professional training & CEUs

Susan Anderson is an expert on how to overcome abandonment trauma and its aftermath of self-sabotaging “outer child” patterns. Author of Journey from Abandonment to Healing; Taming Your Outer Child; The Abandonment Recovery Workbook; and Black Swan: 12 Lessons of Abandonment Recovery, she reaches out through her websites, workshops, videos, books and seminars to share her methods of abandonment recovery with both professionals and the victims of abandonment trauma, heartbreak, and loss. Her groundbreaking program is the product of over thirty years of research and clinical practice. See Susan’s professional bio

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Training in Abandonment and Outer Child techniques is both didactic and experiential.  Susan presents seminars for professionals as well as interactive workshops open to both the general public and therapists.  

Get Training (and CEUs) by attending an Abandonment Recovery Workshop:

Professionals learn experientially, by attending the workshop in the role of participant observer. You get to fully participate, share, interact, and form bonds with the other members, all the while practicing the program’s hands-on Akeru exercises, and experiencing emotional growth and behavioral change along with the rest of the participants.   

Whether the workshop is ONLINE or in person, as a participant observer, you experience and learn about Susan’s special technique for creating structured interaction that fosters a safe, open, life-changing process within the group. 

Susan is on hand to help you gear the experience toward your clinical and training needs.  

Get Training (and CEUs) by attending a professional seminar: 

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Susan also offers professional seminars, more didactic in nature, through university or professional programs.  

Continuing Education Credits (CEUs) are available to participants of all of Susan’s workshops and seminars, whether through university or professional organizations, Kripalu, Esalen, and other venues where the workshops and seminars are presented. Susan offers CE documentation for her ONLINE abandonment workshops as well.  

Techniques in Abandonment Recovery Training:  You will experience growth and healing, as you learn how to:

·       Help people through the five stages of abandonment (Shattering, Withdrawal, Internalizing, Rage, and Lifting (SWIRL).

·       Practice techniques that heal abandonment survivor’s damaged relationship to self.

·       Practice Akeru – a program of hands-on exercises that help people heal and grow through each stage of the SWIRL process.

Outer Child Component:

·       Target Outer Child patterns of self-sabotage. Outer Child is an overarching concept that encompasses defense mechanisms, character traits, knee-jerk reactions, habits, and compulsions – all of your maladaptive behavior patterns.

·       Identify Outer’s emotional triggers.

·       Connect dots between automatic defenses and primal abandonment fear.

·       Learn exercises that redirect attachment energy toward learning healthy new “automatic” behaviors.

·       Practice using new power tools to break through obstacles, change behavior patterns, and propel you forward.

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Advanced Clinical Training: Through a combination of didactics and experiential training, you:

·       Discern acute abandonment crisis from chronic patterns such as mood or anxiety disorders, as well as long-standing outer child patterns of self-sabotage.

·       Learn about Traumatic Shame

·       Learn about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder of Abandonment 

·       Learn about how PTSD of abandonment differs from Borderline Personality Disorder

·       Learn new information from neuro-science upon which new treatment approaches are built.

·       Distinguish normal (albeit intense) abandonment grief from the onset of major depression.

·       Identify acute symptoms of the emotional crisis of abandonment, including: 

     Re-emerging symbiotic feelings

     Increased risk-taking

     Neglected self-care

     Anorexia

     Suicidality

     Panic

     Need to self-medicate

     Borderline regression and other forms of acting out  

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·       Identify chronic (versus acute) symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder of Abandonment. In “Journey from Abandonment to Healing (pages 41-42)” I outline a complete list of abandonment’s posttraumatic symptoms, which comprise what I have come to call the “outer child syndrome.”  

Outer Child Syndrome: