HOLIDAY THERAPY TUNE-UPS AVAILABLE NOW!!! The holiday season can be the best of times or the worst of times. It’s well-documented that relapses soar between November and January. Take preventative measures by scheduling a pre-holiday therapy tune-up to help ensure your holiday season is one to remember rather than one to forget. Contact us at: 248-358-8508 while space is still available. DONATE TO C.A.S.A. LLC! Looking to make a meaningful tax-deductible gift? Please consider writing a check to C.A.S.A., LLC (Cleptomaniacs And Shoplifters Anonymous). Pay it forward and help someone else. We can only keep what we give away. Any donations may be made through PayPal at: http://www.theshulmancenter.com/online-store.htm or by mail with a check made payable to “Terrence Shulman and C.A.S.A., LLC” mailed to PO Box 250008 Franklin, Michigan 48025 U.S.A. You will promptly be mailed a receipt. The Shulman Center on the move and in the news… Thursday November 18, 2015–Mr. Shulman was featured and quoted in The Detroit Free Press on shopping addiction and the holidays. Thursday December 3, 2015–Mr. Shulman was featured and quoted in The Detroit Jewish News on shopping addiction and the holidays. January 2016–Mr. Shulman contributed an article on dishonesty in our culture for the Winter 2016 edition of The Hayes Report quarterly loss prevention newsletter. Thursday January 14, 2016–Mr. Shulman presents on understanding and treating hoarding disorder at The Northville, MI Public Library 7-8:30pm. Free. Thursday March 10, 2015–Mr. Shulman presents on hoarding disorder for Detroit Senior Service Coordinators at Hannan House in Detroit. 9:30-11:30am. Monday May 16, 2016–Mr. Shulman presents on hoarding disorder at The Livonia, MI Public Library 7-8:30pm. Free Please Follow us on Twitter @terrenceshulman or @TheShulmanCenter and Facebook at The Shulman Center. 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 THE BEST OF TIMES OR THE WORST OF TIMES? How Do You Want Your Holidays To Be? by Terry Shulman If you haven’t already noticed, the holiday shopping season seems to start earlier each year, with holiday-themed advertising popping up even before Halloween is over. Are you one of those people who loves the holiday season or hates it? A little of both? I’m a recovering curmudgeon myself. Bad memories, stressful family gatherings, the winter blahs, and pressures to buy, spend, shop and “be cheery” take a toll on many of us. Our spiritual center wobbles, stress pervades our being, and it becomes nearly impossible to fully appreciate the joys and true gifts the holidays offer. Isn’t the holiday season supposed to be a time of wonder, thanksgiving, appreciation, love, miracles, celebration, generosity, rebirth and renewal? Research shows that addictive behaviors and relapses increase during the period between November and January. Eating, drinking, drugging, and gambling all escalate. But four other potentially addictive behaviors also reach epidemic proportions during the holiday season: compulsive shopping/spending, shoplifting, employee theft, and hoarding. Are we having fun yet? It’s estimated that, like in 2014, nearly 135 million Americans will shop during the holiday season, the average shopper will spend an average of about $400 and, collectively, we’ll spend roughly $2 trillion dollars (about half online and half at stores) with $50 billion spent during the first weekend alone. Can you say “New Year’s debt hangover?” It’s also estimated that nearly one-third of annual shoplifting and employee theft take place over roughly the two month holiday season–as well as a correspondingly higher percentage of arrests and job firings. Gift hoarding–including those bought but not given and those received but not used or returned–as well as holiday decorations, knick-knacks, leftover food and drink–could ground Santa’s sled in a heartbeat. And what are we teaching our kids?-that Jesus was born (and died on the cross) so we could get more gadgets? Is that what it’s all about? I’m not saying that shopping and gift-giving don’t have a place in our celebrations but few would argue that the holidays have become more and more about giving and receiving stuff despite our feeling more and more empty, stressed, and disconnected. We recovering addicts are some of the most creative people there are. Why be a mindless sheep in the flock. Let’s put on our creativity caps! Let’s make a list of sober and festive activities we, our friends, and our family can enjoy, including many that are simple, inexpensive, and more likely to leave us with better rather than bitter memories: 1. Enjoy the outdoors–snow or no snow–put down the phones and computers and get out of the house, the stores, the office, the Malls. Try nature walks, sledding, skiing, ice skating, snowman, igloo, and snow-angel making. 