“Don’t Shoot The Unicorn!” How to find true happiness and resilience along your self-care journey.
Format
Individual Presentation
First Presenter's Institution
Coastal Southeastern United Care, and Faculty at University of North Carolina at Pembroke
Second Presenter's Institution
University of North Carolina at Pembroke
Third Presenter's Institution
NA
Fourth Presenter's Institution
NA
Fifth Presenter's Institution
NA
Location
Session 4 (Vernon)
Strand #1
Social & Emotional Skills
Strand #2
Mental & Physical Health
Relevance
This presentation meets criteria for strands “SOCIAL & EMOTIONAL SKILLS” and “MENTAL & PHYSICAL HEALTH”, as it focuses directly on introducing skills for developing and maintaining a positive and resilient mental health state. This program is in fact specifically designed to empower and develop these skills in those who work professionally or as allies to youth 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. In short: This program is particularly focused on treating the mental health of care-givers who work with youth, 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 youth 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 teens is challenging. And it’s not even the kids that are often the problem! Piles of paperwork, administrative nightmares, budgetary demands and conflicts… all take a toll on your personal level of energy and passion. Some days, 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 youth 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… 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 our kids 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 from self-defeating thoughts that limit us from giving our best to our kids and selves. Based on Cognitive Behavioral, Dialectical Behavioral, and Strengths-based counseling concepts, the program will introduce simple, specific, and research-based techniques to facilitate you and your youth in developing the SKILLS of happiness and resilience.
The concepts presented here are focused on reducing risk-taking behavior in adolescents 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, 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 and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, 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., LPCS, 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, a professor in the College of Health Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, has worked at the K–12 level in NC 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
Happiness, resilience, self-care, mental health, adolescent, mindfulness, Anditude, trauma, recovery, skills
Presentation Year
March 2020
Start Date
3-10-2020 8:30 AM
End Date
3-10-2020 9:45 AM
Recommended Citation
Garris, M. Bruce and Mauk, Gary W., "“Don’t Shoot The Unicorn!” How to find true happiness and resilience along your self-care journey." (2020). National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference. 63.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/nyar_savannah/2020/2020/63
“Don’t Shoot The Unicorn!” How to find true happiness and resilience along your self-care journey.
Session 4 (Vernon)
“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 youth by demonstrating positive approaches in your own life, and impacting them with “Infectious Resilience” as they learn to adopt your “Anditude!”
