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Author's Biography

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY

Susan Anderson, psychotherapist, has devoted the past 30 years of clinical experience and research to helping people resolve abandonment and overcome self-sabotage.  Founder of the Abandonment Recovery / Outer Child movementS, she is author of Taming Your Outer Child: Overcoming Self Defeating Patterns; Journey from Abandonment to Healing; Black Swan: Twelve Lessons of Abandonment Recovery; and the WORKBOOK: Journey from Heartbreak to Connection.

FULL BIOGRAPHY

Susan Anderson is a psychotherapist who has devoted the past 30 years of clinical experience and research to helping people resolve their underlying abandonment wounds and overcome their “outer child” patterns of self-sabotage. She is author of Taming Your Outer Child: Overcoming Your Self Defeating Patterns; Journey from Abandonment to Healing; Black Swan: Twelve Lessons of Abandonment Recovery; and the WORKBOOK: Journey from Heartbreak to Connection. Her books are translated into German, Japanese, French, Spanish, Korean, and sold internationally.

Anderson is founder of the Outer Child and Abandonment Recovery movements – complementary programs that propel people forward to reach their behavioral and emotional goals. Her websites www.outerchild.net and www.abandonment.net reach out to recovering people and clinicians throughout the world to collect input for her ongoing research in abandonment and acting-out patterns, and to provide community, group, and individual support. 

Through extensive clinical research, group work, and scientific study, she has developed a treatment protocol specific to overcoming the residual impact of abandonment trauma – maladaptive (outer child) defense mechanisms – in both adults and children. Her five universal stages of abandonment recovery (Shattering, Withdrawal, Internalizing, Rage, and Lifting) are based upon scientific findings related to the psychobiology of separation and attachment, as are her groundbreaking tools for overcoming “outer child” patterns of behavior.  

Through her books and public appearances, she speaks passionately from personal and professional experience, sharing experiences with her own outer child, abandonment, grief, and recovery. Anderson has spent the past decade working with children, compiling anecdotal data on the impact of primal abandonment scenes in their everyday lives, ranging from losing a pet or being “new kid on the block” – all the way to child abuse or death of a parent.  Children’s traumatic experiences, both large and small, trigger patterned responses which too easily become new “learned behaviors” in a developing child. 

An experienced group therapist and workshop leader, Anderson developed a parenting education program to increase community awareness about issues affecting children and help strengthen family bonds. This award winning program won an annual $300,000 Federal grant to be replicated throughout the New York State (and is ongoing). 

She runs Outer Child- Abandonment Recovery Workshops for lay audiences and training courses for professionals, and makes appearances at universities, conferences, national radio and television to increase public awareness and provide support for recovering people.  She speaks on the related topics of relationship-repair, behavior change, child abuse, heartbreak, divorce recovery, post traumatic stress disorder, parenting techniques, addiction, and “racism: the ultimate human abandonment (global outer child behavior).” 

Some of the post graduate training externships and programs converging in her work include training in systemic family therapy, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, addictions specialty (CSAC), and bereavement. She has worked extensively in psychiatric hospitals treating the gamut of diagnostic categories associated with abandonment triggers and entrenched acting out behaviors, including addiction, bi-polar disorder, borderline personality disorder, conduct disorder, and schizophrenia.  

Anderson has been active in community group work, developing clinical programs within agency and day treatment settings; conducting psycho-educational workshops within school systems; providing group supervision to a Drug and Alcohol Agency; and providing social work internships for Adelphi Graduate Social Work Program. Anderson’s journal article entitled “Peer Model of Adult Education,” published by Jossey-Bass, Spring 1999, shares her expertise as a group therapist and workshop leader. 

In addition to her national tours to promote her program, she continues in private practice in Manhattan and Long Island.

