A little bit more information and a recap from ADAM Conf for those who are interested!
In addition to having amazing keynote speakers, we also had some strong breakout talks for people to choose from during the day at Anxiety Disorders and Mormonism. Like everyone else, I wasn’t able to attend all of them. I poked my head into as many as I could, though!
Morning Breakouts
Jeff Gregson spoke about “Raising Anxiety Resilient Children,” and he did a good job of talking about sometimes parents and loved ones feed anxiety in their children accidentally. It can be really counterintuitive to deal with anxiety in loved ones—and Jeff addressed how parents can practically work with children to help them overcome and live with their anxiety rather than give into it and make it worse.
While that was going on, Danna Hartline was talking about “Understanding and Managing Church Trauma.” You can see her talk by visiting our our resources page. She shared stories and opened up the important and often overlooked discussion about what happens when people experience trauma at Church or from individuals in their Church congregation.
Afternoon Breakouts
Tiffany Webster, author of “Embracing the Broken,” spoke of her personal struggles and experience with Christ’s Atonement in her talk, “Welcoming Imperfection.” Meanwhile, Dr. Kyle Weir spoke on scrupulosity in “Embracing Faith, Overcoming OCD.” Check out the resources page for both of their slides (unfortunately I was on a panel and didn’t get to peek into her talk or Kyle Weir’s talk!).
Amanda Ramirez and Tess Collett spoke on “Supporting vs. Enabling a Loved One with Anxiety,” giving some great, practical tools on how family members can work with their loved ones to maintain boundaries and help them in their struggles with anxiety disorders.
Annabella Hagen, director of Mindset Family Therapy, spoke in “Mindfulness Training for Religious Based Anxiety,” helping people understand more about how ACT or acceptance commitment therapy works and how it can help us with religious anxiety.
Overall, there were a great variety of topics to choose from at ADAM Conf, and I’m so grateful for all the presenters and their hard work.
And Announcing….
Now… another announcement in case you haven’t heard yet: We are doing ADAM Conf specifically for teenagers and their parents/loved ones. It will be on Saturday, August 25, 2018 (this year!) at the Utah Valley Convention Center in Provo, UT. I’m working on lining up speakers/presenters currently, so I don’t have announcements on that front yet… but it is going to be amazing!
It is the Saturday immediately following Education Week at BYU, so if you’re going to be in town for Education Week, stay put and come to ADAM Teen! We have special ticket packages for family members, and ticket prices are a bit lower than they were for ADAM Conf, so please spread the word and come!