2. Volunteer at a soup kitchen, homeless shelter, food bank, animal shelter, senior center, or hospital. These places aren’t always gloomy and, hopefully, leave a smile on your face and others’. ‘Tis the spirit of giving after all. 3. Clean out, organize and donate clothing, food, and other usable items to your local charity, food bank, or Toys for Tots program. 4. Organize or volunteer to help with “sober” or “safe” parties with friends and family of choice. Make it potluck so nobody feels over-burdened and consider playing a “white elephant” gift exchange game. 5. Gratitude games and sharing 6. Go caroling in the neighborhood or special venues 7. Gift-wrapping parties 8. Cooking and baking together 9. Ugly Christmas sweater party 10. Make your own holiday cards, decorations, and tree decorations 11. Burning bowl ceremony for New Years 12. Watch holiday-themed movies 13. Dress your pet 14. Walk or drive around and admire the holiday lights 15. Make a wish to Santa (both naughty and nice) So how do you want your holidays to go? What is the key to embracing the miracles? You are the gift. I am the gift. We are the gift. No amount of money or things-whether bought or stolen-can truly bring us peace. Give, but don’t overdo it. If you do have problems with rewarding yourself-or others-in a pure and sound manner, give yourself the gift of asking for help. This may be your best holiday season yet! ————————————– MAKE A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION TO C.A.S.A., LLC We can only keep what we give away. –Recovery slogan Dear Friends, Looking to make a meaningful tax-deductible gift? Please consider writing a check to C.A.S.A., LLC (Cleptomaniacs And Shoplifters Anonymous). Since starting the first nationwide C.A.S.A. support group in metro-Detroit in 1992, we have seen this group expand both in metro-Detroit as well as across the U.S. We also have online and phone support groups, too! Nearly 10% of Americans shoplift, approximately 75% of Americans engage in employee theft, and many more engage in other forms of addictive-compulsive stealing. People need various resources to confront and deal with their problems with stealing. The holiday season is a particularly difficult time for many.
In 2009, I registered a non-profit wing–C.A.S.A., LLC–of my company The Shulman Center for Compulsive Theft, Spending and Hoarding. If you are interesting in donating any amount of money, we will provide a receipt that can be used on your tax return. Donations to C.A.S.A., LLC help me better serve various individuals in the following ways: –Mailing of information, meeting lists, and my books (notably: “Something for Nothing: Shoplifting Addiction and Recovery” and “Biting The Hand That Feeds: The Employee Theft Epidemic”) to indigent persons and/or those currently incarcerated. –Making phone calls and visits to jails, prisons, or mental health institutions to educate about addictive-compulsive stealing and treatment/recovery options. –Assisting individuals nationwide in starting C.A.S.A. support groups. –Offering reduced-fee or free counseling services to those who cannot afford it. –Offering court-evaluations for those who cannot afford it. –Offering free public talks on addictive-compulsive stealing and treatment/recovery options. –Offsetting fees I pay to my website designer to update various C.A.S.A. support group listings and other info online. See: www.kleptomaniacsanonymous.org We encourage you to donate to this cause, especially whether my work, my books, or any C.A.S.A. support group has helped you in any way. Pay it forward and help someone else. We can only keep what we give away. Any donations may be made through PayPal using this link: http://www.theshulmancenter.com/online-store.htm You may also mail with a check made payable to “Terrence Shulman and C.A.S.A., LLC” to me PO Box 250008 Franklin, Michigan 48025 U.S.A. You will promptly be mailed a receipt. Thank you for your consideration and Happy Holidays! Sincerely, Terrence Shulman, The Shulman Center and C.A.S.A., LLC 5 WARNING SIGNS YOU MIGHT BE ON A SHOPPING BINGE by Susan Tompor, Detroit Free Press (November 18, 2015) The buy more-save more mentality can drive compulsive spending on gifts if you aren’t careful. You don’t need to have a “shopping addiction” to overspend during the “All-I-Want-for-Christmas-Is-More” season. The buy more-save more triggers are everywhere. But if you want to hold on to some cash, it can help to consider if you’re about to get trapped into a compulsive shopping binge. Some of the signs of trouble: 1. Do you you walk like a zombie shopper toward Bluelight Specials, the Flash Sales and the Today-Only Special Values? A big trigger for online shoppers is the “Flash Sale.” Customers who sign up for texts and e-mails from certain online retail sites complain of being tempted daily or even a few times a day by all sorts of “limited-time” specials, according to Terrence Daryl Shulman, author of “Bought Out and $pent!” who counsels compulsive shoppers. Maybe this “super savings” lasts only two hours. But the time limit – much like all those early morning Black Friday specials – will create a sense of urgency and a shopper’s rush. Shulman said he’s had a number of female clients say the alerts contributed to overspending and the shoppers had to put a stop to the texts. “They’re like crack, and they often have to unsubscribe to them,” Shulman said. 2. Are you ashamed to admit that all those holiday shopping trips really aren’t working for you? A variety of legitimate reasons exist for slamming the brakes on gift buying – a job loss, loss of overtime pay, concerns about a limited retirement plan or a small amount of college savings. And some people need to control shopping because they’re dealing with an addiction. “Some people really get such an adrenaline rush that it can overtake them,” said Shulman, who lives in Southfield. Some studies indicate that about 6% of the population deals with compulsive spending, he said. How do you stop spending way too much on gifts or having way too many people on your gift list? “It would be great if you could tell people the truth,” Shulman said. While many are too embarrassed to admit to troubles, it’s not all that unusual for friends to say they’d like to limit holiday spending or cut back. It can happen more often than one would think. 3. Do you even know how much you are going to spend for the holidays? One way to keep a clear head in the midst of the holidays is to sit down and decide how much you’ll spend in total for the holidays. Do you want to spend $400 or $700 on all the gifts, dinners, holiday outfits, baked goods, parties and donations? While some might not be running up big credit card debt, they could still be spending more than they need to do. 4. Can you play a game and just spend cash? One trick is to take only cash with you on various shopping trips. If you want to spend only $40 on each gift on a given list, take an envelope, mark it with one name and stuff $40 in that envelope. Then spend only that amount on gifts for that person. Or maybe you want to put a set amount of money on gift cards that you’d buy before you head to the store and later use to buy gifts. The idea is to figure out a way to control impulse spending. Often during the holidays, sales or promotions challenge you to reach some limit, say being required to spend $100 to save $25. 5. Remember: Free isn’t necessarily free. When shopping online or via catalog, one of the gotchas is often a spending limit to get the free shipping. In some cases, shoppers can look at options for in-store pickup to avoid shipping costs. See: Shopping Binge REPAIR FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS DURING THE HOLIDAYS by Elizabeth Bernstein, Wall Street Journal (11/16/15) If you’re fighting with someone in your family, you might want to hurry up and call a truce. The holiday season can be a good excuse for estranged relatives to reconcile. But you’ll need to start the process well before you sit down at your big family gathering, says Melanie Booth-Butterfield, a professor in the department of communication studies at West Virginia University, who has lectured on how to manage family disputes and developed a step-by-step approach for reconciliation.
“There’s a lot of pressure for the holidays to be perfect, for everyone to be together and be happy,” says Ms. BoothButterfield. If you’ve been sparring with someone you love and want to repair the bond, she says, “it’s much better to have a lot of smaller talks starting somewhere neutral, like Starbucks.” How do you repair a serious rupture in a relationship? Start with yourself, Dr. Booth-Butterfield says. Stop ruminating on the issues that caused the rift. When you dwell on negative thoughts you create a downward spiral, she says. Each bad thought leads to another. Break this pattern by replacing the negative thoughts with something else. Think of a beautiful view, such as a sunset. Listen to happy music. Watch a funny movie. Read a great book. Play with a puppy. Dr. Booth-Butterfield, who has written a textbook on communication called “Interpersonal Essentials,” says that the longer you are estranged from someone, the harder it will be to patch up the rift. It might be a good start to send a handwritten note. Start with a compliment: “I’ve always admired your sense of humor.” “I respect your work.” “You are such a great parent.” Then tell the person you miss him or her and would like to meet. “You are opening the conversation,” Dr. Booth-Butterfield says. It will come in handy to practice something communication researchers call “deceptive affection.” This means that you pretend to like the other person more than you really do at this point. Research shows it leads to greater relationship satisfaction. Think of it as social grease. “You don’t have to be a deceiver; but you don’t have to be up front in everything you say either,” says Dr. Booth-Butterfield, who has studied deceptive affection. Follow up with a call. And make a plan to meet somewhere neutral where you can sit undisturbed. Be respectful and show interest in the other person. Keep the