2011 Conference
September 15-17, 2011
Raleigh, North Carolina USA

Carol Berns, Psy.D., F.T.  Since 1973, Carol has been impacting the way grief is perceived and understood and how services are offered to the bereaved. As a teacher, researcher, clinician, author, co-founder and director of the Children’s Bereavement Center, her work and program development, demonstrate the value of a peer support model as well as an interdisciplinary approach to bereavement and the chaos and disorganization which often accompanies it.

Dr. Berns holds a Fellow in Thanatology and is a psychology professor at Mayland Community College in North Carolina.  She has written numerous professional articles and is co-author of the Instructor’s Guide to the college text The Last Dance: Encountering Death and Dying (McGraw Hill, Boston) 5th, 6th, & 7th editions, and website researcher and writer of the 9th edition.

Helping, Holding, & Honoring; Integrating Knowledge, Resources and Sensitivity in Working with Bereaved Clients
Grief and bereavement touches everyone at some point.  It is important for professionals working with the bereaved to be equipped with rich background information, techniques and strategies to help them move forward in a healthy and positive manner.  This session will offer case studies, clinical practice and research that will provide a context for working with bereaved clients as well as effective intervention and partnership strategies. By understanding the experience of loss and grief, one can better comprehend the challenges and roadblocks to organizing, separating and ridding oneself of belongings, all of which can be viewed as ‘more loss’ and engender more grief.

Rick Segel, CSP (Certified Speaking Professional), is a street-smart, down-to-earth business author and speaker who has WOWed over 2100 audiences on 5 continents and 49 states.  He is the author of 13 books including The Essential Online Solution, Laugh & Get Rich, and the Retail Business Kit for Dummies which is now in its second edition and has sold over 100,000 copies. His newest book, The Retail Sales Bible, will be released in early 2011.

"How We Make You Buy:  A Retailer's Perspective on Shopping"
Customers don’t buy by accident. Every retailer has the ability to excite, seduce, and subtly manipulate the mind of the customer. It can be as simple as a warm greeting or a special sale event for VIP customers, or even the use of highly sophisticated techniques of controlling any mechanism that would affect the five senses. Retailers today are clearly focused on enhancing the customer experience and doing whatever it takes to have the customer cross their store’s threshold or enter the store’s website. It is an art and science employed by retailers to increase store visits, increase the average transaction size and the amount of units per transaction that someone purchases. This program will reveal those hidden secrets that will turn the looker into buyers and buyers into fanatic followers.

April Lane Benson, Ph.D., is a nationally known psychologist who specializes in the treatment of compulsive buying disorder. She co-founded the Center for the Study of Anorexia and Bulimia and serves on the Board of the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy, both in New York. She’s been in private practice in New York City for more than 30 years.  Dr. Benson edited the first multidisciplinary examination of her subject, I Shop, Therefore I Am: Compulsive Buying and the Search for Self (Aronson, 2000), which brings together contributions from the fields of sociology, consumer behavior, marketing, community education, psychology, and psychiatry. Her recent book, To Buy or Not to Buy: Why We Overshop and How to Stop (Trumpeter, 2008), offers a comprehensive program for stopping overshopping.

“To Buy or Not to Buy: Why We Overshop and How to Stop”
This workshop will offer skills, tools, and strategies that professional organizers can use with clients to help them reduce, if not eliminate, their overshopping behavior. April will offer guidelines to help you determine if a client is a compulsive buyer, whether, when, and how to intervene. She will also discuss general principles regarding intervention. Learn the various cognitive, affective, and behavioral components that make up a comprehensive approach to doing this work, including how to help clients identify what they’re really shopping for and how to get that. Finally April will introduce several effective and easily learned techniques to use with overshopping clients including an opportunity to practice using these techniques and how to help a client find additional resources to broaden their base of support.

Reid Wilson, Ph.D., directs the Anxiety Disorders Treatment Center in Chapel Hill and Durham, NC and is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the UNC School of Medicine.  He is author of Don't Panic: Taking Control of Anxiety Attacks and is co-author, with Edna Foa, of Stop Obsessing! How to Overcome Your Obsessions and Compulsions. He served on the Board of Directors of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America for 12 years and as Program Chair of the National Conferences on Anxiety Disorders from 1988-1991. His free self-help website – anxieties.com – serves 385,000 visitors (16 million hits) per year. 

