THE SHULMAN CENTER CELEBRATES 10 YR ANNIVERSARY! The Shulman Center on the move and in the news… September 2014–Mr. Shulman is quoted in Time magazine about compulsive shopping and spending. September 16, 2014–Mr. Shulman will present on compulsive stealing, spending & hoarding at the Thelma McMillen monthly professional medical lecture series in Torrance, CA. Free. September 25, 2014–Mr. Shulman will present on hoarding disorder at The Community House in Birmingham, MI. October 7, 2014–Mr. Shulman will present on compulsive shopping/spending at the 4th Lifestyle Intervention Conference in Las Vegas. See www.lifestyleintervention.org October 23, 2014–Mr. Shulman will be presenting “Cultivating Honesty and Integrity in our Kids (and ourselves) in an Increasingly Dishonest World” at The Franklin Public Library in Franklin, MI November 7-8, 2014–Mr. Shulman will present on DSM-5 changes at the Annual Michigan Association of School Social Workers in West Michigan. November 13, 2014–Mr. Shulman will be presenting on compulsive shopping and spending at The Community House in Birmingham, MI. February 3, 2015–Mr. Shulman will be presenting on compulsive hoarding at The Rochester Hills, Michigan Public Library. Free April 29, 2015–Mr. Shulman will present on hoarding disorder at the annual Michigan Conference on Mental Health and the Aging in Lansing, MI. Please Follow us on Twitter @terrenceshulman or @TheShulmanCenter and Facebook at The Shulman Center. NOTE: If you’re a therapist, please consider contacting us to enroll in our brief, affordable local or virtual training to become more proficient at assessing and treating compulsive stealing, spending & hoarding disorders.See Shulman Center Training C.A,S,A, CELEBRATES 22nd ANNIVERSARY MR. SHULMAN PRESNTS ON HOARDING AT NAT’L CONF. I feel privileged to share with you that C.A.S.A. (Cleptomaniacs And Shoplifters Anonymous) celebrates its 22nd Anniversary on September 3rd in metro-Detroit. It’s hard to believe I started this meeting in 1992 when I was just shy of 27 years old and relatively new in recovery. C.A.S.A.’s annual anniversary is a milestone that I take note of personally but many of our members (old-timers and newcomers alike) seem to enjoy marking as well. I estimate that over the last 22 years, our flagship meeting and several other chapters that have also met in the area, have seen over 2,000 people attend our meetings. We recently lost a Monday night chapter 3 months ago when the church we’d been meeting at for about 5 years decided to close the building on Mondays to save money. Another Monday night chapter in a neighboring town has been struggling of late with just a few regular members and declining court-referrals. Two other weekly chapters are holding firm with 5-10 members and our flagship meeting regularly sees between 15-20 attending each Wednesday night. I’m also pleased to report that C.A.S.A. has online and phone support meetings and about 20 chapters in 15 other states. We’re a long way from seeing thriving C.A.S.A. chapters across the land and outside the U.S. We’re also still a long way from enjoying more universal acceptance and referrals from most courts. But Rome wasn’t built in a day–and not even in 22 years! The good news is that many have found unique and powerful help through our meetings and I know that I and many are grateful for this specific support group that has enhanced our recoveries.
Happy Birthday C.A.S.A. Your birthday is my birthday, too! I am also happy to report that my recent trip to St. Louis for The National Conference on Addiction Disorders was fun, informative, and interesting. This annual conference attracts close to 1,000 mental health practitioners from across the U.S. and some from beyond our borders. I met a lot of wonderful, dedicated therapists and attended many well-presented sessions on various topics. I also felt good about my presentation to 50 attendees on compulsive hoarding. There seems to be no letting up of interest on this disorder which has been in the spotlight the last decade due to the success of the various cable TV shows. I look forward to my trip in mid-September to the Los Angeles area to present at the Betty Ford/Thelma McMillen monthly speaker series at The Torrance Memorial Medical Center. I’ll be presenting on compulsive theft, spending and hoarding to between 200-300 mental health professionals. Hope to see some of you there! SHOPLIFTERS: THE PLAY–OPENS