Now Available in Video (4 tapes) or Audio (6 tapes )

Four presentations by Dr. Wilder taped at the 2000 International Conference for Biblical Counseling on:
Developing "Joy Strength" and the Capacity to Persevere (120 min)
Trauma: Its Impact and Implications for Recovery ("Joy Strength" continued) (120 min)
From Dread to Joy: Dealing with Borderline Problems (70 min.)
Finishing Well: Returning to Joy--Personally and Corporately (70 min)
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Video tapes (4) are $34.00 plus shipping and MI tax if applicable
Audio tapes (6) are $24.00 plus shipping and MI tax if applicable

These tapes were done before Dr. Wilder began using PowerPoint slides in his presentation so they are not visually driven. The pace is a bit slower. The video and sound quality are adequate for viewing in a group.

The topics in the presentations are:
Developing "Joy Strength" and the Capacity to Persevere

Dr. E. James Wilder

(2 Hours)

Thursday, March 2, 2000

Joy strength is developed as an actual brain structure through loving relationships. Joyful bonds create our identity, our ability to act like ourselves in distress, and our capacity to face pain. Joy strength both sets and limits our capacity to handle trauma. We can build joy strength throughout our lives if we know how.

1. Brain development

The Bonding Process (Allan Schore)

Psycho-biology of Bonds

Characteristics of a Healthy Bond (From The Red Dragon Cast Down pp. 323-4)

The Development of Identity in Infants

2. Joy and God

Joy is strength

Joy and God's face and voice

Return to joy

Jesus and joy

3. Bonding: The Joy Camp and Joy Mountain analogy

Joy Camp

Climbing Joy Mountain

Getting back to Joy Camp

The Ring of Joy

4. Two ways to bond

Climbing Joy Mountain

Returning to Joy Camp

5. Joyful identity as the limiter of upset we can carry (joy bucket size).

6. Maturity

How we grow and mature is based on our bonds.

We mature in six stages:

7. Joy and healing.

8. The Joy Component in discipleship.

Building the brain through joy

Returning to joy

Restoring the brain through joy

Bonding to God with Joy

Bonding to the church with Joy

Bonding with the wounded by returning to joy

Raising God's children to maturity in joy

 

Trauma: Its Impact and Implications for Recovery ("Joy Strength" continued)

Dr. E. James Wilder

(2 Hours)

Thursday, March 2, 2000

How childhood traumas and deprivations affect brain development, sense of self, problem solving, emotional control, memory and dissociation. Trauma chemically "wipes out" portions of the brain while deprivations keep others from growing at all. New joy-bonded relationships are needed to stimulate the growth of replacement brain connections and circuits. Neurologically, joy means "we are glad to be together."

1. Brain Development and Memory

Memory is remembering who we are so that we can act like ourselves in the future.

2. Memory and Trauma

The Effects of Trauma

Age-specific effects of trauma and high cortisol levels (Fire Dept)

Disorders connected with damage

3. The Size of a Strong Joyful Identity: How big is your "joy bucket?"

The ability of an individual to experience and integrate the right hemispheric memories related to a trauma is limited by two factors:

Several key emotions to be regulated: (Schore)

4. Other Aspects of the Brain's Function:

Front of brain for acting like oneself (joy/love)

Back of brain for solving problems (fear)

Left of brain for explanations and beliefs (same old story)

Right of brain sees something is wrong (upset)

5. An Eight Step Process for Resolving Traumas

6. When Bonding is Needed for Healing.

When there is little joy strength

When they don't know the way back to joy

When an identity is built on fear and weakness

7. Bonds and identity.

Joy based identity

Fear based identity

8. Guidelines for Redemptive Bonding from The Red Dragon Cast Down page 323.

Identity change through replacing fear bonds with love bonds.

 

From Dread to Joy: Dealing with Borderline Problems (Counselors only)

Dr. E. James Wilder

(70 Minutes)

Saturday, March 4, 2000

Restoring missing "joy strength" and "return to joy" circuits through joy-bonded relationships. How non-verbal, right-hemispheric communication works to establish emotional control and identity. How the counselor finds joy in helping borderline people. Neurologically, joy means we are glad to be together.

 

Bonding and the Treatment of Borderline Problems

 

Here is a review of the development of bonds and the joyful identity region of the brain (right orbital prefrontal cortex) and related areas during the first three years of life. The joyful identity region of our brain is significantly also the bonding region. The strength these bonds develop is based on the amount and timing of the joy an infant receives. These loving joy bonds also determine the amount of brain growth and strength in the joyful identity region of the brain's right prefrontal cortex. Which sense a baby uses most to experience the joy and develop her brain is determined by brain maturation. Taste, smell and temperature determine joy bonds for the first three weeks after birth, while touch brings more joy for the second six weeks. When the visual areas of the brain mature and myelinate at three months, the eyes bring in most joy until hearing voice tones develops at 12 months of age. Each new sense brings a new source of joy for stronger bonds and greater brain development.