“Don’t Panic! How to Handle Anxious Clients”
Three traits are common among all anxiety disorders: resistance to change, separation anxiety, and risk aversion. How in the world do you help someone change when—with all their heart, soul and mind—they want to keep things the same? Anxious people want to hold on. Change requires letting go. Learn to make a plan to help those who are threatened by change.

Cathy Cole, MSSW, LCSW is a licensed clinical social worker and President of cathycoletraining, inc.  Ms. Cole is an active member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers, Inc. Since her training in 1995 with William Miller, PhD and Stephen Rollnick, PhD. she has provided numerous trainings for many organizations and for participants in the independent MI workshops she offers.  She regularly lectures to students in all areas of behavioral health studies.  Ms. Cole received her undergraduate degree from Winthrop University and her Masters of Science of Social Work from the University of Tennessee School of Social Work.

“Motivational Interviewing:  Conversations about Change”
Motivational Interviewing is defined by William R. Miller and Stephen Rollnick, the authors of the approach, as a 'client centered directive method for enhancing intrinsic motivation for change by exploring and resolving ambivalence'. The concept of Motivational Interviewing evolved from experience with problem drinkers and now encompasses, in its effectiveness, work with a wide range of concerns such as health care improvement, high-risk sexual behaviors, diabetes management, and mental health problems. Professionals from across the world are now using a Motivational Interviewing approach to explore and resolve ambivalence when clients are working towards change. A growing body of research supports this method for eliciting talk that supports change and leads to action.  In this session you will learn and explore methods for addressing ambivalence in decision-making when clients must undergo change in order to correct disorganized behaviors.

Post-Conference: Motivational Interviewing (MI) Workshop (Optional)
By popular request we are pleased to offer ICD Conference participants an optional full-day Motivational Interviewing workshop on how to apply the concepts of Motivational Interviewing to the issues related to chronic disorganization.  Space is limited, so register early to reserve your spot!

Click here for more details and how to register for
the post conference

Corinne May Botz is an artist who investigates the perception of space and our emotional connections to architecture and objects. Her photographs have been internationally exhibited including shows at Wurttembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart, Germany, Bellwether Gallery in New York, Hemphill Fine Arts in Washington D.C. and The Center for Contemporary Art, Torun, Poland. She is the author of Haunted Houses (The Monacelli Press, 2010) and The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death (The Monacelli Press, 2004). Her work has been reviewed by The New York Times, Village Voice, BookForum, and Modern Painters. Recipient of residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Akademie Schloss Solitude Fellowship in Stuttgart, Germany, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Botz teaches photography at International Center of Photography and School of Visual Arts in New York City. Botz received a B.F.A. from the Maryland

“The Secret Lives of Objects”
Corrine will present an overview of her artwork, with a focus on “The Secret Life of Objects,” her collaborative project with NSGCD. The investigation of space and objects is a primary concern in Corrine's practice. She considers the objects philosophical subjects to be worthy of contemplation and study. Corrine has photographed objects that agoraphobics accumulate as a means of coping with anxieties, objects people are in love with (objectophilia), and objects from the medical examiner's office that were instrumental in sudden and violent deaths. She will discuss and show images from these projects. Special attention will be give to “The Secret Life of Objects.” This project considers how objects are connected with our sense of self, and the process of letting go of possessions. Personal Organizers, who are members of NSGCD, worked with clients who gifted objects for use in the project. These objects were anonymously sent to Corrine, along with a personal story that described the history and significance behind the objects. She will present the objects and stories collected and her artistic response to these objects. The role photography played in the process of letting go will be a special focus.

Louisa Rogers is a life coach, facilitator and business trainer who has led communication and management seminars for 30 years. As the daughter of diplomats, she lived in Eastern Europe, South America, Asia and the UK. She claims her most difficult "posting" was at the age of ten, when her family moved from Quito to the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Today she divides her time between Northern California and Mexico.

“Cultures of Consumption”
In this lively, interactive workshop, Louisa will share stories and insights from her experiences living in different cultures. She’ll show how our cultural identity shapes our sense of self, and in turn our consumer decisions. You will have the opportunity, through facilitated exercises and discussion, to explore the subtleties of your own cultural identity.