OFF-BROADWAY Meet Alma – a career shoplifter who prefers the “five-finger discount” over some lousy senior citizen deal. When her life of petty crime is halted by an overzealous rookie security guard and his ambivalent mentor, she risks losing her freedom, her resolve and maybe even the steak she has stuffed in her pants. Tonynominee Jayne Houdyshell (Broadway’s Romeo and Juliet, Follies) leads an expertly drawn cast of oddball characters in this biting, world-premiere comedy about society’s haves and havenots and how much they might actually have in common. “Life is a supermarket. We wander it – sometimes shopping, sometimes pilfering – gathering what pleasure, necessities, hope and joys can fill up our baskets before we head, as eventually we must, to the check out. I look for situations and people that occupy the smallest of spaces; their tragedy and their comedy enlarged by the almost complete insignificance of their acts.” — Morris Panych, Playwright/Author of “Shoplifters!” See: Shoplifters: The Play DETROIT-AREA JUDGE CAUGHT STEALING, RESIGNS by L.L. Brasier Detroit Free Press, August 21, 2014 Novi. Michigan District Court Judge Dennis Powers is resigning from the bench Sept. 1, a month before he faced a disciplinary hearing for alleged misconduct. Powers had been the subject of a TV news story earlier this year that accused him of golfing when he should have been on the bench, turning in improper mileage requests and coming in late to work. The Judicial Tenure Commission was seeking to unseat him, saying an audit found that he had received almost $4,000 in mileage he was not entitled to. Powers repaid the money earlier this year and said he had misunderstood the county’s mileage policy. He sought some of the mileage reimbursement to travel to real estate classes, and said the classes were important because he sometimes had cases before him involving property disputes. And he said he attended community golf outings as outreach for the court. Powers, 72, earned $138,227 a year, and has been on the bench for 16 years. His term expires in two years, and he would not have been able to run again because of his age. “All I wanted to do is serve out my term,” Powers said this morning. Powers said he hopes now to spend time with his family. Gov. Rick Snyder will appoint his replacement. See article at: Judge Gets Caught Stealing, Resigns MORE WORKERS CLAIM WAGE THEFT by Steve Greenhouse New York Times, 8/31/14 MIRA LOMA, Calif. – Week after week, Guadalupe Rangel worked seven days straight, sometimes 11 hours a day, unloading dining room sets, trampolines, television stands and other imports from Asia that would soon be shipped to Walmart stores. Even though he often clocked 70 hours a week at the Schneider warehouse here, he was never paid time-and-a-half overtime, he said. And now, having joined a lawsuit involving hundreds of warehouse workers, Mr. Rangel stands to receive more than $20,000 in back pay as part of a recent $21 million legal settlement with Schneider, a national trucking company. “Sometimes I’d work 60, even 90 days in a row,” said Mr. Rangel, a soft-spoken immigrant from Mexico. “They never paid overtime.” The lawsuit is part of a flood of recent cases – brought in California and across the nation – that accuse employers of violating minimum wage and overtime laws, erasing work hours and wrongfully taking employees’ tips. Worker advocates call these practices “wage theft,” insisting it has become far too prevalent. Many business groups counter that government officials have drummed up a flurry of wage enforcement actions, largely to score points with union allies. If anything, employers have become more scrupulous in complying with wage laws, the groups say, in response to the much publicized lawsuits about so-called off-the-clock work that were filed against Walmart and other large companies a decade ago. Some federal and state officials agree. They assert that more companies are violating wage laws than ever before, pointing to the record number of enforcement actions they have pursued. They complain that more employers – perhaps motivated by fierce competition or a desire for higher profits – are flouting wage laws. See rest of article: When Employers Steal from Employees SHOPLIFTING ON RISE IN U.K. (AND OTHER COUNTRIES?) DUE TO INCREASING POVERTY by Richard Spillett MailOnline 8/22/14 Shoplifting is on the rise (throughout the U.K.) amid fears parents