 

The first 12 months are used to build joy-strength brain tissue because this strength is needed to learn how to return to joy from the unhappy emotions of fear, anger, shame, disgust and hopeless despair. It is important to learn how to return to joy as soon as the baby has enough strength because of two brain "deadlines" in this next year. At 15 months the limbic system will myelinate and turn on the power for fear and anger. The baby who has not learned to return to joy before the power goes on will have real trouble regulating this intense terror and rage.

 

The second deadline arrives at 18 months. Until this time the baby's brain has acted like each emotion was in a different brain. Only now does the joyful identity center attempt to grow a ring around all these emotional centers and make one person out of them. The brain will unify control over emotions that are connected with a way back to joy--the other brain centers get left out. They are left out of the person's main identity and out of control. For instance, if anger is left out others will notice throughout that they "act like a different person" when they are mad. The goal of maturity, however, is to act like oneself in all emotions and circumstances.

 

Somewhere between 24 and 26 months, the brain will learn to keep track of our circumstances and surroundings according to: time, place and how we reacted. This is what we normally call conscious memory. With this ability, we can now be ourselves under many different circumstances. We remember so that we can continue being the same people day after day. Near the end of this second year, the two halves of the brain are joined so that what we feel and what we think about ourselves and the world will match.

 

The normal development and strength of the joyful identity center of the brain is greatly impaired by both "A" and "B" traumas during the first three years. During the first year our joy strength is crippled. During the second year the return to joy structures that allow us to function as one person no matter how we feel are broken apart. Traumas in the third year break apart our capacity to stay ourselves in different circumstances over time and what we think about ourselves will not match what we feel or do.

 

1. Borderline and dissociation both have their origin in both A and B trauma.

2. When different emotional control centers were not connected to joy at 12-18 months they remain as separate mood states.

3. Attachment and Borderline development

 

4. When are remedial bonds/attachments needed? When right hemispheric memories and emotions aren't processed.

5. The remedial plan for borderline problems

6. Right hemisphere to right hemisphere communication

7. Inducing affect for which there is no return to joy is punished by the client

8. Mutual regulation will uncover the emotions from which the counselor does not know his or her way back to joy (doesn't know how to act like himself)

9. Mutual regulation will uncover how strong the counselor's joyful identity is (What intensity of overwhelmingly painful affect can you take and still act like yourself) Our capacity is increased when we have a joyful group identity.

10. When the painful affect is mixed with right hemisphere memories of sexual arousal

11. Three face bond theory

12. Stone's list of Borderline traits less amenable or not amenable to therapy. (Michael Stone Abnormalities of Personality Within and Beyond the Realm of Treatment, W.W. Norton 1993)

13. When Jesus can be the third face

14. Developmental problems addressed by bonding

15. Being glad to see them

 

Finishing Well: Returning to Joy--Personally and Corporately

Dr. E. James Wilder

(70 Minutes)

Saturday, March 4, 2000

Joy is the basis of our individual and corporate identities biologically and spiritually. Finish the conference with a quick review of our joyful identities and how they help us act like the person God created us to be--even in distress and pain. Let us learn by doing and return to joy together. Joy means we are glad to be together: with ourselves, each other and God. Finish with joy.

1. Start with joy and end with joy

Neurologically, joy means we are glad to be together. Joy is relational.

 

Both our individual and group identities are based on joy. (Stages of a Man's Life)

The joyful identity is an actual brain center and must be grown by joy-bonds

A & B traumas and the development of the brain (The Life Model)

 

Joyful identity can develop through out life any time we give or receive joy.

Start in joy and end in joy

2. Recovery: Building joyful identity

Two ways to grow love bonds: (The Red Dragon Cast Down)

Acting like ourselves when we are in pain and distress

The amount of pain we can face is limited to the strength of our joyful identity brain structure and how much it has grown through loving joy-bonds. Building our joyful identity strength and learning the ways back to joy is how we develop the capacity to suffer

3. Why we hurt

The heart, soul and mind.

The heart as the organ of spiritual discernment - how we see God.

The heart Jesus gives us and lives in is a new creation.

Learn the main characteristics of your believing heart for it will be like Jesus.

How pain reveals your heart, it cares as Jesus would care

 

4. Returning to joy: finding friends for your heart

What makes your heart hurt?

What does that tell us about you?

What would hurt a heart like yours?

Why it is like us to hurt -- being a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1&8)

Hurting like it is like us to hurt and still acting like ourselves.

Accepting your heart and its joy and pain. (Prayer time.)

Committing to see and encourage the hearts of others. Take the care to find out the characteristics of a heart near you. Be glad to be with them!

Tell someone who loves you about your heart!