A SPECIAL MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR

FOR FIRST-TIME VISITORS

Personal Message from the Director

Why Take STAR

Your STAR Experience

The STAR Process

The Essence of STAR

What Graduates Say About STAR

The Value of a Personal Growth Retreat

STAR Staff

FOR THERAPISTS

Message from the Director

What Therapists Say About STAR

Inside the STAR Process

Why Therapists Choose STAR

STAR Staff

SPECIAL TOPICS

Addictions and Recovery

Attachment Disorder and Relationship Problems

Anger Management

Attacking Anxiety and Depression

Grief Recovery

Childhood Trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress

Recommended Reading

We want to provide you the information you need to know about STAR, and we have assembled a variety of materials on this website for your review.

STAR has been developed and is delivered by highly skilled and professionally recognized psychotherapists. The STAR experience frequently enables participants to go beyond the constraints of the traditional therapeutic approach, providing the context in which the therapeutic process can be safely and lovingly accelerated. STAR is not an alternative to therapy, but a powerful adjunct. We encourage participants who are under the care of a professional to continue therapy after their STAR experience.

STAR and Recovery

STAR expands the definition of recovery to include psychological addictions like self-sabotaging behavior, self-diminishment, projections of negativity and other outer manifestations of internalized dilemmas – unconscious defense reactions and barriers to fulfillment. At STAR, recovery is from conscious and unconscious blocks which may have prevented participants from getting their deepest and most basic needs fulfilled. It is a recovery of spirit.

Many STAR graduates are active members of 12-Step programs, and report that STAR complements their recovery process. STAR deepens participants’ journey through the 12 steps by giving them the tools to go deeply within and surrender the destructive and addictive patterns of behavior which may hold sway over their lives.

Patterns of codependency form very early in childhood around poor bonding with parents. At STAR, participants learn to accept, with compassion, the long-repressed, wounded, and unbonded inner child, and learn to reparent themselves with trust and love. The results can be profoundly life-changing; participants are often able to move forward with internal cooperation and harmony, healing the fracture of the ego, the intellect, the body, the emotions, and the child within.

STAR and Childhood Abuse

In STAR, survivors of childhood abuse discover that as whole adults they can genuinely protect and nurture themselves in new ways, as well as be nurtured by others. STAR can assist such people in moving beyond the fear, rage, sadness, and loneliness which are the souvenirs of childhood. The result is that participants are able to give up their addictions to unproductive behaviors and positively integrate their childhoods into their adult lives in a wholeness of body, mind, and spirit.

In a caring community, the STAR experience often illuminates how personal life struggles can mysteriously bring focus to life purpose and ultimate fulfillment on the deepest levels.

STAR For Therapists

In addition, STAR is a valuable experience for anyone in the wide spectrum of the helping professions. Participation in STAR deepens and expands knowledge and awareness of how dysfunction and damage happen, as well as how they may be connected and healed.

As a therapist going through STAR, I was amazed at how much clearer I was able to see the tapestry of my life, and how much it had been limited and conditioned by my birth and childhood. Earlier therapy had given me valuable pieces of my psyche, but STAR put them together in one understandable and cohesive picture. With that, I was able to release and forgive the past, learn to respect myself for the ways I had survived, and then, with that self-esteem, I was empowered to move forward in my life with a sense of meaning and purpose.

My clients have benefited enormously from my own work in STAR. With renewed emotional and intellectual congruity and clarity, I was able to be a more effective help to others.

STAR is a process designed to heal the split between the head and the heart, the intellectual parent and the wounded child, to bring about an internal peace. No longer battling the internal cacophony of conflicting voices, the individual has energy and spirit to live life with a sense of joy and purpose.

After reading the information available here for your review, if you have any questions about the appropriateness of STAR for any of your clients, please feel free to call us with your concerns.

Sincerely,

Barbara Findeisen, M.F.T.
Director, STAR Foundation