"Avenues to Wholeness: Emotional Awareness as a tool to Overcome Addiction" Webinar
March 5, 2020
9:00 p.m. Eastern/6:00 p.m. Pacific
Emotional Fluency and Impact on Adaptive Coping Mechanisms
What is your emotion quotient? How do you experience, identify, and express your feelings? Are you able to describe what you need in direct response to your feelings? Most people experience some level of difficulty externalizing all of their feelings in a way that is simultaneously satisfying and healthy. In some instances, we have perfectly healthy ways of expressing particular emotions and getting our needs met. Yet, in the course of our lives we also assemble a language of self-talk that might impede our ability to express other emotions which makes them feel unsafe, uncomfortable, and sometimes, unspeakable. As a result, we can develop alternative, maladaptive outlets for them. We often don’t understand why we over/under-eat, compulsively clean, overspend, displace anger on those we love, isolate, spend more time away from home that we intend to, have negative self-talk, or even self-harm, among other behaviors. This discussion will explore concepts of emotional poverty and fluency, cognitions about feelings, how to interrupt thoughts that impede our ability to express ourselves healthily, and compulsive behaviors that can often feel like urges or addictions that we desperately want to change.
Guest Presenter: Miss Allison Lanksy
Allison Lansky, Ed.S, LMFT, CEDS, NCC, is the Lead Senior Clinical Therapist on the acute care treatment team at Penn Medicine Princeton Medical Center in the Princeton Center for Eating Disorders. In this role, she provides leadership and education to the multidisciplinary treatment team as well as treatment across the full range of feeding and eating disorders to children, adolescents, adults and their families. Within the scope of her duties she facilitates individual, group, marital, and family therapy for patients of all genders, across all demographics, with a variety of comorbid diagnoses including mood and anxiety disorders, addiction, sexual trauma, and non-suicidal self-harm. Miss Lansky also works as a private consultant for patients, couples, and families specializing in the treatment of eating, mood, and anxiety disorders. Miss Lansky earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology, her master’s degree in community counseling, and her educational specialist degree in marriage and family therapy from The College of New Jersey. She is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She holds a National Board Certification from the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals as a Certified Eating Disorders Specialist and she holds a National Certification in Counseling from the National Board of Certified Counselors. In her spare time, Miss Lansky enjoys the sport of training her dog in agility, baking, yoga, and hiking.