Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: It’s a Matter of Trust
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.afocd.org/
CITY:
STATE: CA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 94800103
Personal name heading:
Callner, James
Found in: The touching tree, 1993: credit frame (James Callner)
LC database, 1/10/94 (hdg.: James Callner)
================================================================================
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS AUTHORITIES
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave., SE
Washington, DC 20540
Questions? Contact: ils@loc.gov
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Holds an M.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, educator, filmmaker, and nonprofit executive. President of Awareness Foundation for OCD. Has worked as an instructor at private OCD support groups; has taught at college level. Creator of the films, In the Shoes of Christopher, The Risk, and The Touching Tree.
AWARDS:Has won awards for films he has written and directed.
WRITINGS
Creator of the lecture series, Hope and Solutions for OCD.
SIDELIGHTS
James Callner is a writer, educator, filmmaker, and nonprofit executive. He leads the Awareness Foundation of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Having experienced OCD himself, Callner has also served as an instructor for private OCD support groups. He has won awards at film festivals in the U.S. and abroad for the films he has made. Among the films he has made are The Touching Tree, The Risk, and In the Shoes of Christopher. All of those films feature main characters dealing with OCD. The Touching Tree depicts a child who has OCD and is in the education genre. The Risk focuses on how OCD can affect the dynamics of a family. A young person with OCD experiences bullying from his peers in In the Shoes of Christopher. Hope and Solutions for OCD is a lecture series by Callner, which also includes professionals who treat the disorder. Callner holds a master’s degree and has taught at the university level.
In 2018, Callner released his first book, a self-published volume called It’s a Matter of Trust. In this work, he shares his struggles with OCD and explains how a specific type of therapy has helped him to overcome the disorder. Callner notes that he first recognized he was experiencing OCD in 1982. He was in his twenties at the time and had been dealing with sex addiction. His troubles with that addiction caused him severe anxiety and stress, which ultimately led to the development of OCD. Callner became obsessed with number and felt compelled to do mundane tasks a certain number of times. Additionally, his hygiene routine became extensive and consuming. Callner became unable to control his disorder and was eventually held in a psychiatric hospital for a month and a half. Over the following two decades, he tried a variety of approaches to controlling his illness, from spiritual journeys to western medical treatments. Finally, Callner found that understanding the fear that lies at the root of OCD helped him to resist his compulsions. He has also come to rely on a higher power to give him the strength and support he needs. In It’s a Matter of Trust, he describes his progress and the setbacks he has faced. Each chapter of the book concludes with words of encouragement for readers.
A Publishers Weekly reviewer offered a favorable assessment of It’s a Matter of Trust. The reviewer commented: “This is a worthwhile read for OCD or anxiety sufferers, their loved ones, or anyone interested in the disorder.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, February 5, 2018, review of It’s a Matter of Trust, p. 55.
ONLINE
Awareness Foundation for OCD website, https://www.afocd.org/ (July 19, 2018), author profile.
James Callner, MA, AFOCD President: Mr. Callner started his teaching and professional filmmaking career in his early twenties. He has earned over 35 national and international awards and critical acclaim for writing and directing films about physically and emotionally challenged individuals. In 1982, Mr. Callner himself was afflicted with the devastating anxiety disorder Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). After over two decades of cognitive, behavioral, spiritual, medical and alternative therapies and treatments, James Callner has emerged as a personal coach, public speaker and educator on moving though the fears and anxieties of life and into self confidence, self esteem and hope.
James Callner
Aptos, California
Mental Health Care
Recommendations 6 people have recommended James Callner
387
connections
View James Callner’s full profile. It's free!
Your colleagues, classmates, and 500 million other professionals are on LinkedIn.
View James’ Full Profile
Volunteer Experience & Causes
Author, Educator, Speaker, OCD Coach
OCD Treatment Centre, Support for Everything OCD, OCD Coaching and Recovery, OCD Coaching Videos
PresentEducation
Volunteering as OCD Educator for seven private OCD support groups on Facebook and OCD Treatement Centre, England.
Causes James cares about:
Arts and Culture
Civil Rights and Social Action
Disaster and Humanitarian Relief
Education
Environment
Health
Human Rights
Politics
Projects
Vblog ~ How Exposure Ritual Prevention Breaks OCD~James Callner
Starting April 2011
James Callner for The Awareness Foundation for OCD describes the power of Exposure Ritual Prevention or ERP as the primary treatment to break OCD compulsions and obsessions. Mr Callner challenges his own OCD fears with ERP daily.
Team members:
James Callner
James Callner Preview ~ Hope & Solutions for OCD
January 2013 – January 2013
James Callner President of The Awareness Foundation for OCD talks about his own recovery and the power of one certain word in this preview for the DVD Hope and Solutions for OCD ~ Available at AFOCD.org
Team members:
James Callner
James Callner~VBlog on Benefits of Walking to Calm Anxiety
January 2013 – January 2013
James Callner President Awareness Foundation for OCD, AFOCD.org talks about one of the great tools for calming anxiety ~ walking. To find you nature get out in nature.
Team members:
James Callner
The Monkey Mind + OCD
January 2013 – January 2013
James Callner President of The Awareness Foundation for OCD describes his experience with taming The Monkey Mind which creates anxiety and worry.