are struggling to put meals on the table during the school summer holidays. Charities say increasing numbers of families are turning to food banks – but one middle-class mother took to the radio today to tell how she stole from a shop to get better quality meals. The mother-of-two, who asked not be named, said she took eggs, butter and bacon to feed her children because food bank food is ‘not fresh enough’. Figures released earlier this year showed three quarters of police forces across the country had recorded an increase in shoplifting. In North Wales, instances of shoplifting have increased by more than 20 per cent compared with last year, with food identified as the most frequently stolen item. A poll by cereal brand Kellogg’s claimed one in eight children are not getting a square meal every day as parents struggle to feed them in the school holidays. He has brought in a system whereby first-time offenders are spared a criminal record and instead take a course to help them manage their lives…. See rest of article: Food for Theft DIFFICULT GIRL: HOW I GREW UP, WITH HELP by Lena Dunham The New Yorker, 9/1/14 I am eight, and I am afraid of everything. The list of things that keep me up at night includes but is not limited to: appendicitis, typhoid, leprosy, unclean meat, foods I haven’t seen emerge from their packaging, foods my mother hasn’t tasted first so that if we die we die together, homeless people, headaches, rape, kidnapping, milk, the subway, sleep. An assistant teacher comes to school with a cold sore. I am convinced he’s infected with MRSA, a skin-eating staph infection. I wait for my own flesh to erode. I stop touching my shoelaces (too filthy) or hugging adults outside my family. In school, we are learning about Hiroshima, so I read “Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes,” and I know instantly that I have leukemia. A symptom of leukemia is dizziness, and I have that, when I sit up too fast or spin around in circles. So I quietly prepare to die in the next year or so, depending on how fast the disease progresses. My parents are getting worried. It’s hard enough to have a child, much less a child who demands to inspect our groceries and medicines for evidence that their protective seals have been tampered with. I have only the vaguest memory of a life before fear. Every morning when I wake up, there is one blissful second before I look around the room and remember my many terrors. I wonder if this is what it will always be like, forever, and I try to remember moments I felt safe: In bed next to my mother one Sunday morning. Playing with my friend Isabel’s puppy. Getting picked up from a sleepover just before bedtime. One night, my father becomes so frustrated by my behavior that he takes a walk and doesn’t come back for three hours. While he’s gone, I start to plan our life without him. My fourth-grade teacher, Kathy, is my best friend at school. She’s a plump, pretty woman with hair like yellow pipe cleaners. Her clothes resemble the sheets at my grandma’s house, floral but threadbare, and with mismatched buttons. She says I can ask her as many questions as I want: about tidal waves, about my sinuses, about nuclear war. She offers vague, reassuring answers. In hindsight, they were tinged with religion, implied a faith in a distinctly Christian God. She can tell when I’m getting squirrelly, and she shoots me a look across the room that says, It’s O.K., Lena, just give it a second. When I’m not with Kathy, I’m with Chris Conta, our school nurse, who has a perm and wears holiday sweaters all year round. She has a no-nonsense approach to health that comforts me. She presents me with hard facts (very few children develop Reye’s syndrome in response to aspirin) and tells me that polio has been eradicated in America. She takes me seriously when I explain that I’ve been exposed to scarlet fever by a kid on the subway with a red face. Sometimes she lets me lie on the top bunk in the back room, dark and cool. I rest my cheek against the plastic mattress cover and listen as she dispenses medication and condoms to high-school kids. If I’m lucky, she doesn’t send me back to class… See rest of article: “Girls'” Star on OCD and more MOVING TO A SMALLER HOME AND DE-CLUTTERING A LIFETIME OF BELONGINGS by Elizabeth Olson New York Times August 22, 2014 THE amount of goods a couple can accumulate over 44 years living in the same house can be overwhelming. And