initial conversation limited to small talk: the children, spouses, jobs, extended family. You need to apologize. This doesn’t mean you have to accept blame for the rift, Dr. Booth-Butterfield says. You acknowledge the other person’s pain and your part in it. Don’t blame the other person either. Should you rehash the issue that caused the split? That depends on how deep the hurt is, how long the rift has gone on and how comfortable you both are with conflict. Ask your loved one how he or she views the issue and decide if you need to talk about it at a later date, Dr. Booth-Butterfield says. Keep the first meeting light and short. “When you like each other again, then you can ask if they want to talk about it,” she says. If your loved one gets angry, do your best to control your own temper. Ask your loved one how he or she wants to proceed. This shows you want to keep talking. And make it clear: “I care for you and want you to be part of my life. Will you come to holiday dinner?” “The goal is to repeatedly talk to each other like close family members do. They don’t just talk once a year,” Dr. BoothButterfield says. Fila Antwine began to cut her dad out of her life when she was 11. She says that throughout her childhood he’d had extramarital affairs that upset the entire household. Her parents divorced when she was 15 and she lived with her mother. “His behavior was disrespectful toward my mother and the family,” says Ms. Antwine, a 36-year-old women’s leadership educator who lives in Valley Stream, N.Y. For years, Ms. Antwine says she saw her father only at major life events: When she went off to college; when her maternal grandmother died; when he asked to meet her first son. From time to time he tried to call her, and relatives on both sides of her family reached out to her on his behalf, but she refused to talk to him. Fila Antwine repaired her relationship with her father as an adult, after he was diagnosed with cancer. ‘I was able to see him as just another human being.’ In 2012, Ms. Antwine learned from her mother that her father had abdominal cancer. Ms. Antwine was pregnant with her second child and decided it was time to heal the rift. A family member arranged to have her father call her and when she answered he said: “Hey, what’s up?” She responded with humor, to make him comfortable. She told him: “I hear they’re trying to put a tag on your toe, what’s up with that?” “We both chuckled, and the conversation ensued,” she says. Ms. Antwine says that initial call-full of small talk and an update on his illness-took her out of her comfort zone. But she persisted. “I had a ton of resentment, but I didn’t want him to die,” she says. To help put aside her negative emotions and give her dad some emotional relief, she pretended to like him more than she did at that point. They spoke on the phone a few more times, then Ms. Antwine invited her father to dinner at her maternal aunt’s house in New York a few days after Thanksgiving. “The holiday was not the time to deal with this,” she says. “I didn’t want to address it in the presence of our large family in a way that would have tainted the experience for everyone.” On the day of the dinner, Ms. Antwine’s father called and said he couldn’t make it. She later learned he had received bad news about his condition and needed to fly back home to Florida immediately. She never saw him in person again. But father and daughter kept talking on the phone a few times each month. They discussed how he’d been an absentee father and some of the other things he’d done that hurt his family. He talked about how his parents had divorced when he was young and how he’d had a strained relationship with his father. Ms. Antwine told him what she’d learned about being a responsible adult, and she tried to reassure him when he became fearful of dying. “Once he began to share some details with me about his childhood and upbringing, it softened me,” she says. “I was able to see him as just another human being and not a bad father.” Ms. Antwine’s father died about a year after their reconciliationone week shy of his 52nd birthday. “I am thankful every day that I got the opportunity to address all that pain before it was too late,” she says. See rest of article at: Holiday Miracles LET’S MAKE A DEAL: Start-Up Give Suspected Shoplifters a Choice: Pay $320 or Go to Jail by Leon Nekfayk, Slate Magazine Online (February 26, 2015) Imagine you’re browsing at Bloomingdale’s when a security guard taps you on the shoulder and accuses you of shoplifting. He takes you to a private room, sits you down, and runs your name through a database to see if you have any outstanding warrants. Then he tells you that you have two options. The first involves him calling the police, who might arrest you and take you to jail. The second allows you to walk out of the store immediately, no questions asked-right after you sign an admission of guilt and agree to pay $320 to take an online course designed to make you never want to steal again. Which would you choose? Over the past four years, about 20,000 people around the country have faced versions of this dilemma and chosen to pay up instead of taking their chances with the criminal justice system. Collecting their money and administering the course is a Utah-based outfit called Corrective Education Company (CEC), which was started by a pair of Harvard Business School graduates in 2010. According to Darrell Huntsman, CEC’s co-founder and CEO, the company serves four purposes: It saves retailers time that they would have to spend dealing with the police; it frees up law enforcement resources that could be spent on higher priority cases; it reduces the likelihood that a shoplifter will come back to the store to steal again; and it gives second chances to offenders who would otherwise be saddled with a criminal record for life. “It’s a private company acting as prosecutor, judge, jury, and collector. That’s remarkable,” said Susannah Karlsson, Brooklyn Defender Services CEC operates in most major American cities, said Huntsman, including Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Boston, Dallas, Houston, San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, and Atlanta. They work with approximately 20 different retailers, including grocery stores, big-box discount stores, clothing stores, and pharmacies. According to the company’s VP for account management, E.J. Caffaro, retail chains that have used the company’s services include Bloomingdale’s, Burlington Coat Factory, and the shoe store DSW; CEC also contracts with third-party security firms that provide loss prevention services in regional branches of Whole Foods and H&M. Retailers can collect a cut of CEC’s $320 fee each time they present an offender with the option of signing up for the program-a form of restitution, said Caffaro, which usually ends up being around $40 per case. CEC doesn’t charge retailers for their services, which the company refers to on its website as being “completely offender funded.” Offenders who are eligible for the CEC course (meaning they have been deemed sufficiently low-risk, based on their criminal history, by the store security guard who apprehended them) are given a card with CEC’s phone number on it, and instructed to call it within 48 hours to begin the process. Usually though, a “life coach” from CEC will call the individual immediately-“while they’re walking out to their car or driving home,” said Caffaro-to tell them about the course and make a payment plan. The company accepts credit cards, e-checks, and money orders, and while they offer a “scholarship” program for people below the poverty line, Caffaro said that about 85 percent of offenders pay the full fee, and less than 2 percent qualify for a free ride. I ran CEC’s business model by four attorneys at public defense organizations. None of them had ever heard of a company quite like it, and all of them were pretty appalled. “There’s no judicial oversight, there are no constitutional protections, there’s no due process,” said Susannah Karlsson, an attorney with the Brooklyn Defender Services, which provides free legal help to people who can’t afford it. “It’s a private company acting as prosecutor, judge, jury, and collector. That’s remarkable.”
Another lawyer, Steven Wasserman of the Legal Aid Society’s Criminal Practice Special Litigation Unit, said it sounded like CEC was “flirting with the crime of coercion in the second degree”-at least in New York State, where that crime is defined as compelling or inducing “a person to engage in conduct which the latter has a legal right to abstain from engaging in… by means of instilling in him or her a fear that, if the demand is not complied with,” he or she will be accused of a crime or face criminal charges. In other words, pressuring people into giving up their rights in exchange for $320. CEC executives emphasized that not one of the 20,000 people who have gone through their program were coerced into doing so. “It’s all voluntary,” Huntsman told me. “If someone started to take the course and paid for it-if they change their mind and they want to get their day in court, we’ll refund their money and put the case back in the retailer’s hands. They’ve got multiple opportunities to step back from this.” The core of the CEC course-which primarily lives online, but can also be taken on paper-was developed by Robert Setty, a clinical psychologist in Austin, Texas, and adapted by CEC for the purpose of rehabilitating shoplifters. The course takes a total of about six to eight hours to complete, and those who sign up are required to finish and pay within 90 days of their apprehension. If they don’t, their cases revert to the retailer’s loss-prevention department, which usually means the police are called, and formal charges ensue. A lot of defense attorneys and criminal-justice reformers would agree with that. But that doesn’t mean they see CEC as the solution. Alexis Karteron, a senior staff attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union who focuses on civil rights, says the problem with CEC’s model is that retailers make mistakes when identifying shoplifters-and that, as demonstrated during New York’s recent “shop and frisk” scandal, there’s good reason to think people who are wrongly accused tend to be disproportionately minorities. “It’s very, very troubling,” said Karteron, referring to the practice of offering suspects the chance to avoid prosecution in exchange for money. “How are they figuring out who is a suspected shoplifter? Do they have criteria for figuring that out? Whoever they target, they’re going to induce into admitting their guilt by saying ‘we’ll call the cops,’ and that is very worrisome if there are not standards in place to make sure their suspicion is founded in fact, rather than just a hunch.” “We plug into the current policies and procedures of the retailer, meaning the loss prevention agents … are trained by the establishment, when they’re hired, on how to make those stops, and how to go about making those stops in the right way,” he said. That is not quite good enough when you’re offering suspects a chance to buy their way out of being arrested, said Susannah Karlsson of Brooklyn Defender Services. “What we know for sure is that [security guards] don’t have a 100 percent hit rate” when it comes to correctly identifying shoplifters. “That’s why we have a criminal justice system and that’s why we have defense attorneys,” she said. Huntsman says he thought about this argument himself when he first started his company. But ultimately he decided that CEC would make the world a better place. “It’s a win from every angle,” he said. “It’s a win for the offender. It’s a win for the retailer. It’s a win for the criminal justice system. It’s a win for the community. Who loses in this?” See rest of article at: Get Out of Jail for $320 ORANGE IS NOT THE NEW BLACK Marking One Year of Running C.A.S.A. Groups At A Women’s Prison by Terry Shulman A year ago–in November 2014–I started volunteering once a month (every first Wednesday from 8:30-10:30am) at Michigan’s only women’s prison: Womens Huron Valley Correctional Facility near Ann Arbor–about an hour’s drive each way from my home. After nearly a year of red tape and scheduling issues, I began facilitating two 1-hour C.A.S.A. (Cleptomaniacs And Shoplifters Anonymous) meetings. Each group meeting had between 5-15 women inmates on any given week–most of them attended nearly all the meetings. All of those attend on a voluntary basis and all identified as being incarcerated for theft-related offenses (most are repeat offenders). The prison saw a need for C.A.S.A. groups to supplement their A.A. and N.A. meetings as they housed more and more women for theft offenses including shoplifting, credit card fraud, employee theft and embezzlement, and other acts of fraud or larceny. There was quite the buzz when the inmates found out about the group and I have found the great majority of those attending to be very open and candid and serious about admitting to their crimes and wanting to know how to break their patterns. Many readily related to the concept of theft addiction. The prison had purchased 20 copies each of two of my books– Something for Nothing; Shoplifting Addiction and Recovery and Biting The Hand That Feeds: The Employee Theft Epidemic. which most of the women borrowed and read. The group was quite diverse racially, age-wise, and socio-economically–though most reported some degree of impoverishment. I told an abbreviated version of my personal addiction-recovery story several times and the group related to many of my own issues: growing up with an alcoholic parent, surviving divorce, taking over as the surrogate parent, feeling I had to be strong and never let anyone see my stress or pain. Most of the women have been engaged, intelligent, articulate and funny. It’s always a little heart-breaking to hear their life stories and the complicated lives they’ve lived and which usually wait for them when they’re released. I feel grateful to be of service in some small way and hope some of the women will attend our local C.A.S.A. meetings when they get paroled. It’s so easy for inmates to get overwhelmed upon release and forget about working a recovery program. There’s always the danger of negative people luring them back into a life of crime as well as the danger of becoming institutionalized and not being able to function in the real world. I do my best to be a good, non-judgmental listener and an inspiration for change. If nothing more, I hope to be planting seeds of encouragement and to help them understand that stealing often becomes addictive and that there are many underlying issues which tend to fuel the stealing. Many of them seemed to never have considered this. Time will tell if any of these trapped angels will find their true wings again and fly. But I’m happy to do what I can to blow a little wind under their sails. _________________________________________________ _________________________________________________ _________________________________________________ SPOTLIGHTS: Younique Wellness for Body, Mind and Spirit I’ve known Dr. Steven Fischer for about 5 years. He’s both a friend and a colleague and has been a Ph.D psychologist in private practice for over 30 years. In the last decade, he has researched and integrated nutrition and mindfulness to his own life and to his patients and reaped powerful results. He recently launched a new business name and website. Here is a bit about this… Younique Wellness is the result of 33 years of clinical experience and experimentation to create the ultimate in Mental Wellness. A passion for helping people heal from their emotional suffering led to the discovery that a combination of psychotherapy and nutrition yields the most powerful treatment possible. Whether you choose psychotherapy alone, or in combination with nutrition, you need to know that you are a unique human being and there is no one-sizefits-all. Ever! See: http://youniquewellness.net
Think Beyond Belief Publishing I’ve known one of my best friends, Kevin Lauderdale since 2000. Kevin is a 58-year old African-American man, actually, he’s a modern “Renaissance Man.” A divorced father of three bi-racial young adult sons, Kevin is a former drag racer, career coach, and federal employee. He is also a black belt in karate and karate instructor and a prostate cancer survivor since 2001. Kevin is a man of heart and soul, a wealth of information, wisdom, and advice on a variety of subjects. He has a lot to say about rare, politics, sex, love, health and spirituality. Kevin just recently completed the several e-books he’s been working on for about 10 years, including on prostate cancer and sexuality for men; creating a vibrant a vibrant business; and manuals for adult men and young men which present codes and guides for living lives of honor and integrity. Please check out Kevin’s websites to learn more about him and to receive free copies of some of his e-books… See: http://kevinalexzander.com http://zantimekoqwanzi.com Alabama Court Referral Program S.T.E.P.: Stop Theft Education Program Mr. Shulman began consulting with Cullman, Alabama Court Referral Program in creating an 18-24 hour court-ordered theft offender education program, scheduled to launch by the end of 2015 as a pilot program for the entire state. See: North Alabama Court Referral Programs unsteal.org unsteal.org is a non profit organization collecting retributive funds from past thefts and returning funds to retail merchants. Founded in October 2014, our official paperwork was filed earlier this year and the IRS recently approved our non-profit 501(c)(3) status. History One day a repenting thief went to a department store to pay for a stolen perfume set he couldn’t afford for his girlfriend’s birthday 5 years prior. The cashier was startled by the apparent confession of a crime and desire to pay back in cash, risking prosecution depending on the statute of limitations and quantity. AWKWARD… Many people have stolen an item from a retailer and would likely return the cost if there was a convenient way to do it instantly from a website or app. There is an amazing reward from retribution and unsteal.org is the website for the world to return anything stolen. We already own the domain name and launched it on a shared host server for the next 14 months. Please help us get started with the legal paperwork for the state and federal government and eventually change theft forever on a global scale! You are all beautiful people and even if you have pain and guilt, you can find moments to shine. Try this! Vision The purpose of Unsteal is to offer retribution for any past theft by collecting money anonymously and returning it to the victims. Initially, we are using a website to host actual transactions, but we plan to launch a mobile app. for iTunes and Google Play by March 10, 2015. To ensure the safety of our users we’re cooperating with retailers at a corporate level, along with local officials, to protect users from prosecution as a result of an Unsteal transaction. Similar to the police’s “no questions asked” gun collection drives to reduce overall crime, we will gain support from law enforcement to give the public a chance to return something stolen without any fear of punishment. Please visit: www.unsteal.org Please click this link below to support Unsteal for most purchases made on Amazon. This is a program called Amazon Smile that will use your same existing Amazon account except that Unsteal will get a 0.5% donation for qualified purchases: https://smile.amazon.com/ch/47-3474503 New Blog and Book For Shopaholics and Compulsive Shoppers Getting Out from Going Under Susan B. is a gratefully recovering member of Debtor’s Anonymous (DA), abstinent one day at a time using the H.O.W. principles since April 25, 2009. She has a wonderful website and blog for those recovering from compulsive shopping, spending, buying