Greetings and Welcome to the New Year 2017!

As your incoming president, I look forward to a year of community building and collective forward thinking. They say “times are changing” but isn’t that true each and every minute of each and every day. The only thing that is constant is changes.  What is important is how we prepare for and respond to the change. My objective this year is to build a network of committed professionals, ready to be pro-active and responsive to national, state and local events that directly impact our regional Dayton community. Collectively, we can build small communities that are task oriented and poised to respond to local events as they occur. We can also anticipate and prepare for broader issues that directly affect our professional practice and the lives of our constituents. In order to accomplish this, my first aim is to grow our representation on the Board of Directors to be more reflective of the constituents we serve. This diversity includes representation from our Early Career professionals to our retiring long-standing peers, as well as our up and coming Interns, active duty military and VA professionals, and representation across other areas of diversity to include racial, cultural, disability and the LGBT community. Via our Bill Box in the Newsletter and Recent Updates in the DAPA newsletter we will keep you abreast of federal and legislative changes that directly impact the scope of your practice. So look forward to hearing from us; I encourage you to respond to invitations to serve in various capacities as we move forward with a proactive and committed presence in our communities. Peace be unto you and the clients you serve!

Rose Mary Shaw, Psy.D.

By Dennis O’Grady, Psy.D.

Accepting Political Friends

Angry facebooking: The enemy of friendship is belittling criticism, cynicism, and contempt. Zingers: No one can make you angry without your consent.

How to Temper Your Temper

The solution: Small acts of deliberate kindness! This will repair the damage done to your friendship bridges of respectful trust and closeness. Stop one-upping and debating before you lose a friend.

Spreading Anger Manure Around Is A Choice

When you sling manure around, you lose ground and don’t smell so good. Hateful words and anger is the enemy, not your friend.

“You’re important to me!”

What to say to ease strained relations with a friend? Some deep, honest and caring mood attitudes to send to a friend to get out of a rut beginning by using their first name:

1. I hope and pray from now on to leave you feeling better off as a result of knowing me.
2. I’ve decided and vowto stop shoving my viewpoints down your throat.
3. I fearthat I’ve hurt our relationship by trashing your cherished beliefs.
4. I’m truly sorrythat I overreacted and behaved inappropriately.
5. I will make sureyou know that I am interested in and appreciative of you.
6. Is there anything I can doto make things better for you?
7. I need youto know that I trust, respect and care for you.

The Math of Mad:  You must send five positives to one negative to get out of a rut—starting now.

Hope is here: You have the discipline to disagree without being disagreeable through kindness to others and yourself when upset, mad or defensive.

Kindness Is the Key

The solution to any conflict-causing upset is you. Be the first one to demonstrate small acts of deliberate kindness—and to keep it up when no response is forthcoming. Are you behaving as your best self and leaving people feeling better off as a result of knowing you?

Temper Your Temper Temperature:

This discipline of love and acceptance requires:

• You must accept that you are co-responsible for the mood and tone in your friendship home.

• You must be the one to stop slinging manure around simply because you’re all swept up during an anger spree.

• You must deliberately make small gestures of goodwill.

• You must send five positives to one negative to get out of a rut—starting now.

• You must change something about yourself instead of trying to change everyone else or the world.

Pals, Communications and Politics

You get to choose pal or politics. Choose wisely. Choose now to use positive and collaborative communication tools by deliberately making small acts of kindness be the friendship norm.

Ernest Brown, M.A., a DAPA board member and a 4^th year SOPP graduate student, recently coauthored a book titled Out of K.O.S. (Knowledge of Self): Black Masculinity, Psychopathology, and Treatment  https://www.amazon.com/Out-S-Knowledge-Self-Psychopathology/dp/1433131706/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1512565519&sr=8-1&keywords=steven+kniffley

 

Kenneth Drude, Ph.D. coauthored two articles published in the Journal for Technology in Behavioral Science: “An interprofessional framework for telebehavioral health competencies https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41347-017-0038-y and “Telebehavioral health, telemental health, e-therapy and e-health competencies: the need for an interdisciplinary framework” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs41347-017-0036-0

 

Local Psychologists Did a TEDx Talk

Two School of Professional Psychology faculty members, Drs. Julie Williams and Steven Kniffley, did a TEDx Talk in Dayton recently that can be viewed on youtube.com at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5trvm6-18F0&t=6s