that is what Wendel and Carolyn Thompson, of Columbia, Md., have been grappling with since January as they prepare to leave their split level and move to a retirement community this month. Figuring out how to squeeze the contents of a house into a twobedroom retirement unit nearby in Catonsville, Md., has taken most of their time in recent months. And they’ve had some help. “Declutter ladies,” or downsizing specialists, spend hours with them every week to sort through and pare down. “We’ll get through this. That’s what I tell myself several times every day,” said Mrs. Thompson, 77, a former teacher and Maryland school nutrition program employee, who raised three children in the four-bedroom house. An avid collector of educational materials, games, gifts and other miscellaneous items like teddy bears, she devotes time every day to deciding what goes in the boxes for giving away, the boxes for the new apartment and the boxes for each of her children – and their children. “One of my recommendations for handling this,” she added wryly, “is don’t wait.” But, of course, many people do wait – and wait, said Kimberly McMahon, co-owner of Let’s Move, a downsizing and moving specialist in Fulton, Md., whose company is helping Mrs. Thompson and her husband, 78, a former government statistician, to clear out every nook and cranny. “Downsizing is the hardest because it is emotionally difficult for people to release their history,” said Ms. McMahon. “It’s the worst anxiety associated with any move.” Her advice is “that nothing should be off limits. Either use it, love it – or leave it.” See rest of article: Letting It Go WHAT PAYING WITH PLASTIC SAYS ABOUT YOU by Lisa Kiplinger August 29, 2014 USA Today Ways that Boomers show their age: wearing sensible shoes, relying on reading glasses and paying for a cup of coffee with cash. There’s a growing generation gap when it comes to using plastic for purchases under $5, a survey out this week by CreditCards.com reveals. More than half of Millennials are likely to whip out a card for a pack of gum or a newspaper, while 77% of people older than 50 still dig out cash. “I think those people mostly use cash because that’s the way we’ve always done it,” says Matt Schulz, senior industry analyst for CreditCards.com. “But Millennials have grown up doing things like going to school and using a prepaid card to pay for lunch. For a lot of younger folks, cash is just something that they don’t carry around.” Schulz sees the trend of plastic replacing cash picking up steam as Millennials and the presumably even more tech-savvy generation after them grow older. The switch to plastic is picking up for a few reasons: * Technology has made paying with cards just as fast as paying with cash. * Rewards programs have made charging attractive. * Banks have spent decades getting consumers and merchants comfortable with cards. See rest of article; I got one word for you… plastic! TAKE BACK CONTROL OF YOUR EMAIL INBOX Tips for Digital De-Cluttering by Joanne Stern Wall Street Journal 8/26/14 Twenty percent off new J. Crew styles. 15,000 Hilton Bonus Points. Last Chance: $30 for 24 colorful roses at 1-800- Flowers.com. Pinterest Weekly: Fresh Pins for You! Welcome to my personal email inbox, where messages from human beings are constantly drowned out by robotically generated pitches like these. Seriously, at the start of writing this column I had nearly 6,000 unread emails-most of which were fired off by the marketing bots of social networks, retailers and service providers. Yes, I did sign up for some of this-or at least, missed the chance to opt out. But in many cases, I don’t remember showing the tiniest bit of interest in the vendor. (I have no recollection of ever flying Spirit Airlines -ever.) Sure, I could delete and unsubscribe from each and every one of them. While I’m at it, I could ask for a case of carpal tunnel syndrome for my birthday, too. Instead, I found a way to shoo the bots out of my inbox without having to chase them all myself. After giving cleanup services such as Mailstrom, Unroll.me and SaneBox access to my email account, I could focus on the messages that matter, those from living, breathing humans. But to do that, I had to be willing to let a third party regularly peek into my inbox. Trash Them I began with a massive purge of all the thousands of messages I will never look at. While bulk deleting is a staple of every email client, even Gmail