms: childhood sexual abuse, sexual harassment, physical abuse, date rape, and other violating intrusions. These abuses rob women in many ways. Often, one of the precious things that is lost is sexuality: sexual discovery, sexual desire, sexual pleasure and sexual intimacy.
This workshop is intended for women whose trauma experience interferes with having a satisfying sexual relationship. We will address issues such as sexual fear and avoidance, flashbacks, dissociation, pain and other blocks. In a safe and respectful environment, survivors of abuse will have an opportunity to give voice to their experience of sexuality as adults, receive accurate information about sex and learn strategies to embrace their sexuality.
Women of all sexual orientations are welcome. While the topic of touch will be explored, no physical touch will be involved in this workshop.
- Held at Womencare Counseling Center, Evanston
- Light refreshments will be available
- Pre-registration is required
- Enrollment is limited to facilitate discussion
- Limited number of partial scholarships are available
Program Fee $95

Sexuality Interrupted For Couples: Sexual Healing After Abuse
Sunday, November 12, 2010
10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Presented by Amy Steinhauer
This workshop grows out of the Sexuality Interrupted workshops for women, and the Sharing the Journey workshops for partners of survivors.
Abuse-related trauma takes a tremendous toll on people and on relationships, and the journey to healing is often long and arduous. Healing creates challenges in couple relationships, and also the potential for a greater and more rewarding depth of connection and intimacy.
This workshop will guide couples in developing a shared understanding of trauma and its impacts, identifying specific relational and sexual challenges in their relationship, developing a plan for beginning to approach sexual concerns, and creating a plan for managing the distress of both partners.
- Held at Womencare Counseling Center, Evanston
- Light refreshments will be available
- Pre-registration is required
- Enrollment is limited to facilitate discussion
- Limited number of partial scholarships are available
Program Fee $125 Per Couple

Tools for Moving from Surviving to Thriving
Sunday, January 30, 2011
10:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Presented by Judith Ierulli
After experiencing trauma, be it a single incident or ongoing abuse, people can experience strong reactions that interfere with their daily lives including flashbacks, nightmares, overwhelming feelings, numbness, anxiety, isolation or avoidance of everyday situations. These reactions can be short-lived. For some people, however, they can persist for years after the trauma.
This workshop is for women who have experienced sexual, physical or emotional abuse and continue to have disruptive and recurring thoughts, feelings and behaviors in response. We will explore healthy ways to cope with the manifestations and reactions to traumatic events, providing concrete tools to reduce disruptions in everyday life, with the belief that awareness, understanding and education can equal transformation.
- Held at Womencare Counseling Center, Evanston
- Light refreshments will be available
- Pre-registration is required
- Enrollment is limited to facilitate discussion
- Limited number of partial scholarships are available
Program Fee $95

Sharing the Journey: A Workshop for Partners of Survivors
Sunday, March 21, 2011
10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Presented by Amy Steinhauer
Loving and caring for a survivor of sexual abuse can be a very difficult and deeply demanding experience. Your best intentions to support your partner may be rebuffed and misunderstood, leaving you feeling rejected and powerless. You may find that you are sometimes experienced as an abuser, rather than the loving partner you want to be.
This workshop will provide information about the aftermath of abuse, including emotional, relational, and sexual issues. It will support participants both in being an ally to their survivor-partner and in caring for themselves.
Workshop will focus on partners of abuse survivors; participants of any gender or sexual orientation are welcome.
- Held at Womencare Counseling Center, Evanston
- Light refreshments will be available
- Pre-registration is required
- Enrollment is limited to facilitate discussion
- Limited number of partial scholarships are available
Program Fee $95

A Mother's Survival Guide: A Workshop for Survivors Navigating Parenting
Sunday, March 27, 2011
10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Presented by and Amy Derringer Chandler and Amy Steinhauer
Our own childhood experiences have a profound impact on who we become as parents and how we parent our children. For people who were abused or neglected in childhood, parenting can elicit a wide range of reactions, from being terrified of repeating our parents' mistakes to a fierce determination to parent with integrity and protectiveness.
This workshop will provide an opportunity for mothers who are abuse and neglect survivors to reflect on their own experiences of being a child, emotions that get evoked in the process of parenting, and their philosophy and hopes for the mothers they want to be.
The workshop will include presentation, exercises, and time for discussion.
- Held at Womencare Counseling Center, Evanston
- Light refreshments will be available
- Pre-registration is required
- Enrollment is limited to facilitate discussion
- Limited number of partial scholarships are available
Program Fee $55

As a follow-up to A Mother's Survival Guide Workshop, we will be offering a group for survivor moms. Please see the Groups Section.
Presented by Amy Derringer Chandler
Boundaries keep us safe as individuals, in control as communities and healthy as persons in relationship. For survivors of abuse and trauma, boundaries are often blurred, negated and violated. In this workshop, participants will learn about physical, psychological, emotional and sexual boundaries. As a group, we will explore the connection between boundary violations and trauma and consider how establishing personal boundaries can aid in rebuilding a sense of grounding and control. We will identify tools for clarifying one's own limits and asserting them with others. This workshop is intended for female trauma survivors and will include presentation, exercises and time for discussion.
- Held at Womencare Counseling Center, Evanston
- Light refreshments will be available
- Pre-registration is required
- Enrollment is limited to facilitate discussion
- Limited number of partial scholarships are available
Program Fee $55

Life Transitions: Workshops for Reflection and Healing
These workshops are intended for the community. Therapists are welcome if they will be addressing their own issues. |
Getting Unstuck: Moving Through Emotional Impasses
Sunday, June 12, 2011
10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Presented by Monica Robinson
There are times in our lives where we feel dismantled, lost, flattened or paralyzed. We may feel stuck, unable to move forward. While these experiences may be frightening or even evoke despair, they are also, like a wintering ground, the seedbed of new possibilities. Using an experiential format, workshop participants will be introduced to the notion that there are transformative powers in life's stuck phases and will be encouraged to allow a new narrative to emerge with new potential. This workshop welcomes both men and women.
- Held at Womencare Counseling Center, Evanston
- Light refreshments will be available
- Pre-registration is required
- Enrollment is limited to facilitate discussion
- Limited number of partial scholarships are available
Program Fee $95

Presented by Nicole Howell
Why is it that mothers often feel as if they can't tell the truth about their experiences without fearing that they will be judged or shamed? We will provide the opportunity for mothers to safely and honestly share their feelings and experiences.
We will explore cultural messages about mothering and working women and discover together how we, as moms, can learn to accept a new rhythm in our lives and understand that this may not be the time to be perfect at everything! We will take time to share things we have each found that have worked for us in juggling the often competing demands of work and children. Ways to move through this time while enjoying parenting and integrating work will be presented. We will also provide information on postpartum depression and anxiety.
- Held at Womencare Counseling Center, Evanston
- Light refreshments will be available
- Pre-registration is required
- Enrollment is limited to facilitate discussion
- Limited number of partial scholarships are available
Program Fee $55

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