Sharpen Your Life Tools Your Life Tools.pdf · 2016. 11. 13. · Sharpen Your Life Tools Making Lemonade Wellness-Focused Series Create Balance In Your Life As human beings, there

Sharpen Your Life Tools

E M O T I O N A L W E L L N E S S S E R I E S C A T A L O G

Victoria A. Gossens LCSW Licensed Therapist Promoting Emotional Wellness

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Sharpen Your Life Tools Emotional Wellness Series

by Victoria A. Gossens, LCSW

Emotional wellness is often misunderstood in our society, yet can profoundly affect our lives as an individual, family member, friend or employee.

We are often faced with intense and overwhelming emotions, but most of us have not had the training or support to learn effective ways to manage them.

I believe everyone should have access to knowledge and tools to help them function their best.

Mental health issues have a negative perception in our society. This combined with the challenge of finding mental healthcare providers and insurance limitations, results in many people struggling to understand and manage their emotions effectively.

Having lived my childhood with a mother who suffered from severe depression, I am passionate about sharing what I have learned and taught over decades to help people recognize and build on their strengths to manage the challenges in their lives.

I created the Sharpen Your Life Tools emotional wellness classes to fulfill my vision of reaching more people. By sharing this knowledge in a supportive group setting, my goal is to reduce barriers to emotional wellness.

No matter their life stage, everyone can benefit from this helpful information to more effectively manage life’s ups and downs. These group sessions provide an accessible option or supplement to one-on-one therapy, and many attendees find they benefit from attending with a family member or friend.

It is my goal that you’ll select the classes, series or group of series that resonate best with your audience, so that you can provide a custom program built for your group’s unique needs. I look forward to working together to help shape a healthier and happier community!

Sincerely,

Victoria

Classes can be presented as a single session or as a package. Sharpen Your Life Tools is divided into 4 series:

1. Foundational 2. Communication 3. Problem-focused 4. Wellness-Focused

Create a package that best fits your needs. If offering a series, it is best to start with the Foundational classes, as they set the stage for the additional series.

Presentations are usually 1½ hours but can be adjusted based on your needs.

Please contact Victoria at 920.360.9194 or [email protected] for rates or questions.

Build Your Own Package

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Foundational Classes for

Understanding and Managing Emotions

Understand the Gift of Emotions Emotions aren’t good or bad, they just ARE! Each and every one of them—worry, fear, sadness, anger, joy, love… It’s what we do with them that can get us in trouble. This overview of how amazing the mind is will help you to better understand what influences emotions, how important emotions really are, and the power we each have to control how we react to them. You will learn healthy ways to calm and release emotions.

Managing Life’s Challenges There are times in our lives when challenging things happen, which we can’t control. It is during these times we can feel very powerless, and emotions can become very intense. This session will explore effective ways to calm and manage emotions, even during stressful situations we cannot change.

De-Stress and Feel Your Best We experience stress every time we have to adapt to a positive or negative change in our life; e.g. a job loss or change, addition to the family, changes of season, or loss of a loved one. Although experiencing stress is normal, this session will focus on learning effective strategies to minimize the negative impact of stress.

The Power of Changing Your Thoughts When something happens in our lives that we don’t understand, we try to make sense of it. Our thoughts and beliefs are automatic, but may not be accurate. This can cause a great deal of emotional distress. This session focuses on how thoughts can affect feelings and behaviors, as well as effective ways to slow down and challenge negative thinking. This will help reduce the intensity of emotional distress.

Self-Care in a Fast-Paced World When so many things are important, we can be confused about where to focus our energy and become overwhelmed, exhausted, agitated, and non-productive. This session offers practical ways to shift from surviving to thriving by learning skills to help calm minds, build on personal strengths, and promote optimism at home and work.

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Sharpen Your Life Tools Communication Series

Keys to Unlock Effective Communication We communicate in many different ways, but often we have never been taught the secret to effective communication. This session focuses on understanding communication styles, while learning skills that will increase effective problem solving, improve

outcomes, and enhance overall relationship satisfaction.

