Full Course Description

Healing from the Bottom Up: How to Help Clients Access Resource States with Peter Levine

Program Information

Outline

Master the SIBAM model for systematically observing clients' nonverbal responses.
Guide clients in "riding the waves" of their sensations as they exit from their immobility response and experience release from their original trauma.
Titrate your interventions to maximize your impact and avoid retraumatizing vulnerable clients.

Objectives

Assess physical cues of internal states that indicate the resources clients can access to improve clinical outcomes.

Target Audience

Psychologists, Counselors, Social Workers, Addiction Counselors, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses and other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 03/22/2014

Couples Therapy for Treating Trauma: The Gottman Method Approach

Program Information

Objectives

Determine the impact of PTSD on a couple’s relationship to inform the clinician’s choice of treatment interventions for both the individual and couple.
Apply simple yet effective clinical interventions in session to help clients acquire a new perspective of PTSD and a more adaptive approach to managing symptoms.
Assess the often ignored social and interpersonal symptoms of PTSD in clients.

Outline

What is PTSD?

DSM-5
Ignored PTSD Symptoms
Epidemiology
Cases of PTSD
Neuroscience of PTSD
The Physiology of PTSD

Effective Treatments of PTSD

Individual Treatments
Couples Treatments
- Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)

Couples’ Therapy for PTSD

PTSD’s Affects on Relationships
The Non-PTSD Partner
Effects on Sound Relationship House
- Love Maps
- Turning Toward
- Conflict Management

Intervention for Couples with PTSD

Surfacing
Exploration
Returning to Couple Interaction
Specific Interventions
Creating Shared Meaning

Target Audience

Psychologists, Addiction Counselors, Counselors, Social Workers, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses, and other Behavioral Health Professionals

Copyright : 03/25/2018

Mastering the Craft of Treating Trauma

Program Information

Objectives

Manage the clinical demands of working with developmental trauma using the core clinical skills.
Develop the clinical implications of trauma as they manifest in the consulting room and in the client’s life.
Analyze the history of client’s significant attachments as it relates to case conceptualization.
Analyze the efficacy of the four core clinician skills in relation to assessment and treatment planning.

Outline

Working Definition of Trauma
- Trauma Memory
- Triggers
Identifying and working with the by-products of trauma as they manifest in the consulting room and the client’s life.
Evaluate client readiness and motivation for desired change
Evaluate client skills necessary for effective trauma treatment
Explore history of significant attachments
Navigate the unique clinical demands of working with developmental trauma
- Core Clinical Skills

Target Audience

Psychologists, Addiction Counselors, Counselors, Social Workers, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses, and other Behavioral Health Professionals

Copyright : 03/24/2018

The Essentials of Effective Trauma Treatment: How to Go Beyond Technique

Program Information

Outline

Creating a Context for Change
- Micro and macro perspectives
- Awareness and attunement to when you use (or don’t use) 5 essential ingredients
  - failure in therapy is failure to notice these 5 ingredients
  - key to therapy and life changes is recognizing when you use and do not use them
- Discuss with clients the process of therapy
  - Understand client’s goals
  - Explain therapy processes that enable change to happen
  - Build collaboration, interaction and engagement
  - Ask client, “what do you want to know about me?” (note: this was discussed during Role Play)
Challenging Patterns/Cycles and Expanding Realities: a Collaborative Change model
- Fractal model: repeating patterns of the 5 essential ingredients, within and between sessions
  - Concept-driven, universal model
  - Adapt to the needs and goals of each client: therapy as an art form
  - Challenges client and therapist to think differently
- Use the Five Essential Ingredients for Healing
  - Attachment and connection: help clients build relationships with you and others
  - Create a sense of belonging, mutual curiosity, compassion, empathy
  - Communicate with collaborative conversations that validate the client
  - Connect to a deep set of values that provide meaningful vision
  - Safety and empowerment: build refuge by creating boundaries
  - Explain your therapeutic model and why you chose to use this approach
  - Expect client challenges
  - Values: use collaborative, strength-based guidance
  - Generate discussion of vulnerabilities and resources, and how to use them in the moment
  - Recognize the universal nature of challenge and change
- Skills: learn and apply many therapeutic models (discussed primarily during “Role Play”)
  - Apply psycho-educational and therapeutic approaches
  - Identify resources for client success
- Hope: expecting the possibility of change (discussed primarily during “Role Play”)
  - Use resources to create possibilities
  - Build expectations in clients
  - Accept finite possibilities to create infinite hope
Consolidation and repetition: pause, reflect, and combine experiences
- Harness the natural cycle of change and growth through using these 3 steps in the Collaborative Change Model,
- Recognize and repeat the 5 Essential Ingredients for Healing
- Build skills for therapeutic intervention
- (the following points outline the speaker’s final hour with audience participation)
- Role play demonstrations with participants:
  - Pictionary: draw a time you felt safe when growing up in your family
  - Pause and reflect, to contract and consolidate
  - all clients are asked to keep a journal of resources to use in the process of change
  - contrast vulnerabilities with resources
  - write one thing you will take with you from session today; distill this to one word

Objectives

Assess the client’s natural change cycle and how to organize therapy around it
Develop procedures for creating a secure, safe attachment, including a transparent and overt collaborative contract
Support clients’ resources rather than becoming preoccupied with pathology
Assess the client’s resources and your own to create an effective treatment plan

Target Audience

Psychologists, Physicians, Addiction Counselors, Counselors, Social Workers, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses, and other Behavioral Health Professionals

Copyright : 03/24/2017

Cultural and Historical Traumas: Invisible Barriers to Healing and Change

Program Information

Objectives

Evaluate the clinical implications of clients with historical trauma to inform the clinician’s choice of treatment interventions.
Articulate clinical interventions that acknowledge and process grief and loss connected to the client’s historical trauma.

