My qualifications for teaching the Overcome Hoarding and Transform Your Life workshop are:
* I have worked with hoarders for something like 40 years (long before there was a name for the condition or anyone knew anything about it)
* I started and led the first Hoarding Behavior Taskforce in San Francisco back in 1984
* I have taught this workshop to rave reviews from my students and ongoing reports of their progress for five years
* I wrote a book called Overcome Hoarding and Transform Your Life which my students talk about with the kind of reverence that people in 12-step groups have for the Big Book
* finally and most importantly, my students are making major progress on all fronts - clearing out, physical and emotional.
I meet with the students from the last workshop for a discussion group every month and it is thrilling to listen to their stories of improvement. I don't have a magic wand, but there is proof that my methods work. I'm not saying it's easy - this is hard work, but it is the best work possible.
I have a BA degree in Psychology and a MS in Counseling, however, I don't have a license and don't consider myself a therapist. That said, many people have said that they have gotten more out of my classes than they did from years of therapy.
I teach a separate workshop, Making Life Easier (MLE), for people who are merely clutterers and not hoarders - that will be in the Fall, and many of my hoarding students take it after making a lot of progress on their hoarding problem. If a person has a hoarding problem, I recommend NOT taking the MLE class first, as organizing isn't really the issue.
For the Making Life Easier workshop, my qualifications are:
* experience working with hundreds of people to create systems to improve functioning in their homes, businesses, and non-profits
* nearly fifty years experience organizing files, libraries, offices and homes
* both practical and theoretical understanding of systems
* ability to anticipate needs for systems and their performance over time
* author of a book on creating systems and organizing, Making Life Easier: Simple Systems to Manage Your Time, Things, Money, and Life - Painlessly!
