THE LEARNING SPACE - Key Persons
Ms. Schara is a Family Systems Coach with 38 years of experience. She specializes in coaching people to have more fun and be more creative as they seek to define a self in their family and social systems. Neurofeedback (zengar.com) is a tool she uses to enable greater integration of the mind/body as people begin to alter old patterns in the relationships system.
Donna Troisi, a board certified, licensed clinical social worker, has been in practice for nearly 30 years. She graduated with a Masters in Social Work in 1978 from The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.
Her interest in family systems began after attending post-graduate programs at Smith College, The Family Institute at Northwestern University, and at The Family Therapy Center with Jay Haley and Chloe Madanes.
In the early 1980s, she went through advanced training in Eriksonian Hypnosis and Neuro-Linguistic Programming. From these experiences, she gained an appreciation for how the use of language reflects how we enhance or constrain our ability to create, problem-solve, and self-regulate, sparking a decades-long interest in language patterns.
It was through her study and tutelage in Bowen family systems theory (beginning in the mid-1990s) with Priscilla Friesen that further energized her ongoing interest and inquiry into language use and its relationship to multi-generational emotional beliefs, anxiety levels, and efforts at self-differentiation. Shortly thereafter, she incorporated neurofeedback training into her clinical work. The training's ability to enhance an individual's self-regulation can be observed in the changes in language when emotional reactivity is decreased and thought-filled ideas and actions increase.
Job Titles:
- Licensed Individual Clinical Social Worker
Glennon Gordon is a Licensed Individual Clinical Social Worker. She graduated from New York University with her Masters in Social Work in May 1997 with a concentration in Family Systems.
As a psychotherapist at The Boys' and Girls' Homes and Community Services outreach program in Silver Spring, MD, she developed a pilot program for troubled youth that included the whole family in the treatment process.
Glennon completed her postgraduate training at the Bowen Center for the Study of the Family in 2002. During this 2-year program, she worked as an intern in the Georgetown Family Center's clinic seeing families, couples and individuals using Bowen theory as a guiding principal.
During this time, Glennon also began consulting at The Counseling Center at St. Columba's. She worked with people experiencing a variety of issues, including anxiety, depression, stressful life transitions, and marital and relationship problems. She also provided pre-marital counseling, which is still an important part of her practice today.
Glennon began studying neurofeedback with Priscilla Friesen in 2004, and incorporated it as a regular and useful tool in her practice. While she has found that neurofeedback is extremely helpful for someone with issues on the anxiety spectrum, she also has an increasing interest in how neurofeedback is helpful for people suffering from migraine headaches. Other neurofeedback interests include working with both children and adults affected by Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), and those with performance-related anxieties (sports, presentations, testing, etc.). Over the years, she has seen first hand how neurofeedback contributes significantly to the process of self-regulation. Examples from her own practice, where she has seen peoples' symptoms decrease, include insomnia, fear of flying, obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety. and depression.
Glennon has a strong sense of the mind-body connection, and views this as an integral part of any healing process. Through athletic endeavors of her own, (a marathon and a number of triathlons) she has learned first hand how quieting the mind and creating positive neural pathways (thinking) decreases anxiety, thereby increasing the body's ability to perform.
Priscilla J Friesen was introduced to Bowen family systems theory in l976 while studying for a Master's of Social Work at the University of Kansas. The theory described her life experience. She moved to Washington, DC, after graduate school in l978 to study with Dr. Murray Bowen, the originator of the ideas. Working in numerous teaching, training, and administrative capacities, Ms. Friesen has been associated with the Bowen Center for the Study of the Family (formerly Georgetown Family Center) since that time. She is presently working with the Murray Bowen Archives Project and the National Library of Medicine to make the Bowen Archives "available to the world."
In the fall of 2005, Ms. Friesen founded The Learning Space with Regina Carrick and Glennon Gordon.
Ms. Friesen's professional and personal interest has been in the interplay of the brain, physiology and relationships. Guided by the framework of Bowen theory, Ms. Friesen has interwoven self-regulation methodologies, including Biofeedback (a method to develop self-regulation through awareness of physiology, such as muscle tension, heart rate, and hand temperature, allowing one to see the impact of thought and emotion on physiology) and Neurofeedback (offering real-time information about central nervous system/brain wave functioning, affecting the way the brain organizes perception, emotion, and learning) into her work with individuals, couples, families, and organizations and in her teaching.
In 2000, Ms. Friesen began using Zengar neurofeedback. Conceptually based in the brain-as-a-system using non-linear mathematics to promote the basic efficiency of the brain system, Zengar has affected how she works. It is now central in the consultation process of addressing chronic anxiety and being more of a self in essential relationships, the central idea in Bowen theory.
Through other fields of knowledge, applied kinesiology, sensory integration, Brain Gym and reflex integration, Ms. Friesen has experienced how the physiology, the senses, and reflexive integration is built into our personal adaption throughout our lives including the multigenerational family process that sets the stage.
An intermittent yoga practitioner since the l970s, Ms. Friesen has experienced the organization of her body and its connection with life experience. Different traditions of yoga develop subtle observation of the physiology of movement, breath and focus that are central to self-regulation. Svaroopa yoga, her present practice, focuses on the release of the spine, which addresses patterns of chronic anxiety developed over one's life course.
Experience with mindfulness meditation, contributed to a deeper awareness of subtle levels of the breath, body, emotion, thought, and perception. This study expanded her ability to coach others in their use of neurofeedback as well as in the study of one's self in relationships.
Ms. Friesen has expanded her understanding of essential emotional beliefs developed over a lifetime that influence thought, emotion and behavior in every moment through the study of the I Ching. The I Ching is an ancient method used to understand and guide one through the human experience.
Regina P. Carrick is a licensed professional counselor trained in Bowen Family Systems theory and integrating Zengar neuro-biofeedback into her work with individuals, couples and families.
Over her 15 years of clinical experience, Carrick has worked with folks experiencing a wide variety of physical, emotional and social symptoms. These include, but are not limited to, anxiety, depression, alcoholism and other addictions, marital disruption (conflict, affairs, illness, death, suicide), major life transitions (leaving home, marriage, birth of children, divorce) and chronic illness/chronic pain.
"I believe that Bowen family systems theory offers a way of thinking about problems that creates new options for improvement. The experience of being in relationship to others, particularly our families, is one of the largest variables that influence our individual health and well being. When we function more thoughtfully in these relationships, physical, emotional and social symptoms become less influential.