Active Listening “You’re not listening to me!” “You didn’t hear a word I said!” Contrary to what many think, good listening requires us to be actively engaged in the conversation. This session will focus on specific skills to improve our abilities to accurately hear and understand what others are saying and to solve problems more

effectively.

Fighting Fair As human beings, we can see the world very differently from each other. Our different views can often cause conflicts and stress in relationships. This session focuses on learning effective strategies to respectfully disagree and problem-solve issues in relationships.

5 Love Languages When it comes to showing love in any of our close relationships, sometimes it seems we’re speaking a foreign language. This session is based on The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman. It will focus on learning the five ways humans show and receive love, as well as effective strategies to communicate for more loving and

satisfying relationships.

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Forgiveness - The Greatest Gift We Can Give Ourselves When others have wronged us or we do something that we deeply regret, it is often hard to forgive. Forgiveness is a process that can help us move from anger and resentment to acceptance. This session will focus on understanding the impact resentment has on our lives, and effective strategies that help us move toward

forgiving others and ourselves.

You Can Heal After Loss Grief is a natural emotional response to any loss. When life doesn’t go as planned, or when we lose a loved one because of distance or death, we grieve. This session will discuss the myths and facts related to the grief experience and effective ways to cope.

Managing Intense Emotions There are times in our lives when strong emotions including anger, anxiety and depression seem to take on a life of their own. This session will focus on skills to help us grab the ‘emotional steering wheel’ of our mind and find healthy ways to calm our mind and body.

Sharpen Your Life Tools

When Life Hands You Lemons Problem-Focused Series

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Sharpen Your Life Tools

Making Lemonade Wellness-Focused Series

Savor Each Moment With God Our lives are so busy that our minds often race just to keep up. It is in the quiet we experience God. By learning effective mindfulness strategies, we will learn to quiet our minds to fully experience God in church, in prayer and in everyday life.

Cultivate Happiness Human beings are designed to be happy, but life can be so challenging at times that it is hard to experience joy! In this session we will learn effective habits of happy people and discover ways to notice the many positives in the world around us.

Be Present In This Moment Our lives are so busy that our minds often race just to keep up. It is in the quiet we can calm our mind and body so we can begin to think clearly and heal. By learning effective mindfulness strategies, we learn to quiet our minds and fully experience the present moment in everyday life.

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Stay Merry & Bright, Not Uptight Demands on time, financial strain, and relationships can all trigger holiday stress. In this session we will learn how to identify personal triggers as well as effective strategies to manage and even prevent holiday challenges. (Great session for late fall/early winter timeframe.)

Sharpen Your Life Tools

Making Lemonade Wellness-Focused Series

Create Balance In Your Life As human beings, there are five primary areas of our lives that can affect overall wellbeing—physical, emotional, relational, spiritual, and intellectual. If we are experiencing challenges in one area, it has a rippling effect on the others. This session will focus on understanding and assessing each area while creating personal

goals to improve overall wellbeing and life satisfaction.

Healthy Ways to Feel Feelings Emotions can be so strong and often seem to take control of our thoughts and actions. In this session you will learn how to identify your feelings, as well as experience and practice ways to release emotions in effective ways. This can promote a sense of calm, clear thinking, while restoring a sense of wellbeing.

Discover The Treasure Within We often look to others to calm and soothe us, yet we all possess a powerful tool to provide this for ourselves. In this session we will learn to harness the power of imagination and reclaim personal strength.

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VICTORIA A.GOSSENS LCSW LICENSED THERAPIST FOCUSING ON EMOTIONAL WELLNESS

WWW.VICTORIALCSW.COM | 920.360.9194 | [email protected]

E M O T I O N A L W E L L N E S S P R E S E N T A T I O N C A T A L O G

Victoria A. Gossens LCSW

Since graduating from UW-Milwaukee with a Masters Degree in Social Work, I have been a licensed psychotherapist in the Fox Valley area for over 30 years.

I provide Behavioral Health Treatment for individuals, families, and groups,

with areas of focus including depression, anxiety, stress management, grief, trauma, and wellness.

I am currently in private practice in De Pere, Wisconsin.

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