Full Text:

BPW To Host Program On Anger In The Workplace

(with photo)

BY KAAREN VALENTA

Shelley Berman likes to recall an espisode from the 1970s television show All

In the Family in which Gloria and Mike posed the following riddle to Archie

and Edith Bunker:

"An injured man was wheeled into the operating room for surgery, but the

surgeon took one look at the man on the table and exclaimed, `I cannot operate

on this man, he is my son.' But the surgeon was not the injured man's father.

Who was the surgeon?"

"It may only take you 20 seconds to realize the surgeon was the mother of the

injured man, but in the early 1970s this riddle consumed a half-hour

television episode," Shelley Berman said. "It said a lot about women and

stereotypes."

Ms Berman, a licensed clinical social worker, will present a program on anger,

depression, coping and emotional balance at the April 5 dinner meeting of the

Newtown Business and Professional Women at the Mary Hawley Inn.

Ms Berman is assistant director of social services at the Jewish Home for the

Elderly in Fairfield and also has her own private practice treating adults of

all ages. She will combine humor with years of personal and professional

experience to provide advice on using coping skills for stress reduction,

anger management, and emotional balance.

Clinical depression is a very real illness, a physiological condition that can

be treated, Ms Berman said, and she does not make light of it. But feelings of

depression, anger, and low self-worth also are experienced by women because

throughout history they have been taught not to trust themselves.

"Women are constantly told they are worth less -- the 60 cents on the dollar

tradition -- and you are viewed as a bad girl if you don't follow the rules,"

she said. "Of course, it is much less empowering to believe the rules for

women than to believe the rules for men."

"We know we are as bright and talented as men," she said. "Fred Astaire was a

very talented dancer, but Ginger Rogers had to do everything he did, except

backwards and in high heels. We have to do more and, of course, we have to do

it perfectly."

Young women today are breaking from the restrictions that their mothers felt,

but there are plenty of middle-aged women who are still struggling to find

themselves, she said.

"Our society is becoming more knowledge driven -- what you know will be

important, not what you wear or look like," she said. "This is a radical

change. Women have been taught differently. And when we get angry about it, we

believe that we don't have a right to get angry. So we suppress it for awhile,

we hang onto it for a lot longer, and we don't really get the closure that men

do."

Shelley Berman started her career as a dancer, not a social worker.

"Dance taught me as much about life as anything else," she said. "I trained

with Margery Mazia Guthrie, the wife of Woody Guthrie, and had my own dance

studio in Westport. Eventually I went from dance to dance therapy, then to

social work, earning a master's degree in social work in 1978."

The modern dance method pioneered by Martha Graham taught her that the body

should flow smoothly from the first warm-up through the end of the dance

routine. "I learned the process -- if you can handle the changes, you can keep

going. That's true with life, too."

She found art to be a useful vehicle for self expression in counseling and

therapy.

"Whether it is writing, or movement, or even cooking groups, the group process

helps us," she said. "It is the sharing, hoping that if you can trust others,

maybe someday you can trust yourself. We are taught not to trust ourselves. We

lie about our age, our hair color, our feelings. So much of our reality is

based on what we think it is -- how we perceive reality -- but we have the

power to change it."

Ms Berman's April 5 program will be funded through a BPW Foundation/Eli Lily

Community Education grant that Newtown BPW was awarded to educate women about

clinical depression.

The grant is part of a national program, Dispelling the Myth: Women and

Depression. The Eli Lily Corp gave the BPW Foundation $10,000 to implement the

program nationwide. The Newtown club received $300 to hire speakers, sponsor

screenings, and distribute information about depression as part of its

"Speaking Up and Speaking Out -- Dispelling the Myths About Women and

Depression" project.

Newtown BPW members distributed 1,500 pamphlets on "What Every Woman Should

Know About Depression" to area businesses and made available a video and

program guide for use by local companies. The organization also assisted the

Family Counseling Center with its annual Depression Screening Day in last fall

and co-sponsored a second screening day at the Booth Library.

Newtown BPW is a nonprofit organization that promotes the interests of

business and professional women and providing them with an opportunity for

networking. The club usually meets the first Monday of each month at 6 pm at

area restaurants. Following a networking session, dinner begins at 6:30 pm.

The dinner meeting will begin at 6 pm and there will be a buffet.

Reservations, $18, must be placed with Judy Volpe at Advance Esthetiques,

270-8911, by March 26. Guests and potential members are welcome.