requires too much manual sorting and searching. That’s where a Web-based cleanup tool called Mailstrom trumps the others. After analyzing my large Gmail inbox in less than 30 minutes, the service organized all of my messages by sender and ranked them by message count. Banana Republic was the winner with 178, though Bloomingdale’s wasn’t far behind. Fun fact: I hear more about 20%-off sales than I hear from my mom and my fiancée. I ticked a few boxes inside Mailstrom’s interface and over 3,300 messages got sent into my Gmail’s trash. Seeing my unread message count drop by more than half felt like stepping into a newly cleaned house, minus the fresh Windex smell…. See rest of article: Digital De-Cluttering SPOTLIGHTS: “In Recovery” Magazine There’s a wonderful relatively new quarterly recovery magazine I want to let you know about. It’s called “In Recovery.” Founded 2 years ago by Kim Welsh, a recovering person herself, in Prescott, Arizona–home to many treatment centers and half-way houses, this magazine has something for everyone. I visited Kim in October 2013 and was honored to be invited to write a regular column about process/behavioral addictions–starting Spring 2014. The magazine is available in hard copy as well as online at: www.inrecoverymagazine.com 3rd Millenium STOPLifting Online Education Course! 3rd Millenium Classrooms out of San Antonio, TX has been offering high-quality online education courses for alcohol, marijuana and shoplifting issues for many years now. I’ve been honored to help them fine-tune and update their shoplifting course which many are court-ordered to complete after an arrest. 3rd Millennium Classroom’s STOPLifting is an online intervention course designed to assist shoplifters in examining and altering their attitudes and behaviors towards shoplifting. The course incorporates evidential examples and related follow-up questions to discover the student’s motives behind shoplifting, reveal possible patterns in his or her behaviors, and identify potential triggers and ways to cope. Through STOPLifting’s unique motivational interviewing style, students are encouraged to evaluate the personal consequences of shoplifting and how they affect the individual, his or her family and those around him or her. See: www.3rdmiclassrooms.com Castlewood Eating Disorders Treatment Centers I was privileged to tour Castlewood Treatment Center near St. Louis in August 2014 while in town for a conference. Castlewood also has centers in Birmingham, Alabama and in Monterey, California. They have been around for over a decade and have a great reputation and great staff. See: www.castlewoodtc.com Clutter-Hoarding National Clean-Up Services See: http://www.clutterhoardingcleanup.com/ Honesty is its own reward.–Anonymous Walk in peace.
The Shulman Center 2014 Ongoing Events Calendar Ongoing … The Baton Rouge, Louisiana court system has a court-ordered, facilitated educational program for retail fraud offenders. The program is based on material from Mr. Shulman’s book Something for Nothing: Shoplifting Addiction and Recovery. Mr. Shulman created a 1-hour employee theft online course with360 Training. Learn why people steal from their jobs, how to deter it, prevent it, and what to do when confronted with it. Enroll at: http://theshulmancenter.360training.com Mr. Shulman created an online continuing education course on compulsive shopping and spending called Bought Out and $pent! based on his book and Power Point presentation. The course, CEs offered, through The American Psychotherapy Association. at: http://www.americanpsychotherapy.com “In Recovery” Magazine There’s a wonderful relatively new quarterly recovery magazine I want to let you know about. It’s called “In Recovery.” Founded 2 years ago by Kim Welsh, a recovering person herself, in Prescott, Arizona–home to many treatment centers and half-way houses, this magazine has something for everyone. I visited Kim in October 2013 and was honored to be invited to write a regular column about process/behavioral addictions–starting Spring 2014.The magazine is available in hard copy as well as online at: www.inrecoverymagazine.com 3rd Millenium STOPLifting Online Education Course! 