Team members:
James Callner
Publications
It's a Matter of Trust
Amazon
December 2016
If you are looking for empathy, compassion, kindness, hope, and practical tools for living with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), this book will help inspire you on your journey to recovery. In 1982, author James Callner suffered a devastating mental breakdown and the onset of severe OCD. He was hospitalized for six weeks. He felt broken, lost, and terrified about what was happening to his life. He felt trapped with no way out. But there was a way out … This hopeful and inspirational memoir is warm and casual and shares his recovery process. His care was multifaceted, including hospitalization, cognitive behavioral therapy, exposure response prevention therapy, and an array of innovative approaches. With compassion, empathy, humor, and wisdom, James chronicles his more than three decades of getting the right help while living with OCD. He found that OCD robbed him of trust and infused him with fears and phobias about people, places, and things and debilitating anxiety. He simply didn’t trust life. He regained that trust by using helpful tools to reclaim his power—to trust himself again. In this book, he shares those tools to help with your recovery. This is a memoir and a self-help book for anyone who struggles with OCD. As James Callner often reminds people with OCD, “There is always hope.”
Authors:
James Callner
Spirituality: Real Medicine for Mental Illness By James Callner
But You LOOK Just Fine by Carol Sveilich
Selection from article:
~ So, on a Wednesday night, I went to my first 12-step meeting. In the beginning I found myself internally fighting with the program. All these slogans and ideas that made absolutely no sense to me. ‘Let go, let God’. My brain screamed silently; ‘what the hell was that suppose to mean’?
I went back to my psychiatrist, and asked; "What the hell does ‘Let go and let God' mean?" He replied with words that I carry to this day. He said plainly; “All it means is Stop Trying to Figure It Out."
And, the God or higher power part? My choice. Source, the Universe the ocean, the higher power in me, etc. My choosing.
For the first time in my life I got very very quiet and literally stopped talking. ‘The committee’ in my mind, stopped arguing. Something finally made sense. I had been ‘figuring out life for decades rather than living it. Then my brain snapped back into judgment mode. It sounded just too simple for a person so phobic and fearful. I said to him in a defending voice,” Stop trying to figure it out? And then what"? He replied with another life changing spiritual concept; "and then, let go of controlling all your feelings and fears. Have them. Own them. Feel them. Life is about feeling all feelings, including fear and not controlling them.
There is a very strange paradox about control that you learn when you get in to spiritual work, whether it is through 12 Step programs, Course in Miracles, a large amount of books and tapes on spirituality from authors like Melody Beattie to Wayne Dyer to Deepak Chopra.
The paradox is this, ‘When you let go of control and stop trying to figure it out… you get control. Let me repeat that. WHEN YOU LET GO OF CONTROL, YOU GET CONTROL. Isn't that strange? I found it unbelievable, but I tried it and it works every time.
Authors:
James Callner
About
Compassion, Help and Hope from "It's a Matter of Trust" and Author James Callner.
Biography
James Callner’s onset of OCD
came in his 20s. To this day,
he continues his recovery with
CBT/ERP, spiritual, medical,
and holistic therapies and
treatments, and has emerged
as an educator and a public
speaker specializing in OCD and anxiety.
Mr. Callner started his college teaching and professional
filmmaking career in his early 20s. He has earned over
30 national and international film festival awards as well
as critical acclaim for writing and directing films about
physically and emotionally challenged individuals. He was
commissioned by the International OCD Foundation to
make the first dramatic educational film about a child with
OCD, The Touching Tree.
He went on to make In the Shoes of Christopher, a
dramatic film about OCD and bullying; The Risk, a film
about OCD and the family; and Hope and Solutions for OCD,
a four-part lecture series with OCD professionals. All films
can be found on afocd.org and YouTube.
QUOTED: "This is a worthwhile read for OCD or anxiety sufferers, their loved ones, or anyone interested in the disorder."
It's a Matter of Trust
Publishers Weekly. 265.6 (Feb. 5, 2018): p55.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
It's a Matter of Trust
James Callner. James Callner, $14.95 trade paper (298p) ISBN 978-0-9980729-0-6
Filmmaker Callner reveals his struggles with obsessive compulsive disorder and offers "practical, common-sense, and spiritual tools" for dealing with it in this helpful memoir-cum-how-to guide. Stress and anxiety due to a sex addiction triggered Callner's OCD in 1982 and led to him being hospitalized when he was in his 20s. As he describes examples of his OCD behavior, from elaborate hygiene rituals to number obsessions, Callner shares how he learned that he could live without succumbing to his compulsions. He reiterates that OCD is a "fear-based" disorder and that "progress not perfection" is key to handling it. Underscoring his optimistic and nonjudgmental tone, each chapter begins with an affirmational quote and ends with a sentence or two of takeaways for readers, such as "You are stronger than you think" and "You do the best you can given the conditions you are under." While there are nuggets of insight and wisdom, the chapters aren't arranged in a logical sequence and a few ideas, such as a higher power providing help, are repeated too often. Nevertheless, this is a worthwhile read for OCD or anxiety sufferers, their loved ones, or anyone interested in the disorder. (BookLife)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"It's a Matter of Trust." Publishers Weekly, 5 Feb. 2018, p. 55. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A526810436/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=98821d06. Accessed 7 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A526810436