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Workshop Description

SUSAN ANDERSON'S WORKSHOPS FOR OVERCOMING SELF SABOTAGE AND ABANDONMENT:  3 SELF HELP TOOLS TO TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE 

HEALING ABANDONMENT /  TAMING YOUR OUTER CHILD  /  CLAIMING YOUR FUTURE 

"Of all human fears abandonment is the most primal," says Susan Anderson, a psychotherapist who specializes in helping people overcome self-defeating behaviors that stemg from unresolved abandonment.  "Left unresolved, this deep personal wound lingers beneath the surface where it undermines self-esteem, triggers behavioral responses, and interferes in our relationships."  Susan shares powerful emotional tools - that act like physical therapy for the brain -- to heal the underlying source of self sabotage -- unresolved heartbreak, trauma, and abandonment. 

Susan is founder of the Outer Child - Abandonment Recovery movements and author of the internationally acclaimed Journey from Abandonment to Healing, and her latest, Taming Your Outer Child: Revolutionary Program to Overcome Self Defeating Patterns.

HEALING THE SOURCE -- UNRESOLVED ABANDONMENT, HEARTBREAK, LOSS, TRAUMA

In this workshop, Susan presents a highly effective program of emotional and spiritual healing that provides the means to reverse the universal wound of abandonment and overcome your automatic acting out patterns. Participants learn:

• Tools that target your “outer child” patterns, including “abandoholism”
• The five stages of grief specific to grief and loss (S.W.I.R.L.)
• The five mental exercises that correspond to each stage
• A mind / body program called "Akeru" that propels personal growth and healing
• Neuro-biological processes that underlie emotional and behavioral processes.

Whether your outer child behaviors are holding you back, or you’re experiencing a recent break-up, a lingering wound from the past, or struggling to find someone to love, this workshop helps to restore your sense of self, overcome your most entrenched patterns, and reach your potential for life and love.  MORE SPECIFICS ABOUT WORKSHOPS

BRIEF BIO
Susan Anderson has devoted the past 30 years of clinical experience and groundbreaking research to helping people overcome self-sabotage and resolve their underlying abandonment wounds.  Founder of the Outer Child - Abandonment Recovery movement, she is author of Taming Your Outer Child: Overcoming Your Self Defeating Patterns; Journey from Abandonment to Healing; Black Swan: The Twelve Lessons of Abandonment Recovery; and the WORKBOOK: Journey from Heartbreak to Connection.

For more info on her work, visit www.outerchild.net and www.abandonment.net. 

Personal Words

PERSONAL WORDS FROM SUSAN ANDERSON 

Thank you for your honest, open, insightful submissions of Outer Child characteristics.  Outer Child is the part of the personality that attempts to defend us against all kinds of hidden wounds - especially the primal wound of abandonment.  Your inner child feels them and your Outer Child acts them out -- inappropriately.  Outer Child is the hidden nemesis – the harbinger of your self-defeating patterns.

Thanks to your input, you have helped to make the complex system of Outer Child defense mechanisms, habits, and traits come alive for my readers and recovering Outer Children everywhere. 

I have incorporated your submissions into the Outer Child Inventory on this website.  The list grows steadily.  People from all over the world write to me daily with new insights. 

I’ve spent over a decade researching and writing about Outer Child.  Taming Your Outer Child offers the latest in techniques for overcoming self-sabotage and reaching your potential.  Its ability to change behavior is what sets the Outer Child program apart from others.

As many of you know, Outer Child developed in response to anxiety, fear, anger, insecurity, and other uncomfortable feelings.  When, in childhood, we experienced disappointment, disconnection, loss – in short abandonment – we did what we could to cope with the primal fears, forming the basis for our oldest, most difficult-to-break patterns. 

Attachment energy gets thwarted as we go through life. Lesions form, both large and small, in the dense tissues of the myriad bonds we’ve created with people, places, and things.  These faulty connections activate Outer Child’s most entrenched patterns, especially those that interfere in our love relationships. 

The Outer Child tools are designed to tap into this powerful attachment energy and redirect it toward healthy new behaviors.  And they are easy to use.  You incorporate them into your daily life. 

Suppressing your pain and turning away from the feelings is how Outer Child gained a stronghold in your personality in the first place.  The tools tap into the source of its knee-jerk reactions and allow you to administer to your long forgotten needs for the first time. 

The program takes you on a delightful journey to the center of the self, all the way to the molten core of feeling where you discover a wellspring of healing, personal growth, and behavioral change.