3rd Millenium Classrooms out of San Antonio, TX has been offering high-quality online education courses for alcohol, marijuana and shoplifting issues for many years now. I’ve been honored to help them fine-tune and update their shoplifting course which many are court-ordered to complete after an arrest.3rd Millenium has partnered with Terrence Shulman and The Shulman Center on this course. See: www.3rdmilclassrooms.com RESOURCES OF NOTE… THE SHULMAN CENTER THERAPIST TRAINING PROGRAM! If you’re a therapist and wish to be trained & certified in the assessment/treatment of compulsive theft, spending and/or hoarding, CONTACT THE SHULMAN CENTER NOW! See: http://www.theshulmancenter.com/counselor-training.html 3rd MILLENIUM STOPLifing ONLINE EDUCATION COURSE! 3rd Millenium Classrooms out of San Antonio, TX has been offering high-quality online education courses for alcohol, marijuana and shoplifting issues for many years now. I’ve been honored to help them fine-tune and update their shoplifting course which many are court-ordered to complete after an arrest. Please check out their courses on their website at: www.3rdmilclassrooms.com IN RECOVERY MAGAZINE–PRESCOTT, ARIZONA There’s a wonderful relatively new quarterly recovery magazine I want to let you know about. It’s called “In Recovery.” Founded 2 years ago by Kim Welsh, a recovering person herself, in Prescott, Arizona–home to many treatment centers and half-way houses, this magazine has something for everyone. I visited Kim in October 2013 and was honored to be invited to write a regular column about process/behavioral addictions–starting Spring 2014.The magazine is available in hard copy and online at: www.inrecoverymagazine.com GET A BOOST with MONEY LIFE-COACHING Tom Lietaert of Sacred Odyssey and the Intimacy with Money programs offers individual money coaching as well as various group workshops on money. Check out Tom’s two websites at: www.sacredodyssey.com / www.intimacywithmoney.com CONSULTING AND EDUCATION ON FRAUD Gary Zeune of Columbus, Ohio has been a friend and colleague of mine for nearly two years. He has been a consultant and teacher on fraud discovery and prevention for nearly 30 years. He is interviewed in my book Cluttered Lives, Empty Souls: Compulsive Theft, Spending & Hoarding. I recently saw Gary in action recently when he presented an all-day on fraud to metroDetroit accountants. See: www.theprosandthecons.com RECOVERING SHOPAHOLIC BLOG AND EDUCATION Debbie Roes is an educator and recovering shopaholic and offers a free insightful blog and e-Newsletter to help you. See: http://www.recoveringshopaholic.com THE FLY LADY ASSISTS WITH CLEANING & DECLUTTERING I recently was told about a website resource that lists strategies for cleaning and de-cluttering and sells various books and products that help with this; so, I’m passing it along… See: www.flylady.net CASTLEWOOD EATING DISORDERS TREATMENT CENTERS I was privileged to tour Castlewood Treatment Center near St. Louis in August 2014 while in town for a conference. Castlewood also has centers in Birmingham, Alabama and in Monterey, California. They have been around for over a decade and have a great reputation and great staff. See: www.castlewoodtc.com Mr. Shulman’s books available for purchase now! Click here to shop amazon.com
Something for Nothing: Shoplifting Addiction and Recovery (2003) See also: www.somethingfornothingbook.com Biting The Hand That Feeds: The Employee Theft Epidemic… New Perspectives, New Solutions (2005) See also: www.bitingthehandthatfeeds.com Bought Out and $pent! Recovery from Compulsive $hopping/$pending (2008) See also: www.boughtoutandspent.com Cluttered Lives, Empty Souls: Compulsive Stealing, Spending and Hoarding (2011) See also: www.clutteredlives.com Contact The Shulman Center: Terrence Daryl Shulman, JD, LMSW, ACSW, CAADC, CPC Founder/Director, The Shulman Center for Compulsive Theft, Spending & Hoarding P.O. Box 250008 Franklin, Michigan 48025 E-mail: terrenceshulman@theshulmancenter.com Call (248) 358-8508 for a free consultation! Our Web Sites: The Shulman Center Shoplifting Addictions
Kleptomaniacs Anonymous Something For Nothing Shopping Addictions Shopaholics Anonymous Bought Out and Spent Employee Theft Solutions Biting the Hand that Feeds Hoarding Therapy Hoarders Anonymous Terrence Shulman Books by Terrence Shulman: Something for Nothing:Shoplifting Addiction and Recovery Biting The Hand That Feeds:The Employee Theft Epidemic Bought Out and $pent! Recovery from Compulsive $hopping and $pending Cluttered Lives Empty Souls: Compulsive Stealing, Spending and Hoarding All book are available for $25.00 each (includes shipping and handling). Click here to purchase