and debting. She also recently published (2015) one of the only 365 Daily Meditation books on financial sobriety.Please visit: Financial Sobriety Psychologist Releases Text Messaging Program For Shopaholics and Compulsive Shoppers Shopaholics and compulsive buyers have a new resource for help. New York psychologist, April Lane Benson, Ph.D., releases an innovative, interactive text-messaging program that directs, inspires, and motivates shopping addicts to stop overshopping. The program is tailored specifically to each participant’s overshopping profile and it provides daily, personalized support when and where overshoppers and impulsive shoppers need it the most. Text messaging is now being used to help people with a variety of physical and mental health issues, including diabetes selfmanagement, weight loss, physical activity, smoking cessation, and diminished alcohol consumption. Although this area of research and practice is relatively new, there has been consistent evidence that text messaging interventions that use tailored messages and offer the user the opportunity to text the system for immediate support are the most successful. The Stopping Overshopping Text Messaging Program incorporates both of these features. To learn more about The Stopping Overshopping Text Messaging Program, see: http://www.shopaholicnomore.com/text-program/ Please see: http://www.shopaholicnomore.com/text-program Write on My Mind Mental Health Project Welcome to WriteOnMyMind.com-a safe place for the mind to speak. This website is part of a broader global initiative, The Surviving Suicide Project, a partnership of the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Collier County, Florida, USA, (NAMI-CC) and author Deena Baxter. As Baxter explains, “After losing our youngest son to suicide in 2012 – death by mental illness – I felt like I was living through my own reality TV series of “Survivor”. That reality launched me on a mission, a search for “Normal”. I desperately needed some company and I was lucky to find the NAMI-CC. I am still searching and invite you to join me. For too long, the stigma of mental illness and impairment has kept it cloaked in darkness and denial. This places an additional burden on those who live with it every day, plus their family members and loved ones. Many of these adults, teens and children are seeking to live full, productive lives. They are successfully integrating their mental health challenges into their daily life but don’t wish to be defined by them.” You have come to a place that gives mental illness a life-affirming voice-a virtual, global community where visitors can find helpful resources and be inspired by the many different ways the mind can speak-in words and in art. This website was inspired by the NAMI-CC Anything Goes: Art-From-The Heart Project that resulted in the artwork included in Baxter’s book-SURVIVING SUICIDE: Searching for “Normal” with Heartache and Humor. Visual art can be a powerful communicator, beyond words. It can send a message if we are open to it, and it can heal. See: www.writeonmymind.com Jack L. Hayes, International, Inc. Based out of Florida, Jack L. Hayes, International is a loss prevention and corporate consulting group that has been helping clients for over 30 years. Founded by Jack Hayes, who is now semi-retired (and who gave an in-depth interview about theft in my book “Cluttered Lives, Empty Souls”), the company is now headed up by long-time point-person, Mark R. Doyle. Hayes International has clients around the world and is recognized for their Annual Jack Hayes Retail Theft Survey of large corporations. This survey tracks the prevalence and trends of shoplifting and employee theft and is widely cited (including by me). Hayes International also is known for their long-standing quarterly newsletter which has several articles about loss prevention and related issues. I’ve been honored to have had several articles included in their newsletter. Please see their website at: www.hayesinternational.com “In Recovery” Magazine There’s a wonderful 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 write a regular column about process/behavioral addictions from 2014-105. The magazine is available 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 Resources
Ongoing … Since 2015, Mr. Shulman has been consulting with Cullman, Alabama Court Referral Program in creating an 18-24 hour courtordered theft offender education program, scheduled to launch by the end of 2015 as a pilot program for the entire state. Since 2010, the Baton Rouge, Louisiana court system has run a court-ordered educational program for retail fraud offenders which 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 write a regular column about process/behavioral addictions from 2014-2015.The magazine is available 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 the course.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 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.