“Don’t Shoot The Unicorn!” Finding Transformative Happiness and Resilience Through Developing Your “Anditude”!

Format

Individual Presentation

Presenters

M. Bruce Garris, Coastal Southeastern United CareFollow
Gary W. Mauk, The University of North Carolina at PembrokeFollow

Location

Vernon

Strand #1

Mental & Physical Health

Relevance

This presentation meets the topical criteria for Strand IV – “HEALTH”: MENTAL & PHYSICAL HEALTH, because it focuses directly on mental health. This program is designed to empower and develop skills in those who work professionally or as allies to youths who suffer from a variety of disorders including depression, anxiety, impulsive disorders, anger/violence, substance use, eating disorders, self-harming ideation, and emotion regulation disorders. This program is particularly aligned towards treating the mental health of those care-givers who work with youths, helping providers to effectively develop and maintain their own optimal emotional health and resilience.

Brief Program Description

As a care provider and leader in your community, you understand the challenge of keeping your own resilience high, and maintaining an attitude of hope. This transformational, uplifting program will equip you to develop the skill of happiness, empowering you to lead youths by demonstrating positive approaches in your own life, and impacting them with “Infectious Resilience” as they learn to adopt your Anditude!

Summary

Working with children and/or adolescents is challenging — And it’s not even the youths who are often the problem! Burdensome paperwork, administrative nightmares, budgetary demands, and conflicts all take a toll on your personal level of energy and passion. Sometimes, just maintaining even a minimally positive attitude can be difficult. Soon, we start to doubt ourselves, our skills, and even our commitment and passion, as we start to think of what we do as “work”, and ourselves as burned-out, ineffective, and even hopeless.

As a leader, educator, and support for youths at risk, “you can’t give what you don’t have.” If you are tired, carrying feelings of guilt, worried, or anxious about your effectiveness, or are just mentally exhausted, then how can you give others what you, yourself, don’t have? Hope, resilience, and self-acceptance…? How can we get back to leading from the front and empowering youths to find the strength to continue their own fight? Answer: “Don’t Shoot the Unicorn!” as you learn to develop your “Anditude”!

This practical, fun, and highly interactive session will introduce attendees to the power of one simple word: “And”. Through developing your own personal “Anditude,” you will find freedom from self-judgment, hopelessness, and self-defeating thoughts that limit you from giving your best to your youths and yourself. Based on Cognitive Behavioral, Dialectical Behavioral, and Strengths-Based counseling concepts, the program will introduce simple, specific, and research-based techniques to facilitate the development of the SKILLS of happiness and resilience in you and your youths.

The concepts presented will focus on reducing risk-taking behavior in youths through promoting thriving, and by empowering you to demonstrate infectious resilience that will be impossible for others not to want to imitate! This dynamic workshop will include a PowerPoint presentation but will also get you out of your chair, out of your old ways of thinking, and into a bright, future where you can restore your level of energy and your resistance to negative emotions, and learn to take well-deserved pride in the smallest victories. Handouts will be provided and customizable electronic documents will be made freely available on request.

Evidence

Fully based on the well-researched and SAMHSA-designated “evidence-based practices” of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), this program is organized around a proven and effective therapeutic approach that has been implemented across a variety of settings, from schools, sports leagues and community organizations, to PRTF/hospitals and therapeutic foster care settings. For almost 50 years, the approaches used in CBT and DBT have been shown to be effective across a diverse range of clients including adolescents at risk for self-harm, anger/violence, substance use/abuse/addictions, sexual misconduct, gang engagement, eating disorders, school problems, and failure to thrive in social/family/community settings.

Biographical Sketch

M. Bruce Garris, M.Ed., LPC, NCC, began a second career as an individual, group, and family therapist after 15-year career as a national-level trainer, Program and Executive Director with the YMCA in several cities across the country. His research and clinical interests involve adolescent wellness/resilience, happiness, and the relationship between written and experiential education. Bruce is currently the Lead Therapist at Coastal Southeastern United Care, a CABHA agency, and maintains a private practice near Wilmington, NC.

Dr. Gary W. Mauk, an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Counseling at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, has worked at the K–12 level as a school psychologist. His research and consultation interests are child/adolescent development and mental health promotion, social-emotional learning supports, and understanding and support for loss and grief issues among school-age youths.

Keyword Descriptors

Mental health, resilence, happiness, skill development

Presentation Year

2016

Start Date

3-8-2016 2:45 PM

End Date

3-8-2016 4:00 PM

Recommended Citation

Garris, M. Bruce and Mauk, Gary W., "“Don’t Shoot The Unicorn!” Finding Transformative Happiness and Resilience Through Developing Your “Anditude”!" (2016). National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference. 146.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/nyar_savannah/2016/2016/146