Anger, Rage & Trauma:
Talking to Kids About Difficult Things

Location:  Foxborough, MA - Holiday Inn, Mansfield - Foxborough

Youth who grow up in chaotic, abusive, disrespectful, and threatening environments often witness and experience communication styles from adults that teach them that acting out in an angry way is acceptable or even necessary to survive. Children exposed to significant trauma and those dealing with major mental health issues often develop communication and behavioral styles based on anger and rage. They commonly express themselves in negative and self-destructive ways, have trouble communicating, and often exhibit their pain via erratic, aggressive, and dangerous behavioral patterns. Working with these youth can be a great challenge, made even harder by their attempts to push us away.

To help these youth, ages 9 - 18, learn more adaptive coping strategies, we have to be able to talk with them about their difficult issues in the right way. We have to set firm but fair structures and consequences for problematic behaviors while at the same time being able to offer them realistic alternatives to their negative behavioral patterns. These youth need to learn ways to take control and responsibility for their actions and we need to avoid being caught up in unnecessary power struggles and ineffective reactive loops as we help them achieve this goal.

It is crucial to have effective strategies and ways to talk with children and adolescents about difficult issues in a proactive manner. This workshop will focus on practical strategies useful in handling the challenging behaviors most often exhibited by youth dealing with anger issues. Workshop participants will:

• Apply verbal interventions to further positive conversations with troubled youth about painful topics
• Adopt techniques to spot aggressive cues and behavioral patterns in the formation stage to stop further escalation before violence occurs
• Create a toolkit of verbal and behavioral de-escalation strategies designed to address agitated youth at great risk of committing self-destructive acts or violence towards others

This workshop is designed for mental health professionals, educators, special educators, and guidance counselors who want to be successful in helping these youth. Workshop format will include lecture, interactive case examples, and discussion.

Instructor:

Daniel Jacobs, Ed.M., Psy.D., M.B.A., is a licensed psychologist in private practice at Andover Mental Health Associates. He was formerly the Director of the Adolescent Partial Hospital Program at Salem Hospital. Dr. Jacobs trains nationally and internationally with mental health agencies, substance abuse providers, residential programs and schools with a focus on helping improve communication, effectiveness, and ways to imitate lasting behavioral change in difficult circumstances. Dr. Jacobs believes hope is always an option and to achieve success we have to be willing to take risks.