Outline

Awareness, Acknowledgement and Assessment

Acknowledgement and Awareness of The Intergenerational Impact and Memory Traces of Cultural and
Historical Traumas on Clients and The Therapist’s Own Self
Relevant Areas for Assessment
Structured Model of Assessment
Case Examples of The Clinical Implications of Traumatic Experiences in The Present

Moving from Reflexive Reactivity to Connection, Fluidity and Coherence in The Here and Now

Difference Between Bias, Prejudice and the “Isms”
The Process to Regulate the Neurobiology of Bias
The Benefit and Power of Providing the Resources of Witness, Protector and Comforter to Heal Intergenerational Wounds

How to Uncover the Survival Narrative, Validate the Trauma, And Move to A Strengths-Based Process of Empowerment and Healing

Studying, Listening to And Validating the Client’s Traumatic Cultural Narrative, While Listening for The Resources That Helped Them Survive
Using the Client’s Own Survival Resources, As Well As Cultural-Specific Rituals and/or Creating New Rituals for Acknowledging and Processing the Loss and Grief Connected to Historical Traumas
New Ways to Establish Boundaries and Self-Defense and Self-Protection

Target Audience

Psychologists, Addiction Counselors, Counselors, Social Workers, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses, and other Behavioral Health Professionals

Copyright : 03/23/2018

Treating Complex Trauma Clients at the Edge: How Brain Science Can Inform Interventions

Program Information

Objectives

Evaluate the extreme symptoms of trauma by determining if they are rooted in sympathetic activation or parasympathetic withdrawal to inform clinical treatment interventions.
Articulate methods by which neuroscience can be interfaced with psychotherapy practices to improve clinical outcomes.

Outline

Experiential Treatments - Integrating neuroscience and psychotherapy

Necessity of utilizing physical, emotional and relationship aspects in therapeutic intervention

Problems with traditional phase oriented treatment

Negative evaluation of symptoms - ignoring their protective function

Internal Family Systems

Understanding symptom presentation as positive efforts pushed to extremes
Welcoming and integrating all parts of an individual
Identifying intent of symptomology, importance of avoiding shaming

Redefining trauma related diagnoses and integrating overactive protective mechanisms

Disorganized attachment
Borderline Personality Disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder

Therapist factors - vulnerabilities

Impact of therapist parts acting as separately as the clients we work with
Responding effectively to personal triggers

Symptoms of post trauma

Hyperarousal, hyperarousal, psychic wounds
Importance of obtaining permission before addressing psychic wounds

Experiential exercise - self-awareness, response to triggers
Mind-brain relationships

Neuroplasticity, neural integration
Neural networks associated with trauma
Implicit nature of trauma memories

Autonomic nervous system

Role of cortisol
Sympathetic hyper-arousal
Characteristics of extreme symptom activation and mixed states

Therapeutic responses

Choosing compassion or empathic responses
Providing auxiliary cognition
Strategies to avoid contributing to hyperarousal
Top down strategies to separate or unblend

Case presentation - example of permission seeking, direct access and unblending
Polyvagal Theory

Dorsal and ventral branches
Activating strategies, responding to hypo-arousal, blunting

Target Audience

Psychologists, Addiction Counselors, Counselors, Social Workers, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses, and other Behavioral Health Professionals

Overcoming Trauma-Related Shame and Self-Loathing with Janina Fisher, Ph.D.

Program Information

Objectives

Discriminate the clinical implications of physiological and cognitive contributors to shame.
Determine cognitive-behavioral, ego state, and psychoeducational interventions to address shame in clients.

Outline

The Neurobiology of Shame

The role of shame in traumatic experience
Shame as an animal defense survival response
Effects of shame on autonomic arousal

Shame’s Evolutionary Purpose

Shame and the attachment system
Rupture and repair in attachment formation

Making Meaning of Shame

Feelings of disgust, degradation, and humiliation are interpreted as “who I am”
Cognition and the body
Internal working models predict the future and determine our actions

Working from the “Bottom Up”

The role of procedural learning and memory
Physiological effects of mindful dual awareness
Using mindfulness-based techniques to inhibit self-judgment

A New Relationship to the Shame: Acceptance and Compassion

Re-contextualizing shame as a younger self or part
Bringing our adult capacity to our childhood vulnerability
Healing shame through compassionate acceptance

The Social Engagement System and the Healing of Shame

Social engagement and the ventral vagal system (Porges)
The incompatibility of shame and social engagement
The therapist’s own social engagement system as a healing agent

Target Audience

Psychologists, Counselors, Social Workers, Case Managers, Addiction Counselors, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses, and other Mental Health Professionals